Steves Computer Vision Blog

Friday, May 24, 2013

Using the Google Voice C++ API

First of all, this obviously isn't an official Google API. I wrote it because I wanted one in C++ and couldn't find one that worked.

That being said, the code is on github here (in the TextCommand folder) and is available under GPLv3 for anyone to use.
I know this could (maybe even should) have its own github project but since I use it for my home automation projects, its included in the PiAUISuite. That being said, the current gvapi binary is also compiled for the Pi. So you will need to run make gvapi if you want to use it on any other linux machine.

To include the C++ code in your own project, you just need to include gvoice.h in your file and then you should be able to access the GoogleVoice class. An excellent example to look at is gvapi.cpp since it shows how to interact with it. You should need only to call Init and Login, then you should be able to do any of the Google voice functions.

If you only to use gtextcommand to send commands to your pi, see here. If you want to send or check SMS without having to include the source in your code/project, just use the gvapi program. It can get contacts, send, receive, and delete SMS. It also comes in with built in spoof protection (this is included in GoogleVoice::CheckSMS).

Here's a quick video demo as an example of the kinds of things you can do with gvapi

Using the gvapi program is fairly simple and it's man page is below:

gvapi

gvapi - Use of Google voice API in order to send and receive SMS

SYNOPSIS

gvapi [OPTIONS]...

DESCRIPTION

gvapi was compiled for use with home automation on the Raspberry Pi but will work on any linux system with an internet connection. It uses curl and boost regex in order to login and stores the cookie in /dev/shm. It only logs in once every 24 hours to save time. It supports a multitude of different options and parameters. For help/comments/questions, feel free to e-mail me at help@stevenhickson.com. I answer sporadically but do eventually respond.

OPTIONS

-?: Same as -h
-c: Checks your incoming text messages to see if you have anything unread. It will mark it whatever it outputs as read unless you also use the -r flag. If you include a number with the -n flag, you can specify it to only check messages received from that number. You can also use the -k flag to specify that the message must start with a certain keyword.
-d: Sets debug mode on. You can also specify debug mode from 1 - 3, where 3 is the most verbose.
Ex: gvapi -c -d2
-h: Asks for some quick general use help for gvapi.
-i: Outputs the contacts of your google voice account in the form name==number
-k KEYWORD: Sets a keyword that has to be in the beginning of the text message for it to be returned. This is useful as a password for parsing only certain messages.
-m MESSAGE: Sends the message you specify. This should be in quotes if it contains special characters or a space. The number also has to be specified otherwise it won't have a message to send
Ex: gvapi -n +15551234 -m Hello
-n NUMBER: Can be used with the -c flag to check messages from a certain number or the -m flag to send a message. Can be in a format without the country code, with just the country code, or with a plus sign and the country code. If the formost, it interprets it as a US number.
Ex: gvapi -n 5551234 -c
-p PASSWORD: Can be used with the -u flag to log in manually. If not specified, the program uses the default username and password specified in ~/.gv
-r: Receives and deletes SMS messges. Can be used with the -c flag or without. It is the same as the -c flag but instead of just marking the messages as read. It deletes them.
-u USERNAME: Can be used with the -p flag to log in manually. See the -p flag for more details. Cannot be used without the -p flag.
-v: Outputs version and creater information

AUTHOR

Steven Hickson (help@stevenhickson.com)

BUGS

No known bugs. To report bugs, send a clear description to help@stevenhickson.com Since this program is fairly crude, user typos could cause crashes/failed responses. Please read the man page thoroughly before submitting a bug.

COPYRIGHT

Copyright © 2013 Steven Hickson. License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later <http://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>. This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it as long as you give credit to the author and include this license. There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.

HISTORY

This is the second major version of this program

Monday, May 13, 2013

Voice Command v2.0 for the Raspberry Pi

Voice Command 2.0 differences

Note: Updated version here
http://stevenhickson.blogspot.com/2013/06/voice-command-v30-for-raspberry-pi.html

I've made some big changes since my last post with voice control with the Raspberry Pi.
You can now verify the keyword, change the keyword, change the response, put it in quiet mode to not talk to you, and put it in ignore mode to not try to answer questions not in your config file.
The config file format has also been changed from voice=command to voice==command, comments have been allowed in the config file by starting a line with #, and special settings can be done by starting a line with !.
I've updated the TTS from espeak to Google's API since it sounds a lot better.
Finally, I've made an update script in the Install folder, that way you don't have to reinstall every time new changes get pushed out to github. All of the source code is at:
https://github.com/StevenHickson/PiAUISuite

Video:

Here's a video demonstrating the new changes:

Special Options

The default special options are as follows:
!keyword==pi
!verify==1
!continuous==1
!quiet==0
!ignore==0
!filler==1
!thresh=0.7
!response=Yes sir?

response and keyword can be any string.
verify, continuous, quiet, filler, and ignore can be 1 or 0 (true or false respectively).
thresh can be any floating point number to set the appropriate volume.

Install Instructions

(this requires git)

sudo apt-get install git-core

git clone git://github.com/StevenHickson/PiAUISuite.git

cd PiAUISuite/Install/
./InstallAUISuite.sh

Update Instructions

cd PiAUISuite

git pull

cd Install

sudo ./UpdateAUISuite.sh

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I've also created a man page fore voicecommand. You can access it with man voicecommand. It is shown below:

voicecommand

Section: voicecommand man page (8)
Updated: 13 May 2013
Index

NAME

voicecommand - Listen to user defined strings and run the corresponding command

SYNOPSIS

voicecommand [OPTIONS]...

DESCRIPTION

voicecommand was developed for the Raspberry Pi but will work on any linux system with a microphone attached. It is a crude program, which uses basic comparisons to determine if your voicecommand fits a format specified in a config file; it it does, it runs the corresponding linux command. It supports auto-completion and variables as well as command verification, a continuous mode, and other options. For help/comments/questions, feel free to e-mail me at me@stevenhickson.com. I answer sporadically but do eventually respond.

OPTIONS

-?: Same as -h
-b: Turns off the FILL audio. The purpose of this was because the Raspbery Pi (or mine at least) cuts off the first few seconds of audio. This flag turns that feature off. You should only be concerned with this if you hear FILL before everything it says.
-c: Makes voicecommand run in continuous mode, where it will keep listening over and over again.
-e: Edits the voicecommand config file.
The format is voice==command
You can use any character except for newlines or ==
You can also put comments if the line starts with # and special options if the line starts with a !
Default options are shown as follows:
!keyword==pi,!verify==1,!continuous==1,!quiet==0,!ignore==0,!thresh=0.7,!response=Yes sir? keyword and response accept strings. verify, continuous, quiet, and ignore except 1 or 0 (true or false respectively). thresh excepts a floating point number. These allow you to set some of the flags as permanent options (though the flags can overwrite them temporarily).
-f /my-location/config-file: This allows you to load a different config file located in a different spot. The default one is in your home directory and is ~/.commands.conf
The config file must be formatted the same way.
-h: Shows this man page.
-i: Sets the ignore mode. When this flag is activated, if a command is not in the config file, nothing happens. The default behavior is to try to find an answer or response to that question and then speak it. This turns off that behavior.
-k word: Sets the keyword. The default is pi. If this flag is set, the verify and continuous flags are also set since this is only checked during those two modes.
Ex. voicecommand -c -v -k Jarvis
-r word: Sets the response. The default is "Yes Sir?" (For version 1.0, it was Ready?. If this response is more than one word, it should be put in quotes, otherwise it doesn't need to be
Ex. voicecommand -r Ready?
-t #: Sets the threshold for volume to determine if the keyword was spoken. This should be a floating point number. The default value is 0.7 which works well with the Logitech C310 camera/mic from about 6 feet away.
Ex. voicecommand -t 1.2
-q: Sets quiet mode on so that voicecommand never speaks through the audio output. It still prints everything but doesn't ever respond. This includes the keyword response.
-v: Makes voicecommand verify the keyword. This only happens in continuous mode so if this flag is set, the continuous flag will be set as well. The default mode is to not verify. When voicecommand hears any sound above the threshold, it says the response then listens for a command. The default keyword is pi. When the verify flag is set, after the threshold is met, voicecommand verifies that the keyword was spoken.

AUTHOR

Steven Hickson (me@stevenhickson.com)

BUGS

No known bugs. To report bugs, send a clear description to me@stevenhickson.com Since this program is fairly crude, user typos could cause crashes/failed responses. Please read the man page thoroughly before submitting a bug.

COPYRIGHT

HISTORY

This is the second major version of this program

Tuesday, April 30, 2013

Voice Control on the Raspberry Pi

Note: Updated version here:
http://stevenhickson.blogspot.com/2013/05/voice-command-v20-for-raspberry-pi.html

I'm finally releasing my Raspberry Pi voice control software.
The beauty of this is that you can use it and customize it without programming anything.
This will work on any linux machine but I find it uniquely suited for the Raspberry Pi and that's what I developed it for.
You just type voicecommand -e to edit the configuration file and add any speech and the coinciding command. You can see all of the little nifty commands it can recognize just with my config file in the video. I use all of these pretty often. It is very mutable and works with lots of other programs.

Watch this video to really get a feel for the program:

The commands should be in the format speech=command. Ex:
music=xterm -e pianobar
Doctor Who=playvideo -r -f Doctor Who

Unfortunately, it is caps sensitive voice control right now, but you can test the input by running
speech-recog.sh
on you machine to see what the speech recognition will give you. It uses Google's api and is really good at recognizing what you say. I used to use espeak instead of festival for the text to speech because of the speed difference. However, after some very helpful comments from people, I've switched to using Google's TTS api, which is much more pleasant to listen to. The video above is still using espeak but the newest code does not.

I hope you will try this out and make some cool things with it. Instructions to install are below.
I'm in the process of setting up a repository so until then, here are the instructions (do this in the terminal):

sudo apt-get install git-core

git clone git://github.com/StevenHickson/PiAUISuite.git

cd PiAUISuite/Install/
./InstallAUISuite.sh

Update Instructions

cd PiAUISuite

git pull

cd Install

sudo ./UpdateAUISuite.sh

Here are the dependencies required to run and build:
sudo apt-get install libboost1.50-dev libboost-regex1.50-dev youtube-dl axel curl xterm libcurl4-gnutls-dev mpg123 flac sox

**Note: If the file .commands.conf doesn't exist in your home directory and you have an old version of code, the program will exit. You should either grab the newest code from github or create the file yourself.

**To make it listen for longer, edit the file /usr/bin/speech-recog.sh and change -f cd -t wav -d 3 to -f cd -t wav -d # where number is how many seconds it should listen.

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Thursday, April 25, 2013

Raspberry Pi Settlers of Catan Server

So a couple of days ago I decided I wanted my Pi to be a Settlers of Catan server.
I decided on using a custom compiled JSettlers version instead of the C++ pioneer version because of the extra perks it had.

It runs surprisingly well considering it is in java but it makes sense since it is making the client's computer do most of the work. I was also decently surprised with the bots. The server allows you to create practice games against bots or real games where other people can sign up to play with you.

It also has multiple scenarios and lots of documentation. Sometimes it is a little buggy but overall I'm pretty happy with it as of right now.

I've uploaded the version I have compiled and an install script. To run it, first you need to have java and apache (or some other web server) installed. If you don't, run:
sudo apt-get install apache2 openjdk-7-*

**Note, you don't need apache to run, you could use others such as NGinx or no web server at all and just play the game by yourself.

Then download the file, unzip it, and install:
wget "https://stevenhickson-code.googlecode.com/files/PiSettlers.tar.gz"
tar -xvf PiSettlers.tar.gz
cd JSettlers2
sudo ./install-web.sh

and now you should be done, you can go to your IP address in any computer on your network and play it.
Mine is at http://192.168.1.100/settlers/
**Note, if you want to play it outside of your network, i.e. you have a domain name, then you need to open port 8880 on your router to go to the pi.

Here is what it looks like playing a game hosted from the pi on my fedora laptop.

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Friday, April 19, 2013

Using Youtube on the Raspberry Pi without XBMC or gnash

There is an update to this here.

You can install this by pulling the source from git and running the InstallAUISuite.sh file.
Commands to install are below (your user should have sudo priveledges but you don't need to sudo or be root to run the commands unless shown otherwise):

sudo apt-get install git-core

git clone git://github.com/StevenHickson/PiAUISuite.git

cd PiAUISuite/Install/
./InstallAUISuite.sh

Update Instructions

cd PiAUISuite

git pull

cd Install

sudo ./UpdateAUISuite.sh

Demonstration:

So this is a quick video to demonstrate youtube working fast and easily on the Raspberry Pi without the use of XBMC or gnash.
I tried out gnash first which didn't work at all.
So then I tried out XBMC and although it is pretty, it is awfully slow so I decided to get youtube to work on my own.
The basis of this is really simple. There is a nifty program out there called youtube-dl that can get the media file from the website and download it. It's great because it does it fast and works for many other websites like the daily show and the colbert report.
So what I did was basically write a little script that analyzes your input and then gets the proper information from the youtube-dl program without downloading the video, then it sends this http stream to omxplayer to play.
It can handle playlists or individual files from multiple websites as well as a bunch of other things.

After that, I started implementing a nice little search feature using C++ and Curl.
I'm starting to implement a GUI which will essentially look like youtube kind of. Until then I have this nifty search tool, which was essentially my start to the GUI I am currently creating.

If you've ever used XBMC's youtube, you will notice that this is a lot faster, and in my opinion, easier to use and more natural. Plus it only requires a tiny file on your system as opposed to XBMC's massive footprint.

The nice part of having an easy command line program like this is that it can be incorporated into a lot of other things easily. For instance, I have incorporated it into my voicecommand script as shown in the video.

The source code can be found here. To install see the top.

Sources:
This post for using axel with the youtube-dl.
This page for the youtube-dl source and documentation.

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Tuesday, April 16, 2013

How to fix Raspberry Pi boot problems

If you have any problems with your SD card messing up or your Pi not booting, this is an attempt at documenting my issues with booting or SD card corruption and how I fixed them.

This can range from problems with rpi-update to changing the /boot/config.txt file to restoring the SD card superblocks from the superblock backup to Oh No my SD card is hosed and I need to recover files. We've all been there so need to be embarrassed about messing something up. Things mess up a lot.

Boot Problems

First of all, this is a great reference that I use a lot.

Start by figuring out what changed.

Did you just change your /boot/config.txt?
Did you delete any important files?
Did you run rpi-update?
Did you add a new device?
Did you overclock too much?
Do you get a kbd prompt?
Did it run some weird commands on the shutdown about "device still open for writing"?

If you just changed your config.txt, you should change it back and then change line by line while rebooting until you see what option is causing the error.

If you deleted any files, restore them.

If you ran rpi-update and it won't reboot, try making your /boot/config.txt the default one. The cma_lwm and cma_hwm options sometimes cause the new firmware to break.
If that doesn't work or you have flashing light errors, restore the old boot files by copying the /boot.bak/ files into /boot/
sudo cp -ap /boot.bak/* /boot/

If you recently overclocked, try reducing it back down. I run 1100 MHz easily but 1200 MHz tends to be unstable for me.

If you get a kbd prompt or error, check your power supply to make sure its supplying enough voltage, then reduce any overclocking or overvolting in your config.txt, then (if the first two don't solve it) replace the boot files like described above.

If you have a kbd prompt that you couldn't fix, you get read/write or I/O errors on shutdown or startup, or

it can't find the ext4 partition, then you have been a victim of SD card corruption.
Don't worry though. There are still ways to recover your files.

The first thing you should do is make a copy of your SD card image.
Plug the card into another computer with linux and use dd to copy the image. Then you can try to fix the image file without further corrupting the data.
The first thing to try to do is replace your superblock with a backup. To do that click here.
If that doesn't work and all else fails, it is possible to use scalpel and custom recovery configuration to get your files. See here for how to do that.

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How to recover any file from corrupted or broken HDs, SSDs, or SD cards

A couple weeks ago, I lost a Raspberry Pi SD card to corruption that didn't even have backup superblocks to restore. There seemed to be nothing to do about it since I couldn't mount it. Restoring the system wasn't a big deal. However, I really wanted some of the cpp, h, js, php, sh, and other files that I had changed a good bit but hadn't yet backed up or committed. Sure we all back up and/or use git/svn but we have to remember Murphy's Law.

This is a guide on how to easily recover those files that you really want but hadn't backed up.

Needed packages

To do this, we are going to use scalpel, xxd, diff, and grep (So we are most definitely using Linux)

You will already most likely have xxd, diff, and grep on your system. To install scalpel, run:
sudo apt-get install scalpel
or yum or pacman or whatever package manager you use.

**Note: It is probably a good idea to make an image of the drive and use scalpel on that if you are able.

Editing Scalpel configuration

The default scalpel configuration file is located at /etc/scalpel.conf

All you need to do is comment out the file types you don't care about and add the filetypes you do care about that aren't in there.

To create custom scalpel configurations, we will use a little bit of common sense and xxd as a hex dumper.

Find a different file with the same file type or an older copy of the file you want and run the following command:

xxd -l 0x04 filename.type; xxd -s -0x04 filename.type

This will get the first 4 and last 4 bytes of the file. Which should be enough to make the filetype unique, though you can change this as needed. You should see a pattern with a lot of files.
For instance, my sh files (the ones I wrote) often start with #!/b and end with sac. or fi..
and my cpp files often start with #inc or // and end with }.
Now we will take these hex patterns, reformat them as \x?? and put them into the scalpel.conf.
You should use REVERSE whenever the file may continue multiple instances of the end statement. You may also need to increase the file size from 50000 to something much bigger for larger files.

Here are some of my custom scalpel configurations:

php y 50000 \x3c\x3f\x70\x68\x70 \x3f\x3e REVERSE
js y 50000 \x3c\x73\x63\x72\x69\x70\x74\x20\x74\x79\x70\x65\x3d\x22\x74\x65\x78\x74\x2f\x6a\x61\x76\x61\x73\x63\x72\x69\x70\x74\x22\x3e \x3c\x2f\x73\x63\x72\x69\x70\x74\x3e
cpp y 50000 \x23\x69\x6e\x63 \x7d\x2e REVERSE
cpp y 50000 \x2f\x2f\x20 \x7d\x2e REVERSE
h y 50000 \x23\x69\x66\x6e \x64\x69\x66 REVERSE
sh y 50000 \x23\x21\x2f\x62 \x73\x61\x63 REVERSE

Running Scalpel

Once your scalpel configuration is finished, you need to start extracting the files. This will probably take a while and will get a lot of files (multiple copies of each that match on your system). It won't know the filename or newest version but we will look at that later. You can run scalpel with the following command:

scalpel -c /etc/scalpel.conf yourcopy.img -o output

or the following if you didn't make a copy of your HDD (you will have to specify the appropriate drive and partition number).

scalpel -c /etc/scalpel.conf /dev/sdx# -o output

Once everything is finished it will be in the output folder and we can look for the newest version of your file.

Finding your files

cd into the output directory and you can see all the different filetypes organized.

cd output; ls

For all your graphical file types, i.e. videos and pictures, they should all be listed there and you will have to rename them.

For your other files, we can use grep recursively to find our newest version. This unfortunately requires you to remember things. It is a good idea to use a function or variable name that you used in order to find your files. Ex:

grep -R "playing()" ./

Searches for the function playing in all your files, this could give you matches in js, php, cpp, c, or h files.

grep -R "::CurlWriter" ./cpp*

Searches for the definition of CurlWriter in all of the cpp files

grep -R "VoiceCommand" ./h*

Searches for the variable or function VoiceCommand in all of your header (h files)

These will probably give you a couple of different results. In my case, these were all different versions of my file. This is a really good chance to use diff. All you have to do is select two of the files and diff to see the differences. Ex:

diff ./sh-5-1/00135386.sh ./sh-5-1/00135393.sh

Once you start getting used to this, you will be better about searching for the newest function or variable name you remember. Once you narrow it down to the newest copy of your file, you can move it elsewhere.

Ex:

mv ./sh-5-1/00135393.sh ~/ImportantFile.sh

There it is, this should allow you to recover almost any file you have created from a corrupted or bad HD, SSD, or SD card.

Places you can find me

Friday, May 24, 2013

gvapi

SYNOPSIS

DESCRIPTION

OPTIONS

AUTHOR

BUGS

COPYRIGHT

HISTORY

SEE ALSO

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Monday, May 13, 2013

Voice Command 2.0 differences

Video:

Special Options

Install Instructions

Update Instructions

voicecommand

NAME

SYNOPSIS

DESCRIPTION

OPTIONS

AUTHOR

BUGS

COPYRIGHT

HISTORY

SEE ALSO

Tuesday, April 30, 2013

Update Instructions

Thursday, April 25, 2013

Friday, April 19, 2013

Update Instructions

Tuesday, April 16, 2013

Boot Problems

Needed packages

Editing Scalpel configuration

Running Scalpel

Finding your files