prog | (no subject)

Cleaning again, getting to the last few boxes under the bed, stuffed there after the move. And it occurs to me that I want to be able have the following conversation with my house:

O House?
Yes, my son?
Where does the flashlight go?
The flashlight goes in Junk Drawer Three.
What is Junk Drawer Three?
Junk Drawer Three is in the kitchen, under the cupboard, second drawer from the left.
Thanks.
Aye aye.
O House?
Morning, sir.
Where does the whiteboard eraser go?
I don't know.
The whiteboard eraser goes into the top desk drawer.
OK, the whiteboard eraser goes into the top desk drawer.
Thanks.
Live to serve.

Surely the technology exists to make this happen. I want to know what sorts of speech-recognition software exists for Mac OS X (I used to know... hee hee, I get to look up stuff in MOSXiaN again; I love doing that), and how one might build an interface between that and Perl. Then it's just a matter of clever mic-and-speaker arrangement. Well, and buying a dedicated computer, but.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I thought about RFID too, but AFAIK this isn't something I can implement right now, at least not at a sub-prohibitive cost (correct me if I'm wrong).

Done more thinking and quick research in the hours since posting this, and have thought some interesting ideas. I'm pretty sure some of them overlap with what others may have written about 'smart houses', but mostly I'm now quite curious about the experience of having mics and speakers throughout one's physical space (my apartment, in this case), connected to a computer that is always listening, and might pipe up by itself when interesting things occur (alarm clock, new LJ friend post, etc... which it can then elaborate on with a spoken command). I guess I'm thinking about using 'smart house' stuff for information management instead of the 'usual' lights-and-doors stuff that the geekerati have been playing with for years.

I may have more coherently stated thoughts after all this settles. :)