[Kde-accessibility] Installing Simon in Microsoft Windows

[Jean Karlo Rodriguez]

Greetings,

My name is Jean Rodriguez and I’m a student from the
University of Puerto Rico, Rio Piedras Campus. I am currently working on a
research project that uses Simon with Professor Patricia Ordoñez. I installed Simon
in my windows laptop through this link: http://download.kde.org/stable/simon/0.4.1/win32/simon-x86-setup-0.4.1.exe.mirrorlist
, and selected the ‘Download file’ that is under File information. I followed
the instructions in the Simon manual that can be downloaded in this link https://simon.kde.org/doc, in order for
Simon to function properly but when activate Simon a window appears that gives
me the following error:

The recognition reported the
following error:

Failed to
setup recognition: Julius did not initialize correctly

When I select the Detail button this is
what appears:

STAT: include config:
c:/users/jeankarlo/appdata/roaming/.kde/tmp-jeank//simond/default/julius/julius.jconf


ERROR: m_chkparam: cannot access
c:/users/jeankarlo/appdata/roaming/.kde/tmp-jeank//simond/default/julius/hmmdefs


ERROR: m_chkparam: cannot access
c:/users/jeankarlo/appdata/roaming/.kde/tmp-jeank//simond/default/julius/tiedlist


ERROR: m_chkparam: could not pass parameter check

What can I do to solve this error?

[Peter Grasch]

Hello,

On Tuesday, February 24, 2015 11:29:29 AM Jean Karlo Rodriguez wrote:
> My name is Jean Rodriguez and I’m a student from the
> University of Puerto Rico, Rio Piedras Campus. I am currently working on a
> research project that uses Simon with Professor Patricia Ordoñez.
Nice to meet you, Jean.

> I
> installed Simon in my windows laptop through this link:
> http://download.kde.org/stable/simon/0.4.1/win32/simon-x86-setup-0.4.1.exe.
> mirrorlist , and selected the ‘Download file’ that is under File
> information. I followed the instructions in the Simon manual that can be
> downloaded in this link https://simon.kde.org/doc, in order for Simon to
> function properly but when activate Simon a window appears that gives me
> the following error:
> [...]

Please describe your setup in more detail. Be as specific as possible.

Best regards,
Peter

[Jean Karlo Rodriguez]

When I went through the initial configuration assistance
process I did the following steps:


In the Scenario window I clicked on download and installed “[EN/H4W]Mouse”
. Then I proceeded to the next window which is Speech Model where I clicked selected
Open Model and clicked on download. I Installed “[EN/VF/HTK] Voxforge” and continued
to the next two windows in which I left the default settings.


When I first activated Simon to test the “[EN/H4W]Mouse” Scenario,
it wasn’t responding to the commands that it had. I later created a Scenario of
my own and used the first dictionary that can be seen in this link http://www.repository.voxforge1.org/downloads/Nightly_Builds/AcousticModel-2014-03-01/
the one that ends with “16kHz_16bit_MFCC_O_D.tgz”. I
was able to create a command that opened a Python command line using the “Trigger”
button that can be found in the Grammar module when opening a
Scenario. Trained the command that I used in the Scenario to open the Python command
line 10 times but when I activated Simon it didn’t respond.


After
training the Senerio that I created and trying to get it to work, this error
started to appear everytime I tried activating Simon:

The recognition reported the
following error:
Failed to
setup recognition: Julius did not initialize correctly


When I select the Detail button this is
what appears:


STAT: include config:
c:/users/jeankarlo/appdata/roaming/.kde/tmp-jeank//simond/default/julius/julius.jconf


ERROR: m_chkparam: cannot access
c:/users/jeankarlo/appdata/roaming/.kde/tmp-jeank//simond/default/julius/hmmdefs


ERROR: m_chkparam: cannot access c:/users/jeankarlo/appdata/roaming/.kde/tmp-jeank//simond/default/julius/tiedlist


ERROR: m_chkparam: could not pass parameter check


I installed Simon in another windows laptop and
followed the same steps described earlier and created a Scenerio with the same
commands and functions, but the same thing happened to it. After I while, the
error started to appear every time I activated Simon.

[Peter Grasch]

Hi Jean,


> In the Scenario window I clicked on download and installed “[EN/H4W]Mouse” . Then I proceeded to the next window which is Speech Model where I clicked selected Open Model and clicked on download. I Installed “[EN/VF/HTK] Voxforge” and continued to the next two windows in which I left the default settings.
You mixed phoneme sets here. The EN/H4W mouse scenario uses the H4W phoneme set, while the EN/VF base model uses the VF phoneme set. Please use only matching scenario / base model configurations.
> When I first activated Simon to test the “[EN/H4W]Mouse” Scenario, it wasn’t responding to the commands that it had.
>
Yes, that would be expected behaviour. The H4W transcriptions are “foreign” to the VF base model, so it will remove those words from the language model (leaving none).

> I later created a Scenario of my own and used the first dictionary that can be seen in this link http://www.repository.voxforge1.org/downloads/Nightly_Builds/AcousticModel-2014-03-01/ <http://www.repository.voxforge1.org/downloads/Nightly_Builds/AcousticModel-2014-03-01/> the one that ends with “16kHz_16bit_MFCC_O_D.tgz”.
>
That may be the right shadow dictionary. Voxforge slightly altered their transcription style at some point, though. Not sure when the base model was built - I think the dictionary should be fine, but if you run into problems it may be a good idea to try to use an earlier version of the Voxforge dictionary.

> I was able to create a command that opened a Python command line using the “Trigger” button that can be found in the Grammar module when opening a Scenario. Trained the command that I used in the Scenario to open the Python command line 10 times but when I activated Simon it didn’t respond.
>
You said you use a base model, right? From the tag, that is a Julius / HTK model. Training only has any effect if you either don’t use a base model or use an adapted base model. Did you use an adapted base model? There is no base model called “[EN/VF/HTK] Voxforge”. Did you use “[EN/VF/JHTK] Voxforge” or [EN/VF/JHTK] Voxforge Binary”?

> After training the Senerio that I created and trying to get it to work, this error started to appear everytime I tried activating Simon:
>
Hm. Weird. Do these files exist when the error appears?
This is Simon 0.4.1, right?

Best regards,
Peter