Project jaNET!

jaNET is a Digital Life Assistant inspired from JARVIS on Iron Man movie.

Introduction

The virtual she-butler comes to life through project jaNET, a platform ready to host multiple creative and innovative pieces of code concerning domestic everyday tasks.
jaNET provides a built in framework to fulfil most of our daily information manners (like e-mail notification, weather conditions etc) but it can also be extend by wrapping 3rd party applications, processes or scripts in order to become a more flexible and smart system!

Framework
Some built in functions (currently 23) and commands, are explained below and used for the final custom synthesis.

Functions
User and Greetings
%user% - get user login
%daypart% and %partofday% - get the current part of the day (morning, noon, evening, afternoon, night, midnight)
%salute% - get the human greets like good morning, good evening and good afternoon

Weather (retrieve information from yahoo web service)
%todayday% - get the current day
%todayconditions% - get the today conditions as partly cloudy, sunny etc
%todaylow% - get current day low temperature
%todayhigh% - get current day high temperature
%tomorrowday% - get the day after
%tommorowconditions% - get the day after conditions as partly cloudy, sunny etc
%tommorowlow% - get day after low temperature
%tommorowhigh% - get day after high temperature

Localization
%day% - get system day
%time% - get current system time
%time24% - get the current system time in 24
%date% - get current system date

Net
%mailnum% - returns the number of a pop3 mail account that you have setup
%inetcon% - if it has an internet connection

Location
%whereami% - retrieves information have been sent from my mobile phone gps. The phone runs a custom python script that sends the location to a web service which produce a google maps page. This function is responsible to extract the readable address

System Console
%cls% and %clear% - clearing the console
%quit% and %exit% - terminate program

Commands
2.1. Bluetooth
set bluetooth on - enable bluetooth
set bluetooth enable - enable bluetooth
set bluetooth off - disable bluetooth
set bluetooth disable - disable bluetooth
get bluetooth state - returns the state of bluetooth as boolean (true/false)
get bluetooth status - returns the state of bluetooth as boolean (true/false)

2.2. Mail
set mail add - setup a pop3 account for %mailnum% function
set mail check - enable mail check every x milliseconds
set mail check off - disable mail check
set mail check 0 - disable mail check
get mail settings - returns pop3 settings
get mail state - returns the number of ms, 0 if it is disabled
get mail status - returns the number of ms, 0 if it is disabled

2.3. Sms
set sms add - supports Clickatel sms gateway
get sms settings - returns sms settings

2.4. Alarm, wake up call
set alarm add - set alarm time in 24 format, ex. set alarm add 12:00
set alarm off - disable alarm
set alarm disable - disable alarm
get alarm state - returns the time in 24 format
get alarm status - returns the time in 24 format

2.5. Web Service (remote listener)
set ws on - enable web service
set ws enable - enable web service
set ws off - disable web service
set ws disable - disable web service
set ws add - add a new task, ex. set ws add mail "set mail check 300000"
set ws remove - removes a list of actions as described
get ws list - returns the list in queue
get ws state - returns the state of the web service
get ws status - returns the state of the web service

Instruction Synthesis
Command synthesis achieved through an xml description file. This file contains customizable command sets, events and settings. Lets see some examples.

Wrap a shell script to get gmail count.

sh /home/john/Dev/Mono/jaNET/jaNET/bin/Debug/gmail.sh
You have, *gmail, mail messages to your g-mail account.

When gmail command is called, the parser will execute the gmail.sh which is marked with an asterisk (*) and means that follows an external resource, fetch the result and synthesize the final output like, "You have, 2, mail messages to your g-mail account."
Note that if the command set without asterisk contains only the command set with asterisk then you'll get the result without voice announcement. If contains something more than that, it assumes that has something to say. This technique become very useful when you want to call an external resource inside the code (yes, it can be done!).

Another example is, synthesis from framework function calls. For instance when security breach occurred, triggered by sonar, it can be something like:

Security Breach @ %date% - %time24%

which will return current date, for example June 15 and time in 24 format, let's say, 12:00.

But it doesn't stop there! You can also use both methods. Probably you may want to have a command set that returns both of your gmail and pop3 account.

You have, %mailnum%, mail messages, to jambel.net account, and, *gmail, mail messages to your g-mail account.

This "hybrid" mode will "ask" the framework with %mailnum% method, to retrieve the number of pop3 incomings you have setup to jaNET and the other one as we previous mention.

Same logic to settings and events. You can get an idea by download AppConfig.xml from Files menu.

jaNET can also accept multiple commands delimited by semicolon.

Structure



Technical Specifications
OS, Windows and Ubuntu linux. jaNET is fully tested on Ubuntu 9.04, 9.10 and 10.04. Partly on Windows.
Development platform, Mono 2.0 and currently 2.2.
Speech synthesis engine for linux, Festival Speech Synthesizer and default speech engine for Windows.
Hardware phidget modules are developed in java.