Expand Hal's Internet Capabilities with Tell Me

Tell Me is a free computer program written to expand the capabilities of Home Automated Livings HAL 2000 by retrieving information from the internet and speaking it when requested.  At this time, Tell Me supports over many different functions allowing your HAL computer to tell you;

Updating Tell Me? Please read the errata file at the bottom of this web page!

Unlimited Recognition Phrases

You can have an unlimited number of recognition phrases for the same content.  For example you may want to ask, "Tell Me the weather conditions" or "Tell Me the weather conditions at Grandmas house"  You may ask "Tell me the cheapest gas prices" or "Tell me the cheapest gas prices near work".  You may ask for the monthly home sales information in a specific location.  For example, "Tell me the home sales in our area" or "Tell me the home sales in Beverly Hills"  You may ask for your Horoscope for every member of the house; "Tell me Jim's Horoscope" or "Tell me Cindy's Horoscope".

You can get a news story from BBC news and specify the story topic; "Tell me a story on Technology" or "Tell me a story on entertainment".

You have complete control over the recognition phrase used to retrieve the content and you can also customize the Initial Response HAL speaks before searching for your request.  In addition, if you want the Initial Response to be random, you can enter the 3-digit RandomSpeak group number in the text box and Tell Me will speak a random Initial Response before executing your request.  Tell Me has direct support built in for RandomSpeak.txt files so be sure to specify the location to the RandomSpeak.txt file in Tell Me.  You can use you existing RandomSpeak.txt file or do like I did and start a new one located in the same folder as Tell Me.

Theater Listings

Tell Me can read movie listings based on your favorite local Theaters.  For example, "Tell me the movies playing at City Place." or "Tell me the movies playing at the Boynton Cinema". 

Note: To have HAL read show times for your favorite Theaters - You must determine the Movie Theater ID for you local Theaters.  To do this, first search for movies at Fandango.com by using your local 5-digit postal zip code.  Then select the local theaters that you want Tell Me to monitor.  You must then identify the "tid" in the URL:

http://www.fandango.com/TheaterPage.aspx?tid=AAFWV

In this example the Theater number is AAFWV.  You would then enter this ID in the "Theater ID" text box in Tell Me. 

Internet Radio

Tell Me can play your favorite internet radio stations at your command.  Just like the HAL DMC you can optionally specify the listening location.  For example, "Play some Classic Rock in the down stairs."

Note: In order to specify the radio station you will need to visit vTuner.com and browse their massive selection of over 8000 stations.  To identify the station ID, hold your mouse over the blue "Play" link and view the URL at the bottom of your web browser. 

Make sure that the music will play from their web site before entering a station ID in Tell Me.  You will need to download Real Player to play ".ram" audio formats.  Don't worry, they have a free version of Real Player.

Tell Me can also "Stop the music" by shutting down the Windows Media Player or Real Player applications.  Because Tell Me has the ability to shut these applications down, you will want to make sure the music actually plays in one of these music players.  For example; if your music plays within Internet Explorer, Tell Me will not close the Internet Explorer window when "Stop" is selected. (It could, but this is currently not supported since it would have to shut down ALL Internet Explorer windows- This may not be a bad thing, but I need some feedback from the HAL community if this is to be supported.)

If you have the ability to control the speakers in your house, Tell Me can specify the HAL DMC listening location.  This allows you to setup rules within HAL that can fire when the listening location changes.  The drop down list will display the listening locations that you specify in your DMC setup. 

Flexible Control

Each of the capabilities in Tell Me can be initiated from a Rule or Macro in HAL.  You simply select a HAL FLAG in Tell Me and when the flag is set to TRUE, Tell Me will retrieve and speak the content.  This is useful if you want to have HAL tell you something specific when you get home or wake up in the morning.  If you don't want HAL to speak the Initial HAL response BEFORE retrieving the internet data, then 'uncheck' the "Play Initial HAL Response" checkbox.  This only applies when an event is initiated with a HAL flag. 

Multiple Attention Words

Tell Me allows you to specify up to 10 different Attention Words with HAL.  In addition, you can select the Voice that HAL uses during the interaction.  You can also specify the response phrase that HAL speaks when you first get his attention.  I also built in direct support for RandomSpeak so you can have HAL respond with a random response for each custom attention phrase. 

You simply enter the 3-digit RandomSpeak group number as seen in the screen shot below.

I tell you this is cool and you will want to get ALL of the currently available HAL Voices. 

Please let Home Automated Living know that you would be willing to pay for additional voices if they made them available.  Click HERE to submit this request!

Quick Commands - On of our fellow HAL users, Art Dustman, came up with a great idea.  Allow HAL to fire a flag when saying an attention phrase.  This way you can issue a "Quick Command" to execute a particular function in HAL without having to first get HAL's attention. 

When you speak a "Quick Command" phrase HAL will simply set the flag to true then exit listening mode.  You will have to create a rule in HAL that executes a series of events when the flag is true.  If you want HAL to respond with speech then you will have to do this within your rule or macro in HAL.  In many cases you can simply add the flag as a secondary trigger to an existing rule.  In most cases, you will set the Flag Delay (the delay time in seconds that Tell Me will fire the flag after the Quick Command is spoken) to 0 seconds.  This will cause the flag to fire immediately.  In my case, since I have a set of rules that determine which microphone I am speaking into, I have to fire the flag 3 seconds after the word is spoken.  This gives HAL enough time to figure out which room I'm in to turn on the appropriate light, TV or fan. 

You can also have Tell Me set a flag when speaking a normal attention word.  This may be useful to determine which personality is speaking, for use in other rules and events in HAL.  When you stop speaking to HAL the flag will be set to false by Tell Me.

A couple of notes when using different voices and Attention Phrases: 

When switching between different attention words, the HAL voice may take a few seconds to load into memory when switching between groups.  For example, switching between "Charles UK" and "Audrey UK" will switch quickly as will switching between "Mike" and "Michelle".  However there will be a delay if you switch "Charles UK" to "Mike" or "Mike" to "Audrey UK". The amount of time it takes to load is typically a few seconds, but depends on your computers speed and the amount of memory it has - More is better.

If you are using this capability in Tell Me then you will need to disable the attention response in HAL's personal assistant screen.  NOTE: You must leave your standard attention phrase in HAL.  If your attention phrase box is empty, then HAL will not enable attention mode.  If you were previously using a rule with RandomSpeak that fired the attention response, then you will need to change (or create) this rule so that it only fires when you get HAL's attention by telephone.    See the example rule:

You can also switch voices "on the fly" by creating a custom recognition phrase in Tell Me and then selecting the "HAL - Switch Voice" content and then selecting one of the other voices.  For example, after you already had HAL's attention you may say, "I want to talk to Charles" and Tell Me would switch to the specified voice.

When Tell Me (or HAL itself) is speaking, you cannot stop it.  Currently ,there is no way to stop HAL from speaking; so don't bother asking.

Tools

Tell Me now has the ability to open an application, send keystrokes to an application or send ASCII data to a RS-232 com port.  These new capabilities can be assigned to a voice recognition phrase or simply triggered using a FLAG from HAL. 

When sending keystrokes to an application, Tell Me uses the Windows AppActivate and SendKeys method.  You may want to do a Google Search on SendKeys to learn more about controlling other applications with Keystrokes.  In order to send keystrokes to an application you must specify the name of the application as it appears in the Windows title bar. 

For example, the Windows calculator has a "title" of simply "calculator".  Microsoft Internet Explorer has a title of "XYZ Page Name - Microsoft Internet Explorer"  You would use Microsoft Internet Explorer" because, In determining which application to activate, "title" is compared to the title string of each running application. If no exact match exists, any application whose title string begins with "title" is activated. If an application still is not found, any application whose title string ends with "title" is activated. If more than one instance of the application named by title exists, one instance is arbitrarily activated.

Tell Me can also send ASCII text (and non printable characters) to any serial port on the HAL PC.  The Baud rate and serial port are selectable, however the settings are hardcode to: N,8,1.  This is useful for controlling equipment that accepts simple RS-232 port commands. 

Easy Setup

Tell Me makes use of the new HALi control, therefore there is no setup in HAL.  You simply start Tell Me and HAL is instantly ready to retrieve information on your command.

Just copy the three files to any folder on your HAL computer then run the Tell Me application.  Tell Me runs in your system Tray.  Please select the RED "Lips" icon to view the user interface.

You may want to have Tell Me start-up when HAL 2000 starts.  To do this, simply select "Open System Settings" then "Personal Assistant" and select the button that says "Configure" (for start up applications).

Requirements

R HAL Software Version 3.0.9 or newer

R Always-On Internet Connection : DSL or Cable (Tell Me may not work with Dial Up).

Download Tell Me Version 2.5.3  (See Program Errata Below FAQ)

1. Download Zipped File
2. Unzip 3 files to any folder on your HAL PC. (If updating Tell Me: Do not overwrite the config.dat file or your settings will be lost)
3. Double-Click the Tell Me application (HAL must be running).
4. Right Click the RED "lips" icon in the system tray to configure Tell Me.

Frequently Asked Questions

 

Q: Tell Me will not startup.  I get an error.

A: You must at least have the latest version of HAL that is referenced in the "Requirements" section above. 

A: If you are still getting an error, make sure you do not have any duplicate devices in your HAL devices list.  This will cause any HALi application to generate "Error # 13" or "This key is already associated with an element of this collection. Error# 457". Also look for duplicate versions of HALi.ocx (You should only have one.) Contact Home Automated Living to determine what the most recent version is for your current version of HAL.

 

 

Q: If I exit Tell Me from the system tray, all my Tell Me settings are lost.

A: This problem has been reported on some computer systems.  Until the problem is identified make a backup of your config.dat and always exit Tell Me by first displaying the form then selecting Main Menu then Exit.

Q: HAL talks too fast or too slow.  Can I adjust the speed?

A: The speed (or rate) that each voice in HAL speaks can be adjusted.  Change the "rate" under "Open System Settings" then "Personal Assistant" - If you notice unusually long pauses in speech in certain areas of Tell Me, let me know where, and I can usually make adjustments.

 

 

Q: The Random Joke, Quote or Poem is not random.

A: These web pages change content every hour.  Check again in 1 hour.  Patience is a virtue.

Q: Can you make the random Joke random every time?

A: If you can find a suitable web site that produces a random joke each time, I will look into it.

     A: I recently added the content "Joke2" (in version 1.5 of Tell Me) which will generate a random joke each time.

Q: I made a change to the Zip Code, or Initial Response, but the change was not saved.

A: After making a change, press the "Save" button.

Q: When HAL is speaking and I touch the Tell Me screen, a message box appears with "Switch to" and "Retry" buttons.

A: This is normal and cannot be changed.  Don't interrupt HAL when he is speaking.  It is rude.

Q: Sometimes HAL says a bunch of strange characters within a response.

A: Always let me know if a particular "content" is returning Garbage from the web.  I may need to update the parsing because a web page has changed.

Q: When I get HAL's attention he responds twice.

A: You have to disable the default attention response within HAL.  This is explained above.

Q: Do I have to install the vTuner software to listen to internet radio?

A: No, the vTuner web page is only used as a reference to identify the Station ID.

Q: When I try to play some of the internet stations, I get a download dialog box.

A: You probably need to install RealPlayer to play ".Ram" music formats.  It's Free Here.

Q: My music will not stop playing when I use the "Internet Radio - Stop" command.

A: Your default music player is probably not supported.  Contact me here and let me know what player you are using, or make it so your music plays on Windows Media Player or RealPlayer.

Q: How can I get Tell Me to start automatically AFTER HAL is loaded?

A: From HAL, within personal assistant select "Startup Applications" and select the Tell Me.exe

Q: Tell Me mispronounces the time when reading movie listings.

A: This is a bug in HAL. It has been reported and has not yet been fixed.  The "Charles UK" voice does not have this problem.  If you ask for sports scores in HAL, you will hear the same mispronunciation of time.

Q: I updated Tell Me and now all my custom settings are gone.

A: When updating Tell Me, only overwrite the EXE.  If you overwrite the config.dat file your settings will be lost.  Back-up this file periodically. 

 

Problems / Suggestions / Questions

    Report Problems or suggestions here. Be sure to provide very specific information. 

Program Errata