I was playing around with COM objects in Windows and discovered that I could access the SAPI.SpVoice interface and make Microsoft Windows talk to me. Well needless to say I had to rush and develop and application to do just that. I uploaded a simple applicaton which will just say whatever you type in as an argument. For example SpeakToMeConsole.exe Hello World will make your computer speak the words “Hello World.” The part that really amazes me is that the guts of this program is only 2 lines long, and it can even that can reduced down to 1 line if we create an anonymous instance of SAPI.SpVoice object.
The reason I created it as a console application and not a windows app is because I envisioned this program only really only having a valid function when it’s called from another application. Or even better, you want to spook your girlfriend or parents by making their laptop talk to them when it turns on! Whatever your reasons are, enjoy! Oh and let me know how you use this program in the comments.
Here is the complete source code to the above application. Let me know what you think in the comments!
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'This application was developed by Gerardo Lopez and was downloaded from www.brangle.com 'Complete source code is available at: 'http://www.brangle.com/wordpress/2009/08/make-your-computer-talk-with-vb-net-app-source-code/ Module Module1 'We want to make sure we grab any arguments as args so that we speak them Sub Main(ByVal args As String()) 'If there are no arguments UBound will return -1 'Therefore we want to make sure to let the user know how to run the app if 'they don't enter any arguments If UBound(args) > -1 Then 'Generate an empty string, we'll use this to concatenate all of our arguments 'together so we can pass it to the narrator Dim input As String = "" 'Concat all of our arguments together and make sure to put a space in 'between them so the words don't run together For Each arg As String In args input = input + arg + " " Next 'Create an object and gain access to the narrator Dim voice = CreateObject("SAPI.SpVoice") 'Tells the narrator what to say voice.Speak(input) Else 'The is where we tell the user what to say if they didn't enter any arguments Console.WriteLine("No arguments specified") Console.WriteLine("Try this instead: SpeakToMe.exe Hello World") Console.WriteLine(vbCrLf + vbCrLf + "Visit www.brangle.com for other apps") End If End Sub End Module 'The End
To run this program from the command line, you can type in something like the following:
SpeakToMeConsole.exe Hello World
And here is the beautiful one-liner!
CreateObject("SAPI.SpVoice").Speak("hello from brangle.com")