Thursday, 14 February 2008

2007_08_01_archive



Whistle (or scream) to control your computer!

Hello Readers!

It has been a long time since I wrote my last blog post. Well, I had

been busy with a lot of things - like college, harmonica playing,

meeting people, (and not to mention a whole host of fun, yet

unproductive things I had been doing). Oh, and I was also busy

reading, discussing and thinking over the last Harry Potter book by

J.K. Rowling. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is stunningly

beautiful. I loved it. :)

Well, anyway ... I'm always in search for alternate ways to

communicate with computers, and ever since I built a sound sensor for

my Viper robot, I was thinking of ways to communicate with my

computers using sound as a medium. I figured out how to use

DirectSound to read the levels of my computer's available sound

capture devices thanks to a wonderful example by Jacob Klint over at

CodeProject. I've written code to count the number of times the sound

level of my microphone exceeds a certain threshold for controlling a

few things on my computer. Say, for example, if I whistle two times

(loudly), the software would check my email. If I whistle three times,

it would turn off my computer, and so on.

The drawback is that it won't be long before everyone in your house

will be irritated by your whistling! That's why I still prefer laser

gesture recognition for controlling things. :) However, if you're

interested in seeing the code, just let me know.


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