thomascullen/voicebox

Download
voicebox requires node.js to be installed on your system for it to work

How

Press alt+s to trigger the voicebox window

What can you do?

VoiceBox currently has a very limited set of sentences it understands. If you want to contribute to this, please look at the adding responders section.

Hello
What time is it?
My name is Thomas
What's my name?
Tell me about [any topic]
What is a guitar
Start a timer for 20 Seconds
what is 20% of 245
Remind me to take the pizza out of the oven in 15 minutes
What's the weather like in Dublin

Dev Setup

VoiceBox is built on top of electron.

npm install
grunt
electron .

Now press alt+s

Adding responders

As VoiceBox is a very new project we encourage you to publish your responders to npmjs.com and to add them to the responders list via a pull request.

Create a new folder for your responder. Responders are downloaded from NPM so a responder will need at least a package.json and index.js file. Open the responders manager and click the 'install from dir' button and select your responder folder.

The addResponder method takes two parameters:

• regex ( Regex ): The users input will be matched against this to determine if it should respond
• response ( Function ) : If the regex matches the input the response function will be called

The voiceBox.respond(message) method is then used inside the response function to output a response.

NB: The response function is only called if it is the last responder to match the input

voiceBox.addResponder(/Hi|Hello|Hey/i, function(){
  voiceBox.respond("Hello")
})

Responders with API requests

voiceBox.request can be used to make external API requests.

NB: This uses the request module

voiceBox.addResponder(/What's the weather like in (.*)/i, function(){
  voiceBox.request('http://api.openweathermap.org/data/2.5/weather?q='+RegExp.$1, function (error, response, body) {
    if (!error && response.statusCode == 200) {
      voiceBox.respond(JSON.parse(body).weather[0].description)
    }
  })
})

Respond with options

In some cases a responder may require the user to give more information. This can be done using the voiceBox.addChoice and voiceBox.choice methods.

First, you need to add a choice using the voiceBox.addChoice method. This works the exact same way as the voiceBox.addResponder method.

You can then respond asking for more information using the voiceBox.choice(message) method. This tells VoiceBox that we are asking for more information and will begin listening again after output of the message has finished.

voiceBox.addResponder(/give me options/i, function(){
  voiceBox.addChoice(/one|1/i, function(){
    voiceBox.respond('You selected option one')
  })

  voiceBox.addChoice(/two|2/i, function(){
    voiceBox.respond('You selected option two')
  })

  voiceBox.choice('Do you want option one or option two?')
})

Storing information

You can store information using the following methods

voiceBox.db.set('users_name', 'thomas')
voiceBox.db.get('users_name')

Adding better voices

You can change the voice in the OS X speech and dictation settings. In the system voice dropdown you can select 'custom' which will allow you to download more voices. I use 'Samantha' which is the same voice used by siri on the iPhone.

Ideas for more responders

• Adding / Reading events from calendar
• Sending / Reading messages from messages.app
• Creating reminders
• Reading contact information from contants
• Latest news
• Unit Conversions

Todo

All the things

• Better application structure
• Improve documentation

## License VoiceBox is released under the MIT License.