Pant Building a Virtual Assistant for Raspberry Pi

The practical guide for constructing a voice-controlled virtual assistant
1. Auflage 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4842-2167-9
Verlag: Apress
Format: PDF
Kopierschutz: 1 - PDF Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 95 Seiten

Reihe: Apress Access Books

Build a voice-controlled virtual assistant using speech-to-text engines, text-to-speech engines, and conversation modules. This book shows you how to program the virtual assistant to gather data from the internet (weather data, data from Wikipedia, data mining); play music; and take notes. Each chapter covers building a mini project/module to make the virtual assistant better. You'll develop the software on Linux or OS X before transferring it to your Raspberry Pi, ready for deploying in your own home-automation or Internet of Things applications.

walks you through various STTs and TTSs and the implementation of these components with the help of Python. After that you will start implementing logic for handling user queries and commands, so that the user can have conversations with Melissa. You will then work to improve logic handling to detect what the user wants Melissa to do. You will also work on building some useful applications/modules for Melissa, which will allow you to gain interesting information from Melissa such as the time, weather information, and data from Wikipedia.

You will develop a music playing application as well as a note taking application for Melissa, laying the foundations for how Melissa can be further extended. Finally, you will learn how to deploy this software to your Raspberry Pi and how you can further scale Melissa to make her more intelligent, interactive and how you can use her in other projects such as home automation as well.

What You'll Learn

• Design the workflow and discover the concepts of building a voice controlled assistant
• Develop modules for having conversations with the assistant
• Enable the assistant to retrieve information from the internet
• Build utilities like a music player and a note taking application for the virtual assistant
• Integrate this software with a Raspberry Pi

Who This Book Is For

Anyone who has built a home automation project with Raspberry Pi and now want to enhance it by making it voice-controlled. The book would also interest students from computer science or related disciplines.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Pant, Tanay

Inhaltsverzeichnis

1;Contents at a Glance;6
2;Contents;8
3;About the Author;14
4;About the Technical Reviewer;16
5;Acknowledgments;18
6;Chapter 1: Introduction to Virtual Assistants;19
6.1;Commercial Virtual Assistants;20
6.2;Raspberry Pi;20
6.3;How a Virtual Assistant Works;20
6.3.1;Speech-to-Text Engine;21
6.3.2;Logic Engine;21
6.3.3;Text-to-Speech Engine;21
6.4;Setting Up Your Development Environment;22
6.4.1;Python 2.x;22
6.4.2;Python Package Index (PyPI);22
6.4.3;Version Control System (Git);23
6.4.4;PortAudio;23
6.5;PyAudio;23
6.6;Designing Melissa;23
6.7;Learning Methodology;25
6.8;Summary;26
7;Chapter 2: Understanding and Building an Application with STT and TTS;27
7.1;Speech-to-Text Engines;27
7.1.1;Freely Available STTs;27
7.1.2;Installing SpeechRecognition;28
7.2;Recording Audio to a WAV File;28
7.3;Speech Recognition;30
7.3.1;Google STT;30
7.3.2;Wit.ai STT;31
7.3.3;IBM STT;31
7.3.4;AT&T STT;32
7.4;Melissa’s Inception;32
7.5;Text-to-Speech Engine;33
7.5.1;OS X;33
7.5.2;Linux;33
7.6;Building the TTS Engine;34
7.6.1;Repeat What I Say;34
7.7;Integrating STT and TTS in Melissa;35
7.8;Version-Controlling Your Source Code;36
7.9;Obtaining the Code from GitHub;37
7.10;Summary;37
8;Chapter 3: Getting Your Hands Dirty: Conversation Module;38
8.1;Logic Engine Design;38
8.2;Making Melissa Responsive;39
8.3;Fixing Limitation 1;41
8.4;Fixing Limitation 2;42
8.5;Extending Functionality;45
8.6;What’s the Time, Melissa?;46
8.7;Committing Changes;46
8.8;Summary;47
9;Chapter 4: Using the Internet to Gather Information;48
9.1;How’s the Weather?;48
9.2;Define Artificial Intelligence!;50
9.3;Read Me Some Business News!;53
9.4;Text-Controlled Virtual Assistant;56
9.5;Selenium and Automation;56
9.6;Time to Sleep, Melissa!;58
9.7;Summary;59
10;Chapter 5: Developing a Music Player for Melissa;60
10.1;OS X Music Player;60
10.2;Linux Music Player;61
10.3;Module Workflow;61
10.3.1;Building the Music Module;62
10.3.2;Play Party Mix!;65
10.4;Summary;66
11;Chapter 6: Developing a Note-Taking Application;67
11.1;Design Workflow;67
11.2;Designing the Database;68
11.3;Inner Workings of the Virtual Assistant;69
11.4;Building the Note-Taking Module;70
11.5;Building a Note-Dictating Module;72
11.6;Exercises;72
11.7;Summary;73
12;Chapter 7: Building a Voice-Controlled Interface for Twitter and Imgur;74
12.1;Building the Twitter Module;74
12.2;Exercises;78
12.3;Building the Imgur Module;78
12.3.1;Creating the Tables in the Database;80
12.4;Summary;84
13;Chapter 8: Building a Web Interface for Melissa;85
13.1;Operating Workflow;85
13.2;Building the Web Interface;86
13.3;Exercises;94
13.4;Summary;94
14;Chapter 9: Integrating the Software with Raspberry Pi, and Next Steps;95
14.1;Setting Up a Raspberry Pi;95
14.2;Setting Up Melissa;98
14.3;Adding New Components to the Raspberry Pi;99
14.4;Making Melissa Better Each Day!;100
14.4.1;Windows Compatibility;100
14.4.2;Tests;100
14.4.3;Vision;101
14.4.4;Multi-Device Operation;101
14.4.5;Native User Interface;102
14.4.6;Offline Speech-to-Text (STT);102
14.5;Where Do I Use Melissa?;102
14.5.1;Drones;102
14.5.2;Humanoid Robots;102
14.5.3;House-Automation Systems;103
14.5.4;Burglar-Detection System;106
14.6;Summary;106
15;Index;107