vectorator

Important Installation Instructions

1. Update (May 22, 2019): I believe my issue with Bluehost has been resolved. So the program should work again WITHOUT having local copies of the .csv and .txt files.

2. In order for Vector to read the news you will need to install feedparser. This command should do the trick:

   'pip install feedparser' (though some installed it using: 'py -3 -m pip install feedparser')

3. You MUST be using the latest version of the SDK. There are installation notes here:

   https://forums.anki.com/t/vector-sdk-v0-6-0-alpha-release-notes-april-30-2019/33455

Introduction to Vectorator

Quick disclaimers... I'm new to the Vector SDK, new to Python, new to github. If I'm doing something wrong, or if you see problems in my code, please let me know! Also, Vectorator is likely buggy and I haven't finished fine-tuning the timings -- though you can tweak these as much as you like by downloading and editing the dialogue.csv file. Instructions below.

I wanted to add more actions/reactions to Vector, but without Anki's tools this would be extremely difficult and time-consuming. Much easier, is making Vector talk using his built-in text-to-speech! So that is the origins of my new program. (Vector + orator = Vectorator). I have written hundreds of lines of random dialogue, and edited nearly a thousand joke and "fact of the day" files. In addition, every morning Vector will tell you the news and your local weather! (You have to enter your city and region names in the config.py file.)

I went through and documented a lot of my code this morning, but I'll provide some additional instructions below:

Editing Vector's "dialogue"

When the program runs it downloads a file called dialogue.csv from my website. If you copy this file to the same folder as the program, Vectorator will use it instead of the downloaded version. The file is here: http://cuttergames.com/vector/dialogue.csv

The first column (NAME), contains event/trigger names. Don't change these.

The second column (LINES), is how many random lines of dialogue there are for that name. You can add or remove as many lines as you like -- you can even leave lines blank -- but make sure this number is correct.

The third and fourth columns (INT_LOW and INT_HIGH) are the number of seconds Vector will wait before responding to that event/trigger again. The program picks the value at random, between the low and high values.

The fifth column (NORMAL) is Vector's dialogue for the "Normal" mood. If I continue to work on the program I'd like to add moods like: playful, angry, sad, afraid, etc. The dialogue for these new moods will appear in the following columns.

Words in Curly Braces:

You will notice that some lines of dialogue have words enclosed in curly braces. If my program detects the word "{name}" then it will check to see if Vector has recently seen a named human and use it in place of "{name}". If he has NOT seen anyone he recognizes in the last few seconds then I replace "{name}" with a null string. This seems to work pretty well. The robot will either say, "Hey John, here is an interesting fact." Or he will say, "Hey , here is an interesting fact." Even with the name removed it still sounds fine.

The other words in curly brackets: "{good}", "{weird}", "{interesting}" and "{scary}" get randomly replaced with synonyms in order to add some more randomness. You can ONLY add these words: good, weird, interesting, and scary. I haven't tested it much but you should be able to use more than one in a line of dialogue, though be aware that if you use "{scary}" twice it will pick the same synonym both times.

IMPORTANT NOTE: My program picks lines of dialogue with biased random numbers. The first few lines will get repeated a LOT, while other lines won't get said nearly as often. If there are 10 lines of dialogue, the odds of Vector saying #10 is less than 1%. So if you write your own dialogue for Vector be sure to put the generic lines in the beginning.

Add Your Own Jokes!

Like the dialogue.csv file, my program downloads "jokes.txt" from my website, but you can save a local copy to the program folder and Vectorator will use that instead. The file is here: http://cuttergames.com/vector/jokes.txt

Be aware that, in an effort to make Vector more understandable, I have added a lot of commas and purposely mispelled some words. (I also slow down his speech a little bit.) This are intended and not spelling/grammar errors.

Change the Random Facts or Add New Ones

You can also download the facts.txt file I use and make changes to it. It's available here: http://cuttergames.com/vector/facts.txt (Once again, it needs to go into the same folder as vectorator.py.)

I have edited this file, too, but I have not heard Vector try to say everything, so there could still be some mispronunciations or words that are difficult to understand.

Editing the config file

You will need to enter your city and state/region to get weather forecasts. The API I'm using doesn't seem to be especially great, but perhaps the accuracy is somewhat location dependent. If the program crashes it might be because the API doesn't recognize the city/region. Try picking a larger city nearby. (I'll try to work on this in future updates.)

For the temperature, enter either "farenheit" or "celsius". With the former you will also get wind speeds in miles-per-hour, while the latter will give kilometers-per-hour results. (I hope this works, I only tested "farenheit".)

The chattiness setting (1 to 10) affects the INT_LOW and INT_HIGH values above. If INT_LOW is 1000 and chattiness is "5" then INT_LOW remains 1000. But if chattiness is set to "6" then INT_LOW changes to 800.

Be aware that any changes to chattiness might not be noticed right away, because I am saving time stamps every time Vector says anything. In other words, once Vector tells a joke he saves a timestamp that won't allow him to tell another joke until, say, 4:45. So changing Chattiness wouldn't have any impact until the NEXT TIME Vector tells a joke and sets a shorter timer. You can get around this by deleting the timestamps.csv file. If my code doesn't find this file it creates a new one with fresh times.