Offline Speech Recognition

Question

I want to make sure my understanding of this is correct. In order to use the SpeechRecognition class, the user needs to check the "Enable Speech Recognition Service" in the Settings->Speech options form. This service requires an internet connection.

I am struggling with any way to use speech recognition without an Internet connection. Is this really required?

Thanks.

Answer 1

Hi Fred,

Jeff thought that is possible to use speech recognition offline, see details from https://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/windowsapps/en-US/aff8c39d-a7c5-493c-b788-2142d420f889/is-it-possible-to-implement-offline-speech-recognition?forum=wpdevelop. Try that code sample and let me know the result.

Regards,

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Answer 2

That is great. I got that sample, upgraded to Phone 8.1 and it works. However, I am starting with a Windows 8 Universal app, phone portion, and that does not have a WMAppManifest.xml file.

So, maybe my question is one of targeting. Can I use a Windows 8 "Universal" app with the phone portion doing speech recognition offline? If so, how?

Or, do I need to create a dedicated Phone 8.1 application to get this functionality?

Thanks.

Answer 3

More info. I created a new Windows Phone 8.1 project, added the speech recognition stuff, and it exhibits the same behavior, no recognition when the network is not available. I can't seem to create a Phone 8.0 app, but the sample that I upgraded does work offline.

What I'd really like to understand is what exactly is the behavior I should be expecting. More specifically, when Windows 10 is available, will a Windows 10 universal app be able to perform voice recognition without the network?

One difference is that the sample is using "Windows.Phone.Speech.Recognition" and the new P8.1 app is using "Windows.Media.Speech.Recognition".

A bit worried here that the go forward direction is to require the network be available.

Thanks.

Answer 4

>> A bit worried here that the go forward direction is to require the network be available.

It seems yes in universal development. Then I would recommend vote on UserVoice to ask for this feature. https://wpdev.uservoice.com/forums/110705-dev-platform?query=offline%20speech%20recognition%20

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Answer 5

I got some confirmation from Microsoft that offline speech with a custom grammar is possible. Check out the 'speechandtts' sample here: https://github.com/Microsoft/Windows-universal-samples

A great source of samples for Windows 10 and shows the direction moving forward. For my particular project, we are going to move forward with Windows 10 so I don't need to figure this out for Windows Embedded Handheld 8.1 at this time.