Meet Jasper: open-source voice computing

Meet Jasper. He’s like Siri, but much better, in that it’s open-source and completely customisable. All you need to set up your own is a microphone, a speaker, and a Raspberry Pi.

Jasper already comes with modules to deal with things like time, weather, Gmail, playing your Spotify music, news (and what’s on Hacker News)…and knock knock jokes. You can build your own modules to add more functionality. We’re really impressed by how well-documented Jasper is; new developers should be able to get to grips with building on the platform very easily, and we’re looking forward to watching what you guys get up to with it.

59 comments

Kevin avatar

OK, so now we need to connect Jasper to the Rapiro robot

Liz Upton avatar

That’d be BRILLIANT. He needs a cuter voice, though!

tzj avatar

What about ‘sqeaky belle’?

IMLXH avatar

I would honestly really love it if Claire Corlett would be willing to be recorded for a text to speech engine. Doubt she’d have the patience for it though, recording phoneme after phoneme multiple times.

Les Pounder avatar

This looks like a great project, and I can already see a cross over into assistive technologies for less able bodied individuals.
I’m also curious to see if the Wolfson audio board would work, as it has two on board microphones, which would create quite a neat package.

Robin avatar

Wow, that is really cool. Would be even cooler if this would work with the Wolfson audio card, using the build in microphone to accept command and reply via a small speaker which is hooked to the build in amplifier.

Dave avatar

This is the baby brother of Jarvis from Iron Man. It would be cool if Paul Bettany could do the voice overs.

Nice work guys. Good find Liz and peeps.

Scot avatar

Thats exactly what I was thinking!

Stephen avatar

Actually, I was thinking of either a Stephen Hawking, or better, a HAL 9000 voice module

tzj avatar

Or stephen fry?

The Raspberry Pi Guy avatar

OMG! We need Jarvis!

elParaguayo avatar

Hello XBMC voice control…

AndyL avatar

That’d really suck is someone on the movie you were watching yelled “SELF DESTRUCT!”

elParaguayo avatar

Not if you had programmed Jasper to respond with a countdown…

Klaas avatar

Finally a way to continue my project!!

Dave avatar

Voice controlled home automation, this could be the laziest way to switch a light on (unless I can OpenCV to recognise a blink).

Matthew Simpson avatar

Haha, I’d like to see you trying to blick to turn the light on in the middle of the night.

tzj avatar

My sides! XD

pelrun avatar

Not so hard – just use IR illumination. You can’t see anything, camera can see you just fine.

lenod avatar

Looks great, but does it uses a central server and an ethernet connection (like siri or google’s equivalent)? Because the documentation only writes about “jasper-client”.

fu L avatar

I could be wrong but
It looks like the only ‘open’ bit is the ‘client’ .

Iv heard on the vine that
The server has new some new clothes that are magnificent !

Trevor avatar

The “client” is also the server. There is no central server. Jasper-Client operates as both.

fu L avatar

-1 for confusing terminology
++ for open ‘client/server’

=D

Nick avatar

I’m a newcomer to raspberry pi and would really like to try this project. I see that the microphone the recommend is no longer available on amazon. Does anybody have a recommendation for one that would work for this project?

tzj avatar

A sing star mic may work, they’re rather cheap second hand.

Matt Smith avatar

I would go for any USB microphone with a stand possibly a webcam with mic if you have one lying around. I might try http://www.amazon.co.uk/Kinobo-USB-Microphone-Desktop-Laptop/dp/B0052SBAEU/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1397113277&sr=8-1&keywords=usb+microphone

its the 1st one on UK amazon

Plasticbrain avatar

As lenod asked above – does it work offline, or is the recognition work being done on someone else’s server over the net? Not to take anything away from this project – it looks great, but I’ll be really impressed when one of these voice recognition projects actually runs on the hardware sitting in front of me…

Markus avatar
Jeff Ledger avatar

That’s the ticket! My carputer project just went into overdrive.

Laurence avatar

I was thinking the same! “Jarvis! Next track!” would be rather nice. My concern was how well it’d work over road noise though…

pelrun avatar

Now it needs a module to detect violations of the Verbal Morality Statute…

tzj avatar

Ooh… all the things from demoliton man that you could make using a raspberry pi…

Patrick O. avatar

But then they would have to say “Jasper” first ;)

Garremp avatar

Cross combine with http://www.adafruit.com/products/597 and we can make our own toilet paper!

Budius avatar

can we replace the “Jasper” to “Jarvis”… I mean, come on! Iron Man!

Smikey avatar

What about this? http://stevenhickson.blogspot.de/2013/06/voice-command-v30-for-raspberry-pi.html
I think it’s more customizable and has a better voice :) And you can call it “Jarvis” if you like to :D

luke avatar

i’m using that one, works fine for me, uses google’s voice meaning you can make a simple script for custom voice feedback.
and that one is opensource as well

Luke

Jack B Nimble avatar

Jasper brings 1983’s Wargames computer voice back to life.

u8nc avatar

The discussion makes me wonder
surely, surely set and properties departments for the movie industry must be making things with the pi?

The thing is, things in that industry can be strictly programmed, especially when matching CG to live action, but also directors also have to accommodate for loose timing and the size/weight of the Pi is perfect for any device following script instructions while computing for time variation.

is there a way to keep an eye out for film use? As we’ve seen previously the ‘Industrial’ tag is very thin on the ground

BruceR avatar

It’s already been a prop in TV dramas, but guess you are talking behind the scenes. The nearest I can think of was that Cadbury Joy Jacket advert.

BruceR avatar

Can’t use this, our family cat is called Jasper. It would be way too confusing.

Not for the cat of course he just ignores us anyway.

Andy Crofts avatar

Wish it was around a couple of weeks ago…
/Thinks/ Connect Pi to Sleepy Pi/ (misaligned connectors – let the magic blue smoke fairy out of Pi)
“SORRY DAVE, I CAN’T LET YOU DO THAT!” would’ve been useful at that point.

CA avatar

Is there an official community or forum somewhere on the Interwebs for this project? It doesn’t look like their github allows it

jeby avatar

English only? any possibility to have it in Italian? :)

Dennis avatar

Very nice project! We need more of this! I would love to see a community/forum for this, since I cannot get it to work on my Pi (not even when using the image). Can you enable community discussions on Github?

Scot avatar

Can anyone here do a decent Jarvis impression? ‘Cause that would be freakin’ EPIC! -Marvel Fan

jobe lawn avatar

This is Marvellous news! PI has yet another life! I only need jasper to listen to me and perform plain HTTP_API according to voice commands. That’s it.

Julien Syx avatar

Hello everyone,
I also started my own project : http://www.lisa-project.net
Here the community where I post regular updates : https://plus.google.com/communities/109665724480163795371

I’m looking for contributors (written in Python). The project is a bit more evolved : it uses a real network engine, and use Natural Language Processing. The end of already prebuilt sentences which aren’t natural.

MM avatar

It would be great if the image worked as described. Been trying to get this to work for hours now, no luck.

srunnals avatar

I am with you on that have you found a way around the install of the subversion?

dendad avatar

I too cannot get it to work.
At the moment, I’m downloading it again (3rd time) on a completely different computer just in case the other one trashed something. It is very trying when the demos do not work solidly, particularly when one is a novice, and not really knows even what question to ask. Still, I try again…..

Liz Upton avatar

If you’re still struggling, go and ask questions in the forums (link at the top of this page): you’ll find plenty of help there.

Tommy avatar

Does the rasperry pi come with a program to code it with? If not, which one do I use?

Walther Swarte avatar

Bonjour a tous tout le monde!

I have downloaded the Image of Jasper and put it on a SD cart. it doens’t work out of the box unfortunally. So I start doing it manually. The compiling took a very long time (10 hrs) to compile. The same happend. It didn’t work. I wonder if Jasper also works without the metioned usb mircophone and with a soundboard wich works on my Raspberry? I can record sound through my soundcard and also play what I record using arecord and aplay.

I guess I do something wrong because it works with others. But I can not discover what I do wrong. I did manually install Jasper for more than 5 times. Downloaded the source to different PC’s, tried different SD cards. Is there a misspelling in the sourcecode why it compiling take so long?

Any suggstions are very, very welcome!

Walther Swarte.
the Netherlands.

Helen Lynn avatar

The best place to ask this is in the forums (link at the top of the page).

Jeff Neumann avatar

can I give it a British voice?

gepee avatar

which mic are you using ???

john avatar

can i change the name?

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