While setting up a lab environment today I had some time to kill and thought I would check out more recent methods for speech automation from within PowerShell. Some of the interesting aspects involved in this script are:
Get-Random - Used to select random members from the object
ArrayList object type - Used to allow the removal of array members
Get-Random - Used to select random members from the object
ArrayList object type - Used to allow the removal of array members
if ($VerbosePreferenceOrig.length -eq 0) {$VerbosePreferenceOrig = $VerbosePreference;}
$VerbosePreference = "Continue";
Add-Type -AssemblyName System.Speech
$Speech = New-Object -TypeName System.Speech.Synthesis.SpeechSynthesizer
$Speech.Volume = 100;
#create temp copies to work with
$Voices = New-Object System.Collections.ArrayList;
$Words = New-Object System.Collections.ArrayList;
#fill the arrays which will be static
Foreach ($Item in $Speech.GetInstalledVoices().VoiceInfo.Name)
{
$Idx = $Voices.Add($Item);
}
$Idx = $Words.Add("Hello, welcome to PowerShell 4.0 Part 1");
$Idx = $Words.Add("Did you know PowerShell rocks!");
$Idx = $Words.Add("What you are hearing, is written in PowerShell");
$Idx = $Words.Add("We are going to have some fun this week");
$Idx = $Words.Add("With dot net we can do a great deal");
$Idx = $Words.Add("Don't worry, use Get-Help");
#create temp copies to work with
$TmpVoices = New-Object System.Collections.ArrayList;
$TmpWords = New-Object System.Collections.ArrayList;
#fill the temporary arrays
foreach ($item in $Voices) {$Idx = $TmpVoices.Add($item);}
foreach ($item in $Words) {$Idx = $TmpWords.Add($item);}
For ($loop=0; $loop -lt 10; $loop++)
{
Write-Verbose "Starting loop $loop";
#make sure we don't completely empty the arrays
if ($TmpVoices.Count -le 0) {foreach ($item in $Voices) {$Idx = $TmpVoices.Add($item);};}
if ($TmpWords.Count -le 0) {foreach ($item in $Words) {$Idx = $TmpWords.Add($item);};}
#randomly get the voice and words to say
$Voice = Get-Random -InputObject $TmpVoices;
$Word = Get-Random -InputObject $TmpWords;
#remove these from the selection for less repetition (
$TmpVoices.Remove($Voice);
$TmpWords.Remove($Word);
Write-Verbose "Voice: $($Voice)";
Write-Verbose "Words: $($Word)";
$Speech.SelectVoice($Voice);
$Speech.Speak($Word);
Start-Sleep -Seconds 3;
}
Write-Host "Script Done!";
$VerbosePreference = $VerbosePreferenceOrig;
