Okay, so I haven't had much sleep in the past couple days so any sort of grammatical errors within this post is probably due to pure exhaustion. I apologize. Also, the idea just came to me this morning so things may be a bit... fragmented (I apologize for that as well).
Okay, so I want a talking house.Well, it's going to be a talking apartment really but same similarity. The different ideas I've come up with utilizes a variety of projects so I wasn't really certain where to post my plans so I decided to just go to you guys.
Here's the jist of my proposal:
What I want is a series of automated messages that are released from my computer upon a variety of events. For example, say I walk through the main door and trip an IR beam prompting a message akin to "Welcome to the bridge captain. How may I serve you." I've thought of different ways to accomplish this but I'm hoping for some kind of efficient way of accomplishing this from the Arduino community. Maybe use RFID tags instead of an IR beam? I was thinking of using ZigBee and an Arduino to transmit the message to my computer and then have the computer use a TTS application like Festival to speak-a my language. Perhaps I can have a script that plays a pre-recorded audio file?
That's just the first part though, I want to speak to my machine also. I run Linux (Ubuntu) and I hope to use a voice recognition application (julius) to satisfy my needs. Also, does anyone know a way for me to use multiple microphones to input audio into my Linux box? Since I will be speaking aloud at a good distance (~10-15 ft.) away from my computer I am thinking about running a second microphone across the room and hiding the wire under the rug. Maybe there are 'industrial' microphones that can pick up sound better then your average desktop computer mics? (I'll have to look into that : )
Basically, what I want to implement is an elaborate speech recognition 'hotkey' system that just spits out verbal confirmations. If successful, I want to continue building upon the system (adding the 'Sudo make me a sandwich robot machine, having the computer sing me a song etc..). Maybe I'm just being silly, but having a real-life HAL welcoming me to my 'Stardeck' sounds uber-cool!
Also important to note, I have very little experience working with electronics and hardware; more of a programmer really (and a shoddy one at that). Being eighteen my skill-set isn't exactly what you would call 'flushed-out' so, please, speak to me like an idiot so I can understand what is being said. I'm hoping that this project can be broken down into steps that will teach me about Arduino and other various projects.
Oh, and another thing -- this project will probably take a long time to do and there will be lots of learning involved. If you know of any, may I please get some recommendations on some books that pertain to the subject at hand? I would be much obliged.
Thanks for reading through this massive post and I would appreciate any sort of responses.
[Edit: I would be willing to use Windows to accomplish my goals if needed since I'm probably going to be using a dedicated box anyways. Also, I guess you could say I'm trying to emulate an A.I here. Sort of like the computer chick from Portal, HAL, or the computer home chick from Eureka.]