JustSayIt.jl

JustSayIt enables offline, low latency, highly accurate and secure speech to command translation on Linux, MacOS and Windows and is usable as software or high-level API. It implements a novel algorithm for high performance context dependent recognition of spoken commands which leverages the Vosk Speech Recognition Toolkit. Single word commands' latency (referring to the time elapsed between a command is spoken and executed) can be little as 5 miliseconds and does usually not exceed 30 miliseconds (measured on a regular notebook).

Furthermore, JustSayIt provides an unprecedented highly generic extension to the Julia programming language which allows to declare arguments in standard function definitions to be obtainable by voice. For such functions, JustSayIt automatically generates a wrapper method that takes care of the complexity of retrieving the arguments from the speakers voice, including interpretation and conversion of the voice arguments to potentially any data type. JustSayIt commands are implemented with such voice argument functions, triggered by a user definable mapping of command names to functions. As a result, it empowers programmers without any knowledge of speech recognition to quickly write new commands that take their arguments from the speakers voice. JustSayIt is ideally suited for development by the world-wide open source community.

JustSayIt unites the advantages of Julia and Python: it leverages Julia's performance and metaprogramming capabilities and Python's larger ecosystem where no suitable Julia package is found - PyCall.jl makes calling Python packages from Julia trivial. JustSayIt embraces the vision "Why choose between Julia or Python? - Use both!".

Finally, JustSayIt puts a small load on the CPU, using only one core, and can therefore run continuously without harming the computer usage experience.

Quick start

1. Connect your best microphone (a good recording quality is key to a great voice control experience!)

2. Install Julia if you do not have it yet.

3. Execute the following in your shell to install and run JustSayIt:

$> julia
julia> ]
  pkg> add JustSayIt
  pkg> <backspace button>
julia> using JustSayIt
julia> start()

4. Say "help commands" and then, e.g., "help type".

5. Try some commands and then look through the rest of the documentation!

Dependencies

JustSayIt's primary dependencies are vosk, sounddevice, pynput, PyCall.jl, Conda.jl and MacroTools.jl.

Support for Linux, MacOS and Windows

JustSayIt is programmed in a highly portable manner relying exclusively on portable Julia and Python modules (see Dependencies).

Your contributions

The only limit to the commands that can be programmed with JustSayIt is your imagination! Please open an issue to discuss your idea for a contribution beforehand. Furthermore, note that pull request should always address a significant issue in its completeness and new commands should be generic enough to be of interest for others. Moreover, pull requests should blend nicely into the existing JustSayIt project; common sense is the primary guide in this regard (community guideline documents, e.g. ColPrac, can be consulted in addition for inspiration). We are looking forward to your contribution!

Contributors

The principal contributors to JustSayIt.jl are (ordered by the significance of the relative contributions):

• Dr. Samuel Omlin (@omlins), CSCS - Swiss National Supercomputing Centre, ETH Zurich