Analog5:Article 010

Voice Activated Mac Media Center aka Voice Row

By: Shinmaryuu
Published: January 20th, 2007

Preface

There are millions it seems media centers out there of many different types and complexity but nothing matches the coolness of the old Star Trek episodes where the computer did whatever you said, literally. This project is not the holodeck but trust me it's just as cool. Even better is having a solid media center or media center front end can be had for as little as 200 dollars. Plus you can talk to it.

Old Mac Vs New Mac

The first thing you have to look at when getting started with this project is do i have an old mac or a new mac. The reasoning behind this is we are going to be using the Front Row software as the base and it only comes with newer macs. If you have a newer mac with Front Row you can skip step 1 and go straight to step 2.

Step 1: Getting Front Row on an Older Mac: If your older mac is running Tiger 10.4.4 your all set. You can download Front Row from apple and install with no problems. If your not running this version of Tiger your going to have to get your hands dirty with some quirky hacks. Instead of trying to explain that giant mess here i am going to point you to where i learned at this link (http://www.andrewescobar.com/frontrow) from Andrew Escober's website. He has a great tutorial on getting Enabler to work and get Front Row installed on those older macs. Another quirk with older macs is they do not offer the Apple remote used for Front Row. There are a lot of ways around this using keyboard commands etc but i prefer to use a wireless remote from a third party like Keyspan (http://www.keyspan.com). There RF Remote for Front Row Part Number: ER-RF1 is a perfect replacement for the Apple Remote.

Step 2: Let there be Voice Once you have Front Row set up you should be able to hit Command+Esc and Front Row will open. You can hit it again to close the software. We will now take advantage of this keyboard shortcut via voice. A quick tip is to go into Keyboard & Mouse under System Preferences and disable the Front Row short cut because the next Step does not seem to work unless it's shut off. When you try and type the command it just opens Front Row instead of recording the strokes. Once you have that shut off go back into System Preferences and click on Speech. Make sure "Listen continuously with keyword" is set to on and the keyword is Computer. Now turn Speakable Items on and say the following command "Define A Keyboard Command" a dialog box will pop open asking for a set of keyboard strokes. Hold down Command and press Esc it will show up as Command+Esc if so click ok. Where it says "By Saying this Phrase" type in the phrase you wish to use. In my case Open Front Row. Click on the Any Application radial and click Save. Once you have done this go back into Keyboard & Mouse and turn the shortcut back on. Once this is ready say "Open Front Row" and front row should open. Say it again and it should close. You can set up another command using "Close Front Row" if you would like.

Step 3: My table of Commands Here is a quick list of commands i have set up for voice activation. Of course once you have the first one setup the sky is the limit on this hack. You can control most of your Apple machine using voice commands. It might be a cool idea to learn all of these and impress you friends.

	Open Front Row - Command+Esc
	Left - Left Arrow Key
	Right - Right Arrow Key
	Up - Up Arrow Key
	Down - Down Arrow Key
	Enter - Return Key (Selects an item with in front row.)
	Back - Shift+Esc (Esc seems to send you back to the desktop where as 
	 Shift+Esc will just take you back a page in Front Row. If your at the
	 turn table. it will also slowly take you back to the desktop which looks
	 very cool.)

Once you have all of these set to voice commands your ready to control your Front Row media center with nothing but the sound of your own voice.

Step 4: Notes/Contact Info

• Episode 2 of my show Random Acts Of Anarchy (http://RAOATV.Blogspot.com) should have a video demo of this in action.
• Any questions can be sent to UndergroundInformation@Gmail.Com with "Voice Row" in the subject line.
• If you would like to follow my progress with this project using a G4 Mac Mini you can hit up my blog (http://www.Shinmaryuu.vox.com). I am doing a lot with media centers so it's becoming a good resource for information.

Shinmaryuu

http://www.Shinmaryuu.vox.com