Brainhat Progress

This page updated: August 18, 1999

Last code release: August 18, 1999

• There is now a SAPI client. You will find it as bhatclnt.exe in the ftp directory for Brainhat. The client lets you talk to the computer, and the lets the computer talk back to you, using Brainhat as the intelligent agent.
  • You need a speech engine: If you have a SAPI compliant speech engine, you can download the client and give it a try. Brainhat has been tested with Dragon Systems Naturally Speaking and the Microsoft Speech SDK.

  • You will need a full duplex sound card. Actually, it may be even more restrictive than that. I have only tried it with a Soundblaster Live! card.

  • You may also need the Winsock2 update from Microsoft if you are running Windows95.

  This is all very new: you may have problems. Please write me (dowd@atlantic.com) with feedback, positive or negative.

  SAPI client traffic takes place over port 4144. This is the port that compuserve uses. I chose to make use of it too because it is one of the ports that is opened through a number of corporate firewalls. Also, note that the client takes a few moments to get started. Please don't assume that it has crashed; the client negotiates a fair amount of stuff with the server upon startup.

  There is much left to do. I have versions of the client that interact with the speech engines to try to pick the best of N possible interpretations of what the user said. They used up a lot of CPU horsepower and weren't terribly friendly to Window's sense that all computing should be event driven. I can fix it, but for now, you will see all N interpretations on your screen, and have to suffer with the first.

  P.S.: Come see us in New York at SpeechTek in October. See http://www.speechtek.com.