Ai Dreams Forum
Chatbots => General Chatbots and Software => Topic started by: Bragi on April 20, 2012, 06:27:47 pm
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I finally released a first version for the android platform. It's still pretty early, there are some things that need fixing (including speed ups), but all in all, it's starting to work.
It can currently make a phone call to one of your contacts, send an email or sms, get the weather info and change a few phone settings (limited feature set). It also has a few basic chatbot features as well (most of the topics that have been included, can be found as separate downloads on my website).
It's available on google play (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.bragisoft.aici) or from my downloads (http://bragisoft.com/download/).
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Finally some one has given me a reason to charge up my Tablet - thanks !
Will report back, and thanks for providing an alternative link to the Google Market place - my tablet is only able to access the free stuff and there is no way to register it as a device with Google - so yeah....expensive door stop...
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I haven't been able to test it on a tablet yet. I'm not certain what will happen since the android manifest specifies that the app needs phone access (to start a phone conversation). The big screen will also be interesting. In the menu, there is a button 'info', this pretty much lists what's currently possible.
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Well it will be 3 hours before the darn thing has charged. I was just looking at some cheap Android 2.2 phones, there's a few good deals around now, I might pick one up.
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I noticed you have made it available for Android 1.5 and up...
Did you run into any obstacles in catering for the earlier versions ?
Or to ask another way - what kind of impact would say only basing it on Andorid 3 have ? There must be pros and cons hey ?
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I had to put the minimum so low to get it to show up on the android market (google play, these days). The 'targeted' version is the actual required one, which is 2.2
It's still pretty low. It plays a role for the available features. At the moment, this is not a problem, but there are some things missing in the lower versions, like a proper API to talk the to agenda or some missing UI objects (like frames).
Getting back to the google play, this was a b*** to get it loaded up there (had to redo it like 15 times, spend a whole day at it). It simply wouldn't show up and it takes a while before it did. So I might have gone a bit low on requirements.
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Hmm, well I tried to install it and it seems to require SpeechSynthesis and that won't install on my tablet. Piece of junk...
Anyway, I will get a 2.2 phone and try it then :)
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Will it simply not install?
It should detect if TTS is availabe or not, when not available, it doesn't use it.
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I *think* your app installed as I could type in a question. However as soon as I enter the question it goes to this speech thing. I don't really know what its trying to do - it appears to want me to install it, and like I said it will not install.
I wouldn't worry about this particular tablet, it's useless.
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Ahh yes, when it can't find TTS, it tries to go to the google market place. Probably that's it. I can put in an option to disable speech. I'll do that (pretty easy).
Also, as a side note, I am making my own TTS engine (so I can have lip-sync), so in the next releases (not the very next, but in 2 months or so), It wont have to rely on an external app.
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Thanks, I tired to install TTS on this before and it did not work. Not to worry I have a phone on the way now 8)
Making your own TTS sounds great, especially the lip sync - I would love to make some characters for it.
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Freddy,
Ummm...just what brand is the tablet with which you so dearly have this Love/Hate relationship? Inquiring minds want to know.
European / UK branded item or Dell, Windows, Android, etc.? TIA!! (maybe that way we can likewise avoid them).
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Funnily enough they are not available any more - wonder why...
But since you ask it's a brand called 'Cambridges Sciences' - don't be fooled though I think this is nothing but a re-branded cheap import job.
And yes avoid them. Trouble here is that Android 2.2 is really for phones, they just managed to get some of it working for tablets, but without a full job done.
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are you able to put a new android version on it? I haven't done this yet, but with the samsung devices it appears to be possible.
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I don't think it can be done with the tablet or I would have hoped they would have been able to instruct me how to do it. I did ask them if they had worked on getting it upgraded, but they said no - and kindly offered to sell me a newer version. Since I bought this one less than six months ago I felt like telling them where they could install it. But I will have a dig around, maybe there is some site that explains how to do it.
It's no biggy as my Android phone is here now :) Galaxy Ace and it is everything the tablet is not. Really very pleased with it so far and it's possible to upgrade.
So I had a brief chat with with your bot and it seems to be working well. I was really impressed with the voice it comes with and voice recognition is cool if I speak clearly enough for it.
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I was just about to release a newer version which allows proper disabling of the voice. (tomorrow or so). Sorry I was a bit late (also tried to put in some speed improvements and had some woes with people from a previous life popping up).
The current voice recognition comes from google. Glad to hear it's working for you. For me, none english speaker, it's not that great. It also requires a network connection, which I don't like.
How was the speed on your phone? On mine it still needs some work (luckily there is still plenty of room in this area). Especially disk access is currently a problem. The first salvo takes a long time.
Also, I don't like the sync at the start. It's not really required once you can use proper if-then and loops in the 'do-patterns'. So it's gonna go as soon as possible.
Glad you liked it.
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I've published a new release. In this version, you can disable TTS and it should also respond better in case google play can't be reached. I can't test this cause I don't have such a device. Would you like to try this out for me, Freddy?
This version is also able to report battery state, voltage and temperature.
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I find I have to speak really crisply at the phone, but I am getting used to it.
Speedwise it was quite good, as good as any other bot - certainly as good as my own experiments using the Pandorabots server and my own little bot program, which I still have to finish...
Have been a bit busy today, have spent most of it installing an SSD drive with a lot of help from Data...pretty much done all the important stuff now and the system seems stable.
But back on topic, yes the first reply took a while and I thought it had crashed, later replies were fine. So all the bot processing is done server side then ?
I can test out the new release sure...is it on the marketplace ?...oh that's Google Play now...yeah...
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No,all the processing is done locally, except the google speech part. This is an external application that I use on the phone and it uses the google servers to transform the sound into text (for now). Processing the text is local. That's why the first salvo currently takes so long: all the code is being loaded from the sd-cards, which is slow. For the next statements, lots of stuff is already in memory and things go faster.
Fixing this is a bit tricky, there are many small things that need to be done: reading larger blocks from disc instead of a single one each time (so that the disks aren't overtaxed), pre-loading things, ....
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those SSD cards. Is the speed difference very noticeable?
If you need any help with the android api's, I'm slowly starting to understand them.
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OK I see, that's interesting as my app obviously does it server side. Very wise to install to SD then in that case O0
SSD...to be honest it is probably the most effective change to my computer I have made in terms of speed. Windows boots in seconds, desktop loads more or less instantly, programs open in a snap etc etc, so yes I like it. The only other way for me to have achieved similar results would be to buy a new MB and CPU...one of the new Intels or something, but that would have cost me a lot more and even then I would still be tied to the slower HDD speeds.
They are coming down in price a lot lately, in the past month I saw it go from about £110 to £95, and now I see it's at £90 on Amazon.
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those are reasonable prices indeed (it's been a while since bought a harddisk, without all the rest)
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Do I just unistall the old version and redownload the one at Play ?
Also is it time to roll out the banner ? ^-^
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Do I just unistall the old version and redownload the one at Play ?
yes, if you can access google play. Otherwise, you can download it from the download page or from here (http://bragisoft.com/files/com.bragisoft.aici.apk).
A small warning though. I discovered 2 serious bugs in this version: memory isn't saved properly (tried to optimize something, accidentally opened it read-only :-[ ) Also, the 'like' topic has a small bug left, that I though I had fixed, apparently not.
Also is it time to roll out the banner ?
I guess so, I'd like to get these 2 bugs fixed and I've also put in a background image (making it selectable as well), which would make more sense with the banner. I've also done some improvements about the first statement's speed (not there yet completely). So perhaps you could put it up when the next release comes out. I'm aiming for somewhere next week (as early as possible).
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Yes, the phone has full access - actually there was a notification and it appears to have upgraded now O0
It's still working anyway, just that intial question hangs...
Just let me know when you want the banner up, I will put in on the Chatterbot Collection too :)
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I just did a new release of the android app. Here's what's new:
-Change the appearance of application (background, fonts, colors)
-search for images (saw Freddy's AIML pattern, figured I could do this as well :P )
-open the photo gallery
-open google
-start gmail
-started work on allowing the android app to be fully managed from the app itself (instead of the pc), in combination of a file server (already used to install some images).
There was also still a deadlocking bug that I only began noticing on the android platform. This should be gone now (damn hard one) And some speedups. The first sentence is still slower as the rest, but everything is a bit faster. Especially if you do the same statement 2 times, that's really fast (the difference in having the data buffered or not).
So, I guess it's time to put up the banner now?
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saw Freddy's AIML pattern, figured I could do this as well
Ahh good, at least one person found it useful, that's enough for me :)
It all sounds good, congratulations 8)
I can put the banner up, no problem at all - where to you want me to point it towards ?
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I think this: http://bragisoft.com/ (http://bragisoft.com/) is best, thanks
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Done :)
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Thanks!
I had forgotten how good it looks. Could I use it again in case I can put up a banner somewhere else?
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Glad you like it and yes feel free to use it however you see fit.
Basically I give it to you :)
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O0