Asterisk voice recognition for non-dial phones

[RCMcDonald]

Hi all -

I have several old phones hooked up to an Asterisk PBX network in my house, and I'd love to figure out a way to incorporate phones without a dial using a voice recognition module on my Asterisk PBX.  I'm envisioning a prompt from the server saying "Operator.  Please state your number."  Then the caller could simply respond with the one or two digit number that will dial the appropriate extension on my system.

Is there anyone on the forum who can point me to some resources on the web for doing this?  I see there is commercial software for creating a voice-capable IVR, but these are pretty expensive and offer much more functionality than I need.

Regards,

Bob McDonald

[Owain]

It appears it may be possible to integrate Sphinx with Asterisk

http://www.voip-info.org/wiki/view/Sphinx

http://cmusphinx.sourceforge.net/

Especially if you only need recognition of digits 0-9

[Phonesrfun]

You might try the C-net listserve.

[dsk]

That would be fun, we could even use magnetos with very little extra (Capacitor in series with ringer?)
dsk

[GG]

There are also voice-dialing adaptors made as accessibility devices for people with disabilities that prevent them dialing the phone.  They translate spoken words into touchtone digits.

Most of these work as "speed dial lists," dialing by name from a list the user (or the user's assistant) programs in advance.  You go off hook, the machine hears dial tone, you speak the desired name, and it sends the touchtone digits associated with that name. 

A few of these allow the user to speak digits to dial.  Most of these units are speaker-dependent, in other words they have to be "trained" to recognize a specific person's voice. 

The best of the batch a couple of years ago when I last checked, was made in Israel but I don't recall the brand. 

What would be really cool:

Go off hook, the device detects dial tone and says "Number, please?"

Speak digits into the telephone.  After a three-second pause, the device assumes the number is complete, repeats it back, waits for you to reply Yes or No, and dials it.  The device would also handle Star, Pound, Pause, and Flash. 

When you reach a voicemail system: flash the hookswitch, device comes online and says "Operator," and then you say e.g. "dial 123 now," and it says "One two three," waits for you to reply Yes or No, and dials.  To retrieve your own voicemail messages, a similar process also including your password.

For call waiting: flash the hookswitch, device comes online and says "Operator," and then you say e.g. "Call Waiting," and it repeats back to you "call waiting" and waits for you to reply Yes or No, and sends a flash signal to the CO line. 

For 3-way calling: similar to call waiting, but you say "Three way call?" and the device says "Number?" and you give it the number.  The device then sends flash + digits + flash to the CO line. 

With this, any manual telephone could become fully functional.  A magneto version could even be built, where it needs to detect 90 volts on the station side of the line in order to activate.  This would have to isolate the station side from the CO side. 

You could put one of these in a house and have all manual telephones.  That would be a hoot when visitors came over: "can I use your tele- ... uh-oh, how do I use this thing?"