Can you please open Reddit subreddit_name”.
only the italic bold phrase should be used as it is.
You can use any kind of prefix, just take care of the italic bold phrase.
How it works : If you have said the phrase open reddit in your command then it will search for subreddit name in the user command using re.
search().
The subreddit will be searched using www.
reddit.
com and will get opened in the browser using pythons Webbrowser module.
The Webbrowser module provides a high-level interface to allow displaying Web-based documents to users.
if 'open reddit' in command: reg_ex = re.
search('open reddit (.
*)', command) url = 'https://www.
reddit.
com/' if reg_ex: subreddit = reg_ex.
group(1) url = url + 'r/' + subreddit webbrowser.
open(url) sofiaResponse('The Reddit content has been opened for you Sir.
')So, the above code will open your desired Reddit in your default browser.
2.
Open any website in the browser.
You can open any website just be saying “open website.
com” or “open website.
org”.
For example: “Please open facebook.
com” or “Hey, can you open linkedin.
com” like this you can ask Sofia to open any website for you.
How it works : If you have said the word open in your command then it will search for website name in the user command using re.
search().
Next, it will append the website name to https://www.
and using webbrowser module the complete URL gets opened in the browser.
elif 'open' in command: reg_ex = re.
search('open (.
+)', command) if reg_ex: domain = reg_ex.
group(1) print(domain) url = 'https://www.
' + domain webbrowser.
open(url) sofiaResponse('The website you have requested has been opened for you Sir.
') else: pass3.
Send Email.
You can also ask your desktop assistant to send the email.
How it works : If you have said the word open in your command then the bot will ask for receipient, If my response is rajat, the bot will use pthons smtplib library.
The smtplib module defines an SMTP client session object that can be used to send mail to any Internet machine with an SMTP or ESMTP listener daemon.
Sending mail is done with Python’s smtplib using an SMTP server.
First it will initaite gmail SMTP using smtplib.
SMTP(), then identify the server using ehlo() function, then encypting the session starttls(), then login to your mailbox using login(), then sending the message using sendmail().
elif 'email' in command: sofiaResponse('Who is the recipient?') recipient = myCommand()if 'rajat' in recipient: sofiaResponse('What should I say to him?') content = myCommand() mail = smtplib.
SMTP('smtp.
gmail.
com', 587) mail.
ehlo() mail.
starttls() mail.
login('your_email_address', 'your_password') mail.
sendmail('sender_email', 'receiver_email', content) mail.
close() sofiaResponse('Email has been sent successfuly.
You can check your inbox.
')else: sofiaResponse('I don't know what you mean!')4.
Launch any system application.
Say “launch calendar” or “can you please launch skype” or “Sofia launch finder” etc.
and Sofia will launch that system application for you.
How it works : If you have said the word launch in your command then it will search for application name(if it is present in your system) in the user command using re.
search().
It will then append the suffix “.
app” to the application name.
Now your application name is for example say calender.
app(In macOS the executable files end with extension .
app unlike in Windows which ends with .
exe).
So the executable application name will be launched using python subprocess’s Popen() function.
The subprocess module enables you to start new applications from your Python program.
elif 'launch' in command: reg_ex = re.
search('launch (.
*)', command) if reg_ex: appname = reg_ex.
group(1) appname1 = appname+".
app" subprocess.
Popen(["open", "-n", "/Applications/" + appname1], stdout=subprocess.
PIPE)sofiaResponse('I have launched the desired application')5.
Tells you the current weather and temperature of almost any city.
Sofia can also tell you the weather, maximum and minimum temperature of any city around the world.
The user just needs to say something like “what is the current weather in London” or “tell me the current weather in Delhi”.
How it works : If you have said the phrase current weather in your command then it will search for city name using re.
search().
I have used pythons pyowm library to get the weather of any city.
get_status() will tell you about the weather condition like haze, cloudy, rainy etc and get_temperature() will tell you about the max and min temperature of the city.
elif 'current weather' in command: reg_ex = re.
search('current weather in (.
*)', command) if reg_ex: city = reg_ex.
group(1) owm = OWM(API_key='ab0d5e80e8dafb2cb81fa9e82431c1fa') obs = owm.
weather_at_place(city) w = obs.
get_weather() k = w.
get_status() x = w.
get_temperature(unit='celsius') sofiaResponse('Current weather in %s is %s.
The maximum temperature is %0.
2f and the minimum temperature is %0.
2f degree celcius' % (city, k, x['temp_max'], x['temp_min']))6.
Tells you the current time.
“Sofia can you tell me the current time ?” or “what is the time now ?” and Sofia will tell you the current time of your timezone.
How it works : Its pretty simpleelif 'time' in command: import datetime now = datetime.
datetime.
now() sofiaResponse('Current time is %d hours %d minutes' % (now.
hour, now.
minute))7.
Greetings/ leaveSay “ hello Sofia” to greet your voice assistant or when you want the program to terminate say something like “shutdown Sofia” or “Sofia please shutdown” etc.
How it works : If you have said the word hello in your command, then depending on the time of the day, the bot will greet the user.
If the time is more than 12 noon, the bot will respond “Hello Sir.
Good afternoon”, likewise if the time is more than 6 ck pm, the bot will respond “Hello Sir.
Good evening”.
And when you give command as shutdown, sys.
exit() will be called to terminate the program.
#Greet Sofia elif 'hello' in command: day_time = int(strftime('%H')) if day_time < 12: sofiaResponse('Hello Sir.
Good morning') elif 12 <= day_time < 18: sofiaResponse('Hello Sir.
Good afternoon') else: sofiaResponse('Hello Sir.
Good evening')#to terminate the programelif 'shutdown' in command: sofiaResponse('Bye bye Sir.
Have a nice day') sys.
exit()8.
Play you a song on VLC media playerThis feature allows your voice bot to play your desired song in VLC media player.
The user will say “Sofia play me a song”, the bot will ask “What song shall I play Sir?”.
Just say the name of the song and Sofia will download the song from youtube in your local drive, play that song on the VLC media player and if you again play a song the previously downloaded song will get deleted automatically.
How it works :If you have said the phrase play me a song in your command, then it will ask you what video song to play.
The song you will ask will be searched in youtube.
com, If found than the song will be downloaded in your local directory using pythons youtube_dl library.
The youtube-dl is a command-line program to download videos from YouTube.
com and a few more sites.
Now the song will be played as soon as it gets downloded using pythons VLC library and play(path_to__videosong) module actually playes the song.
Now if the next time you ask for any other song, the local directory will be flushed and a new song will be downloaded in that directory.
elif 'play me a song' in command: path = '/Users/nageshsinghchauhan/Documents/videos/' folder = path for the_file in os.
listdir(folder): file_path = os.
path.
join(folder, the_file) try: if os.
path.
isfile(file_path): os.
unlink(file_path) except Exception as e: print(e)sofiaResponse('What song shall I play Sir?')mysong = myCommand() if mysong: flag = 0 url = "https://www.
youtube.
com/results?search_query=" + mysong.
replace(' ', '+') response = urllib2.
urlopen(url) html = response.
read() soup1 = soup(html,"lxml") url_list = [] for vid in soup1.
findAll(attrs={'class':'yt-uix-tile-link'}): if ('https://www.
youtube.
com' + vid['href']).
startswith("https://www.
youtube.
com/watch?v="): flag = 1 final_url = 'https://www.
youtube.
com' + vid['href'] url_list.
append(final_url)url = url_list[0] ydl_opts = {}os.
chdir(path) with youtube_dl.
YoutubeDL(ydl_opts) as ydl: ydl.
download([url]) vlc.
play(path)if flag == 0: sofiaResponse('I have not found anything in Youtube ')9.
Change desktop wallpaper.
You guys can also change your desktop wallpaper using this feature.
When you say something like “change wallpaper” or “Sofia please change wallpaper” the bot will download random wallpaper from unsplash.
com and sets it as your desktop background.
How it works : If you have said the phrase change wallpaper in your command, the program will download a random wallpaper from unsplash.
com, store it in local directory and set it as your desktop wallpaper using subprocess.
call().
I have used unsplash API to get access to its content.
Now if the next time you ask to change the wallpaper again, your local directory will be flushed and a new wallpaper will be downloaded in that directory.
elif 'change wallpaper' in command: folder = '/Users/nageshsinghchauhan/Documents/wallpaper/' for the_file in os.
listdir(folder): file_path = os.
path.
join(folder, the_file) try: if os.
path.
isfile(file_path): os.
unlink(file_path) except Exception as e: print(e) api_key = 'fd66364c0ad9e0f8aabe54ec3cfbed0a947f3f4014ce3b841bf2ff6e20948795' url = 'https://api.
unsplash.
com/photos/random?client_id=' + api_key #pic from unspalsh.
com f = urllib2.
urlopen(url) json_string = f.
read() f.
close() parsed_json = json.
loads(json_string) photo = parsed_json['urls']['full'] urllib.
urlretrieve(photo, "/Users/nageshsinghchauhan/Documents/wallpaper/a") # Location where we download the image to.
subprocess.
call(["killall Dock"], shell=True) sofiaResponse('wallpaper changed successfully')10.
Tells you latest news feeds.
Sofia can also tell you the latest news update.
The user just has to say “Sofia what are the top news for today ?” or “tell me the news for today”.
How it works : If you have said the phrase news for today in your command then it will scrape data using Beautiful Soup from Google News RSS() and read it for you.
For convineince I have set number of news limit to 15.
elif 'news for today' in command: try: news_url="https://news.
google.
com/news/rss" Client=urlopen(news_url) xml_page=Client.
read() Client.
close() soup_page=soup(xml_page,"xml") news_list=soup_page.
findAll("item") for news in news_list[:15]: sofiaResponse(news.
title.
text.
encode('utf-8')) except Exception as e: print(e)11.
Tells you about almost anything you ask.
Your bot can fetch details of almost anything you ask her.
Like “Sofia tell me about Google” or “Please tell me about Supercomputers” or “please tell me about the Internet”.
So as you can see you can ask about almost anything.
How it works : If you have said the phrase tell me about in your command then it will search for the keyword in the user command using re.
search().
Using pythons wikipedia library it will search for that topic and extract first 500 characters(if you dont specify the limit the bot will read the whole page for you).
Wikipedia is a Python library that makes it easy to access and parse data from Wikipedia.
elif 'tell me about' in command: reg_ex = re.
search('tell me about (.
*)', command) try: if reg_ex: topic = reg_ex.
group(1) ny = wikipedia.
page(topic) sofiaResponse(ny.
content[:500].
encode('utf-8')) except Exception as e: sofiaResponse(e)Lets put everything togetherimport speech_recognition as srimport osimport sysimport reimport webbrowserimport smtplibimport requestsimport subprocessfrom pyowm import OWMimport youtube_dlimport vlcimport urllibimport urllib2import jsonfrom bs4 import BeautifulSoup as soupfrom urllib2 import urlopenimport wikipediaimport randomfrom time import strftimedef sofiaResponse(audio): "speaks audio passed as argument" print(audio) for line in audio.
splitlines(): os.
system("say " + audio)def myCommand(): "listens for commands" r = sr.
Recognizer() with sr.
Microphone() as source: print('Say something.
') r.
pause_threshold = 1 r.
adjust_for_ambient_noise(source, duration=1) audio = r.
listen(source) try: command = r.
recognize_google(audio).
lower() print('You said: ' + command + '.') #loop back to continue to listen for commands if unrecognizable speech is received except sr.
UnknownValueError: print('.
') command = myCommand(); return commanddef assistant(command): "if statements for executing commands"#open subreddit Reddit if 'open reddit' in command: reg_ex = re.
search('open reddit (.
*)', command) url = 'https://www.
reddit.
com/' if reg_ex: subreddit = reg_ex.
group(1) url = url + 'r/' + subreddit webbrowser.
open(url) sofiaResponse('The Reddit content has been opened for you Sir.
')elif 'shutdown' in command: sofiaResponse('Bye bye Sir.
Have a nice day') sys.
exit()#open website elif 'open' in command: reg_ex = re.
search('open (.
+)', command) if reg_ex: domain = reg_ex.
group(1) print(domain) url = 'https://www.
' + domain webbrowser.
open(url) sofiaResponse('The website you have requested has been opened for you Sir.
') else: pass#greetings elif 'hello' in command: day_time = int(strftime('%H')) if day_time < 12: sofiaResponse('Hello Sir.
Good morning') elif 12 <= day_time < 18: sofiaResponse('Hello Sir.
Good afternoon') else: sofiaResponse('Hello Sir.
Good evening')elif 'help me' in command: sofiaResponse(""" You can use these commands and I'll help you out:1.
Open reddit subreddit : Opens the subreddit in default browser.
2.
Open xyz.
com : replace xyz with any website name 3.
Send email/email : Follow up questions such as recipient name, content will be asked in order.
4.
Current weather in {cityname} : Tells you the current condition and temperture 5.
Hello 6.
play me a video : Plays song in your VLC media player 7.
change wallpaper : Change desktop wallpaper 8.
news for today : reads top news of today 9.
time : Current system time 10.
top stories from google news (RSS feeds) 11.
tell me about xyz : tells you about xyz """)#joke elif 'joke' in command: res = requests.
get( 'https://icanhazdadjoke.
com/', headers={"Accept":"application/json"}) if res.
status_code == requests.
codes.
ok: sofiaResponse(str(res.
json()['joke'])) else: sofiaResponse('oops!I ran out of jokes')#top stories from google news elif 'news for today' in command: try: news_url="https://news.
google.
com/news/rss" Client=urlopen(news_url) xml_page=Client.
read() Client.
close() soup_page=soup(xml_page,"xml") news_list=soup_page.
findAll("item") for news in news_list[:15]: sofiaResponse(news.
title.
text.
encode('utf-8')) except Exception as e: print(e)#current weather elif 'current weather' in command: reg_ex = re.
search('current weather in (.
*)', command) if reg_ex: city = reg_ex.
group(1) owm = OWM(API_key='ab0d5e80e8dafb2cb81fa9e82431c1fa') obs = owm.
weather_at_place(city) w = obs.
get_weather() k = w.
get_status() x = w.
get_temperature(unit='celsius') sofiaResponse('Current weather in %s is %s.
The maximum temperature is %0.
2f and the minimum temperature is %0.
2f degree celcius' % (city, k, x['temp_max'], x['temp_min']))#time elif 'time' in command: import datetime now = datetime.
datetime.
now() sofiaResponse('Current time is %d hours %d minutes' % (now.
hour, now.
minute))elif 'email' in command: sofiaResponse('Who is the recipient?') recipient = myCommand() if 'rajat' in recipient: sofiaResponse('What should I say to him?') content = myCommand() mail = smtplib.
SMTP('smtp.
gmail.
com', 587) mail.
ehlo() mail.
starttls() mail.
login('your_email_address', 'your_password') mail.
sendmail('sender_email', 'receiver_email', content) mail.
close() sofiaResponse('Email has been sent successfuly.
You can check your inbox.
') else: sofiaResponse('I don't know what you mean!')#launch any application elif 'launch' in command: reg_ex = re.
search('launch (.
*)', command) if reg_ex: appname = reg_ex.
group(1) appname1 = appname+".
app" subprocess.
Popen(["open", "-n", "/Applications/" + appname1], stdout=subprocess.
PIPE)sofiaResponse('I have launched the desired application')#play youtube song elif 'play me a song' in command: path = '/Users/nageshsinghchauhan/Documents/videos/' folder = path for the_file in os.
listdir(folder): file_path = os.
path.
join(folder, the_file) try: if os.
path.
isfile(file_path): os.
unlink(file_path) except Exception as e: print(e)sofiaResponse('What song shall I play Sir?') mysong = myCommand() if mysong: flag = 0 url = "https://www.
youtube.
com/results?search_query=" + mysong.
replace(' ', '+') response = urllib2.
urlopen(url) html = response.
read() soup1 = soup(html,"lxml") url_list = [] for vid in soup1.
findAll(attrs={'class':'yt-uix-tile-link'}): if ('https://www.
youtube.
com' + vid['href']).
startswith("https://www.
youtube.
com/watch?v="): flag = 1 final_url = 'https://www.
youtube.
com' + vid['href'] url_list.
append(final_url)url = url_list[0] ydl_opts = {}os.
chdir(path) with youtube_dl.
YoutubeDL(ydl_opts) as ydl: ydl.
download([url]) vlc.
play(path)if flag == 0: sofiaResponse('I have not found anything in Youtube ')#change wallpaper elif 'change wallpaper' in command: folder = '/Users/nageshsinghchauhan/Documents/wallpaper/' for the_file in os.
listdir(folder): file_path = os.
path.
join(folder, the_file) try: if os.
path.
isfile(file_path): os.
unlink(file_path) except Exception as e: print(e) api_key = 'fd66364c0ad9e0f8aabe54ec3cfbed0a947f3f4014ce3b841bf2ff6e20948795' url = 'https://api.
unsplash.
com/photos/random?client_id=' + api_key #pic from unspalsh.
com f = urllib2.
urlopen(url) json_string = f.
read() f.
close() parsed_json = json.
loads(json_string) photo = parsed_json['urls']['full'] urllib.
urlretrieve(photo, "/Users/nageshsinghchauhan/Documents/wallpaper/a") # Location where we download the image to.
subprocess.
call(["killall Dock"], shell=True) sofiaResponse('wallpaper changed successfully')#askme anything elif 'tell me about' in command: reg_ex = re.
search('tell me about (.
*)', command) try: if reg_ex: topic = reg_ex.
group(1) ny = wikipedia.
page(topic) sofiaResponse(ny.
content[:500].
encode('utf-8')) except Exception as e: print(e) sofiaResponse(e)sofiaResponse('Hi User, I am Sofia and I am your personal voice assistant, Please give a command or say "help me" and I will tell you what all I can do for you.
')#loop to continue executing multiple commandswhile True: assistant(myCommand())So you have seen how just by writing simple lines of python code we can create a very cool voice-based desktop/laptop assistant.
Apart from these features, you can also include many different features in your voice assistant.
Please not that once you start executing your program, be loud and clear while you are interacting with voice assistant because it may happen that if your voice is not clear your voice assistant may not be able to interpret you properly.
Conclusion: What the future holdsThroughout the history of computing, user interfaces have become progressively natural to use.
The screen and keyboard were one step in this direction.
The mouse and graphical user interface were another.
Touch screens are the most recent development.
The next step will most likely consist of a mix of augmented reality, gestures and voice commands.
After all, it is often easier to ask a question or have a conversation than it is to type something or enter multiple details in an online form.
The more a person interacts with voice-activated devices, the more trends, and patterns the system identifies based on the information it receives.
Then, this data can be utilized to determine user preferences and tastes, which is a long-term selling point for making a home smarter.
Google and Amazon are looking to integrate voice-enabled artificial intelligence capable of analyzing and responding to human emotion.
I hope you guys have enjoyed reading this article.
Share your thoughts/comments/doubts in the comment section.
You can reach me out over LinkedIn.
.