By watching recorded TV over live TV, we are more likely to watch what we want, rather than choosing the best of what is on TV at that time. It also lets us control when we watch TV. We no longer need to change our own schedules around when a particular TV show is on, as we can now choose to watch our shows at whatever time is most convenient to us. We are back in control.

I made a video to show the many ways you can either currently use, or will be able to use in the future, for removing commercials. You can view this video further in the article. You will also find out about the software required to remove commercials automatically, and information on the legalities and consequences of using commercial removal technology.
 

WtvWatcher: This program scans my recorded TV folder for the native .wtv file format. It then sends the file through Microsoft’s inbuilt WtvConverter.exe to convert the file to the .dvr-ms format. This is necessary because Lifextender will not be able to interact with the .wtv format.

Lifextender: This program scans my recorded TV folder for new dvr-ms files and scans the file for commercials using Commskip or Show Analyser. It then recreates the file with the commercials removed.

My Script: I wrote this script to move files around based on the name of the file. If the file is a movie, it will be copied to another location to enable Media Center Master to download the DVD cover and other features. My script doesn’t have anything to do with ad removal really, but it is a helpful finishing touch. It will require a little fiddling to get it working though as it is setup for Australian TV. I run this script automatically through a scheduled task.

Click on the title of each for more detail on the setup of each piece of software. Both WtvWatcher and Lifextender have good default settings so they should work straight away. All you will need to do is install the two pieces of software and copy the shortcut of the files into your startup folder.

WtvWatcher and Lifextender work incredibly well together. I found that a quicker computer did achieve better results. There is likely to be the occasional ad or company logo at the end of an ad skip, but the impact is minimal. Much of the time it is hard to notice there was ever an add placed in the gap. Music sometimes even joins up flawlessly, from before the add break, to after.

On the rare cases that commercials haven’t been removed, setting up voice control will enable you to say “skip ads” or “comskip”. This will move the media forward around two and a half minutes, or roughly the length of a commercial break. If there are still ads, you can say “skip” and the media will move forward a further 30 seconds. Alternatively, you could use the “fast forward” command. These make for a very quick and easy way to skim past commercials. You can even do this with VCR’s and external DVD players if you setup a USB-UIRT.

Life with and without commercials:

There are consequences to commercial removal in the long term, though the good far outweigh the bad. We can be highly manipulated by commercials as we watch them. The repetitiveness of them slowly sinks into our minds and subconsciously impacts us. The decisions on what we buy are often based on what a commercial has told us, rather than the quality of a product and common sense. i.e. The iFrenzy. I do not have the same concerns with online advertising because the Ad companies have managed to make ads relevant to the subject matter of interest, and are generally more of a help rather than a hindrance.

If we all remove our commercials, I think a likely outcome will be the advertisers move to other forms of media to promote their products, such as billboards or online advertising. This will reduce commercial TV’s buying power for shows and in turn, the quality of shows may drop. Advertising on TV will become cheaper to fill the spots. This endless cycle could ultimately bring an end to commercial TV. Commercial TV can’t survive if advertisers don’t want to show their commercials on it. If commercial TV does remain as is, product placement within shows is likely to increase greatly.

Commercial removal will have little impact on government and community funded TV stations. Live sporting events will also remain with regular commercials as these events are generally watched live. It should not impact on Pay TV either. Pay TV was advertised as commercial free when it was launched in Australia and now it is flooded with commercials. It’s unreasonable for us to pay to have our mind manipulated.

Commercial TV might be considered good for people who don’t have the money to buy Pay TV, or are unable to afford DVD’s. By watching adverts, they can receive the TV service for free. This is an important point, but commercials aren’t for me, and I am ready to deal with the possible consequences.

Legalities:

From what I can make out, it is legal to remove commercials in my country (Australia), and is likely to remain legal. For it to be made illegal would be the same as making the skip or fast forward buttons on a remote illegal, or in my case, the spoken words Fast Forward and Skip illegal to say. These are the same functions that have been built into our DVD and VCR players since their inception, they have just become much more efficient. I don’t see any way it could be policed if such a law were to come in.

As more people get technology capable of this in their homes, more and more people will start doing this. A similar example is MP3′s as they were around long before the record companies saw that the copying of them would create an issue. I don’t really see why the government would want to have a say on the topic. It’s up to each individual to decide if they want TV commercials in their home. I don’t believe it will be possible for TV stations to install any technology that would make commercial removal impossible, as TV commercials can be removed from shows using a variety of new and old methods.

Conclusion:

Having my house commercial free over the last year has changed my family’s life for the better. I hope that each person will consider the consequences of removing ads from their TV shows before trying this out. Once you have experienced TV without commercials and have seen how easy it is to set up, I don’t think it likely many people would be able to consciously choose to go back to commercials. Removal would be as easy as uninstalling this software.

I am very confident that voice control is the way to go when it comes to controlling my home theatre setup into the future, because I am currently using it and benefiting from the huge advantages it offers. I believe a reliable voice control system will be the best way to control any electrical appliance, and that voice control is likely to be in our lives indefinitely. There are huge cultural and environmental problems which need to be addressed for it to work reliably, but the technology that interprets what we say works very well.

After setting up voice control on my home theatre PC, I realised that there needed to be an instant way to trigger the voice control so it would start listening to me. I needed a way to avoid using a traditional Universal remote, or my gadget. I needed a button that is ultra convenient. This means installing a button right next to my hand that will trigger the voice control. The only way of achieving this is by installing a button into my lounge. This may seem a bit excessive, but once it is done, the benefits we receive from it will last us well into the future. I believe all home theatre seating or lounge suites will eventually have the option to add a button into the arm.

There are many different types of buttons on the market, but I have only seen one that I know will be able to last the lifetime of the lounge. It’s going to take a beating, so I needed a button that was strong and reliable. Arcade machine buttons have proven themselves over the years as being ultra reliable. Fortunately for me, they are also cheap.

The end result is a button sitting immediately next to my hand which can activate and control my whole entertainment system using my voice. It’s not going to get much better than this. I expect this configuration to last the life of the couch, and it is likely to be considerably cheaper than having these factory installed. The only DIY work needed to be done for most lounges will be to drill a hole to install the button, and to click the pieces together. My scripts are not perfect yet, but I hope you will agree that it is pretty exciting stuff.

This article will show you how to install an arcade controller board, and a button into your lounge to trigger voice control of your entertainment.

There are probably many ways to achieve the same result, but this solution is cheap enough for me to run with. I purchased a set of 20 buttons for $20 and a BYO arcade encoder board for $50 from X-Arcade. Soon after I received them and started testing them out, it was clear I had made a wise choice. I quickly purchased another two upgrade boards, so that I could install one in each chair. I am going to use them elsewhere in the house now as I have figured out that it would be easy to daisy chain the chairs by running wires from the one board.

This kit comes with almost everything required to install a button in up to 20 seats so long as you are willing to solder some wires to reach from chair to chair, and possibly some plug sockets of some type, to tidy up the wire connections. If you are not comfortable with soldering, you could use an additional separate USB PCB Upgrade kit in each chair at an additional cost of $30 per chair. There may well be cheaper ways of achieving the same result, but a starting cost of around $70 if you are willing to solder from the one controller board, I am not fussed about searching for a cheaper option. The only other costs are a USB hub and possibly an active USB cable used to connect the controller boards to the computer.

This arcade controller board simulates a computer keyboard, so it’s just a case of either connecting the correct wires to a button so that the 0 or [ are the active buttons, or by wiring up your own selected button and changing the AutoHotkey script to respond to that button. It’s all fairly straight forward. The circuitry looks complicated, and there do appear to be a lot of wires, but all we need to care about is that one end has the USB plug that connects to the computer, and the other end is a button. The rest of it we can ignore as it will do it’s job out of the box. A little bit of trial and error in notepad will show you what each button does. I have only come across two minor problems with using this board, though they have little impact on how reliably the system functions. If I set the script to use a keyboard letter, every time I use that letter on the keyboard, the relevant script will run rather than showing the letter on the screen. I need to make sure that I am only using rarely used buttons (such as [ and 0) instead of general letters. Also, this board will not bring the system out of standby, though putting the system into standby is not desirable as it will also stop the media centre from recording and processing TV shows. There are ways around it though, which I will explain in future articles.

Installation Guide

Please read through the entire process before making alterations to your lounge. If you are not careful, it would be easy to do a poor job and effectively destroy the appearance of your expensive lounge suite.

Ensure you do have access to the inside of your lounge. If your arm wont fit in the arm cavity, installation will be near impossible.

Components: This image is of the components that make up an arcade button. There is the button itself, the locking screw and the micro switch. They clip or screw together easily.
Connect the button to your PC: Plug in the button to your computer and wait for it to install. Open up notepad and see what button registers on the screen. There are lots of buttons you can plug into, but [ is plugged into the board, one down on the left side.
Drill a hole: You will need to make a hole in the arm of the chair. Be careful when drilling because the cushioning of the chair may get caught up in the drill as it did for me. A way around this is to cut a suitable hole with a box cutter into the fabric before drilling. A 20mm hole is required, and once achieved, the button should slip in easily. You could choose to install a panel in the side of the chair, and attach the button (and other things) to that panel.
Screw the button in: The button will fit tightly in your lounge when you screw on the locking device.
Attach the micro switch:  Clip in the micro switch and if necessary reattach the wires.
Attach board to couch: I used the holes in the board to put in some self tapping screws. The other end I couldn’t reach was attached with double sided tape. You could probably just use double sided tape if you want, but the hold would obviously not be as strong as using screws.
Connect it to your computer: Either daisy chain some powered USB hubs together or use an active USB cable. This will get the signal from the back of the room, to the computer.

You should now be able to test it out. If the script is running and you have wired up the correct button, it should work straight away for you.

Some lounge suite designs may not be appropriate for installing your buttons. You will need to sit in your chair to feel if there is a suitable position for your button on the outside of the lounge where your hand can naturally reach to. You will also need access to this place from beneath the chair. Depending on how you mount it, you may need to make sure you can fit your arm into the arm cavity of the chair. As my arm would not fit, my wife needed to help me attach the button. The chair in the video is a chair my wife bought for $20 from an op shop. This was so that I could practice on it, without ruining the family lounge suite. I recommend going through this same process, doing some thorough research before attempting this on your expensive lounge. Saying that, it is ridiculously easy to install.

My final purchase was $130 plus shipping as I purchased the 20 buttons, the BYO arcade encoder, and 2 USB upgrade kits. Though as explained above, I don’t plan on using the Upgrade kits for this project, so that brings it down to around $70.

Resources:

Pack of 20 buttons: $20
X-Arcade BYO arcade encoder: $50 – Includes wires to attach buttons though these could be made
USB PCB Upgrade Kit: $30 – Same as above without cables

I have no affiliation with X-Arcade. I just found their site and purchased from them by chance, and I found their service and products to be good.

Once I was able to voice control my home theatre PC, I still needed to use my remote control to turn on the TV and receiver. I wanted to rid my lounge room of remotes altogether, so I needed to find a way to get my computer to control the rest of my audio visual gear. I wanted to be able to control everything in the lounge room with just my gadget and my voice.

It was logical to use Infra Red (IR) technology for this, because that is the only way we can control most AV gear currently. Often the buttons on a device (such as a TV set) don’t offer as many options as its remote control unit.

The USB-UIRT is a magic device that can send and receive IR signals. It connects to a USB port on our computer and enables us to send IR commands from our computer to our peripheral AV gear. It sits at the back of the room and has good range and reliability. This device removes the need for remote controls in our TV room altogether as we can tag a voice command to tell the USB-UIRT which IR signal or signals we want it to send.

The result is that we can walk into the room, press the trigger button and say “TV on”. This will turn the TV and stereo on. When we say “I’m finished”, the TV and stereo will turn off. 

It gets really impressive when we start controlling our VCR, BluRay or cable box with voice. I have added some extra scripting which will enable just this. When I put a video into the video player, I can say “Video Player” and the TV will change the channel to AV, to show the VCR. I can then use the usual play/pause/stop/rewind/fast forward voice commands to navigate through the video. When I return to the media centre, the tape will stop, rewind and 3 minutes later, eject the tape and turn off. This is while all the other media centre voice commands are working as per normal.

This article will show you how to setup the USB-UIRT to control your audio visual gear to control everything in your lounge room/home theatre by voice. The scripts need to be installed, and IR signals learnt, which is thankfully quite easy with to do with EventGhost. The speech macros have also been updated to simplify the commands to their shortest abbreviation. I have also included another speech macro which enables the “Play artist/genre/track” commands. It’s a bit harder for the computer to pick up the new commands, though they do work. The old commands still work and are worth learning because the computer is much more likely to recognise them. The commands will be progressively tweaked until each command is as simple as we can make them. It’s not far off as simple as it can get now.

How it works:

These scripts let us use voice commands to trigger EventGhost commands. When we say “Room on” the keyboard shortcut is sent to EventGhost which in turn sends the series of IR codes to make the TV and stereo turn to the correct channel.

Additionally, we use the command “Video Player”, the script changes modes so that instead of sending keyboard shortcuts to navigate around Windows Media Center, it starts sending IR signals based on our commands, via EventGhost. When we return back to the “Media Center”, the original commands are used.

This could easily be expanded to allow for multiple external devices. It is written in autohotkey, so it’s about as simple as coding can get if you want to tinker around yourself. You will just need to make another componentmode for each device you want to control, and add to your EventGhost tree. I will update the coding myself if there is enough demand or my needs change.

Hardware:

USB-UIRT: This device is what makes it possible to use voice commands to control our AV gear. It sends IR signals to our AV components so that the component will do what we want. With the right scripting, this device can control just about everything in our TV room. The USB-UIRT is $50 plus shipping and is available from the USB-UIRT Website. I am very excited by the things this device makes possible, both currently and into the future. This needs to be placed in your room so it has clear sight of your devices. In my case, this means having it at the back of the room.

Software:

Voice Control.zip: This file contains all of my speech macros and scripts that make the system work. These scripts have been considerably updated to allow for these extra functions, but can still be used if limited functionality is desired while training takes place.

Eventghost: This automation software lets us control the USB-UIRT based on the voice commands we give. I have included my EventGhost Tree in Voice Control.zip so that all you need to do is teach Eventghost what IR commands to use.

Installation:

There are various components that need to be installed for all of this to work correctly. It follows on from my earlier article on How to: Voice control Windows Media Center, which goes into detail on how to install the voice recognition control script, as well as the speech macros. Please refer to that article for assistance on how to install the various components.

Unzip Voice Control.zip into your Speech Macros folder within your Documents folder.

There are only two new components in Voice Control.zip, and the first is the EventGhost tree, and I will show you how to load it and configure it for your needs. There is no way to bypass the training as each device uses different commands, but luckily it is fairly straight forward. The second component is Video Player WSR Macro which will need to be installed if you want to operate any external AV component, i.e Video Player.

Install EventGhost: The scripts are designed to launch EventGhost from it’s default location. If you change the location, you will need to update a whole bunch of the macros and scripts, though it is not difficult.

1. Click File > Open
2. Navigate to your speech Macros folder
3. Select  “My Gadget – USBUIRT Eventghost Tree.xml”
4. Click Open

On the left of the screen, we can see a log of what triggers and actions have been acted on by EventGhost. On the right side is a list of all the macros I have setup for my system.

The macro title is the same as what the macro does. Below that is the trigger event. In all cases, these are currently keyboard shortcuts i.e. how the script calls each action to be performed. Normally, the triggers will be able to be left as is, but if you choose to change the trigger keyboard shortcuts, you will also need to change the scripts.

Below that is the transmitted IR code, and these are the codes we need to change to match your system. There are quite a few things you are going to need to change, but most are simple. It is worth saving frequently while working through this. I frequently got the “not responding” warning, and it usually rectified itself given enough time, but sometimes it would crash. I haven’t had the same crashing when running it.

We will start off with one of the easy ones. Right click on the command USB-UIRT: Pause Video and select configure.

Click on Learn an IR Code…

Follow the instructions on screen.

In this example, press the pause button your video players remote control unit.

Once a valid signal has been taken, the screen will return to Action Item Settings.

You can test the code to see if it performs the same command you trained it with.

Repeat the training for all the other commands.

There are a few special commands which perform more than one action. These turn the TV on and change video inputs etc. You will need to figure out what buttons you press on your remote and replicate the procedure in EventGhost. You may need to put in some delays as I have.

Once you have set it up, you won’t need to change it until you buy another TV or other AV component. Ensure you save the tree with your own filename to ensure future Voice Control.zip files don’t overwrite your altered file.

Honourable Mention: The USBIRToy may soon be a suitable device to use for this task. It is much cheaper, but currently lacks the power required to get results we want.

Conclusion:

I am very happy with the results this is getting for me. I have found the USB-UIRT to be very reliable. This is a key feature that makes voice control truly valuable. By combining my voice with this device, the whole lounge room is controlled with just one button.

I hope you have enjoyed reading this article and found it useful. Please stick around and check out some of my other articles at Inspect My Gadget.

The day Microsoft Kinect was launched in Australia, I saw the promotional video showing people waving their arms around to navigate through their media centre. It seemed to me that this would be a fairly unreliable and exhausting way to control anything, apart from games specifically designed for the technology. I was way too lazy to consider using this technology into the future.

I concluded that voice is the simplest way to control anything, and that it always will be. This led me to start playing around with voice control again. I ran through the voice tutorials and was able to get the computer to understand my voice some of the time. It did stuff up on me a whole lot, but it was clearly much more reliable than software I had used in the past.

Now around 6 months on, I have written an AutoHotkey script and a WSR macro that interact with Windows Media Center and Windows Speech Recognition software, allowing my media centre to be controlled completely by voice. This is a practical use for voice control. I can navigate faster with my voice than I can with a remote control. Instead of needing to know which button to press on my remote (or remotes), I simply speak my mind. I no longer use a remote at all. This is something I have wanted for a long time and I am excited about this outcome.

This system far exceeds any other voice control setup on the market today in terms of reliability and practicality. Most of the problems as to why systems haven’t worked in the past has not been because the software was inadequate for the task, (the software has worked fine for many years). Most of the problems are environmental, and my solution tackles these environmental issues. Rather than trying to make technology that works in our environment, my solution changes the environment to enable the technology to work. I believe it is inevitable that all future voice control systems will need to take this approach for the system to work.

This article will give you all the information you need to control your Windows Media Center home theatre PC with your voice. I will provide the easy to edit scripts and show you how to install them on your PC. I will also explain what works and what doesn’t, as well as explaining why previous attempts have not been successful. The more I explain how it all works, the easier it will be for you to set it up and get it working reliably. This will not be as easy as installing the software and having the results you want right away. You will need to train it to recognise your voice, and you will need to learn the correct commands to make. A solution that can understand the whole English language is a long way off. It is much more difficult to synthesize human understanding than it is for a computer to understand dictation. That is why we need to have set commands.

There is a video of my home theatre PC running this system after the jump.

What you need: The costs

• A Windows 7 PC running Windows Media Center 7
• A decent microphone. I have been using this one from Logitech which retails for $50, though it is not hard to find cheaper. This microphone picks me up from anywhere in the room and has noise cancelling features. I plan on putting in boundary microphones in the future.

How it works:

This system uses Windows Speech Recognition(WSR) to understand the commands we say. This is free software that is built into every Windows 7 PC. WSR Macros runs in parallel with WSR to perform actions based on what we say. I used this to create voice tags which link in with keyboard shortcuts. i.e. Saying “Stop TV” will send the keystroke Ctrl+s. Because keyboard shortcuts are being used, the xml files could easily be altered to work with XBMC or Media Portal.

The second component is what makes my system work. The AutoHotKey script waits for a predefined button press (0 or [). When that button is pressed, the volume of the media drops to a level that WSR will not pick up enough sound to misinterpret as a command. It then opens up communication to WSR welcoming our commands as we talk at a natural volume.

When we have finished saying our commands, we can either say “Play TV” or press the button again. This will turn off WSR, put the volume back to a suitable listening level and then resume playback of our media.

Using this method, we don't care how loud the volume is when the media is playing. It makes no difference if the stereo is on full blast because the trigger button will drop the level to a volume that we can talk comfortably to the system. I have been unable to find any products or patents that do this, and it is a necessary step for voice control to work. The alternative is to yell over the sound coming out the speakers, and at the same time hoping that WSR doesn't pick up music as commands.

Windows Media Center has voice control built in, but it suffers the same problems as all the other products on the market. The volume needs to be impractically low for it to work. These built in commands do not clash with the commands built into my system. They work in conjunction with each other, and they only work when a trigger has been pressed.

The software:

All of the software is free.

Please don't be put off by the list of programs below. Each of them are necessary for the system to work, and they are all fairly straightforward to setup. The format they are in allows you to easily make any changes to the voice tags. The system is very open so you can use it as you want.

• Windows Speech Recognition: This software is available from the Speech Recognition Applet within your Control Panel. I feel it has never been given the props it deserves. I can't ask for much more than 100% accuracy when using this system with a headset. It does have a requirement that you use the English (US) language, so if your system is currently running a different language, you will need to change it in the Regional and Language Applet of the Control Panel.
• WSR Macros: This program works with WSR. It lets us install xml scripts which define the commands the computer will listen for. WSR Macros can be downloaded for free from Microsoft.
• AutoHotkey: This is not required, but it is what I wrote the script in. If you want to make changes to the script, you will need this program. It is available from Autohotkey.com.
• The following programs and scripts are included in Voice Control.zip file.
  • Nircmd.exe: It is used by the script to change the system volume. It is truly a fantastic piece of freeware.
  • Speech Recognition Control.exe & Speech Recognition Control - No Eventghost.exe: This is a compiled version of Speech Recognition Control.ahk. This manages the trigger function and volume changes. Use No Eventghost if you do not yet have eventghost installed.
  • Media Center.xml: This script contains the majority of the commands I have setup for WSR Macros.
  • Sydney TV Channels.xml: This is a sample script which looks after TV channel control.

Installation:

To launch Windows Speech Recognition, go into your Control Panel and launch the Speech Recognition Applet. There is not much to setup in this software. Within the options, you will probably want to tick the setting to load it at startup. I also turned off audible feedback and the dictation scratchpad.

Download and install WSR Macros. You will need to have this loading at startup. The easiest way to do this is to make a shortcut to it in the Startup folder of your start menu. At the same time, unzip the zip file to the Speech Macros folder within your Documents folder. This folder will automatically be created when WSR Macros is installed.

The options for both WSR and WSR Macros can be found in your task tray near your clock.

Click on New Speech Macro.

Select Advanced

Copy and paste the entire Media Center.xml into the text box. Click Next.

You can call the file anything you want, but I call mine Media Center.WSRMac.

Ensure you digitally sign the file. This will ensure the script is allowed to run on your computer. This has advantages later on also. The alternative to digitally signing your files is to drop the security level down. I would recommend against reducing your security.

Repeat the steps above for the Sydney TV Channels.xml file. You will probably want to change the xml file to suit your needs. The code is as follows.

<command>
<listenFor>ABC</listenFor>
<listenFor>Channel 2</listenFor>
<sendKeys>2</sendKeys>
<sendKeys>\</sendKeys>
</command>

The <listenFor> command determines what phrase you say to go to the particular channel. It is best to make it 3 or more syllables i.e. instead of saying “GO”, say “channel go”. You can have as many phrases for each channel as you want.

The <sendKeys> command determines the keyboard button to press. i.e. This example presses 2 on the keyboard which will go to channel 2.

The <sendKeys>\</sendKeys> is necessary as it turns off speech recognition and turns the volume back up to listening volume.

If you are willing, please send me your altered TV Channels.xml files so I can share them among readers to save them from requiring to go through this step.

Finally, create a shortcut in the Startup folder of your Start menu to Speech Recognition Control.exe.

If you have installed the system correctly, after you reboot, you should see a green H icon, WSR icon and WSR Macro icon in your system tray. You are now ready to test it out. The trigger button is either “[” or “0” as determined by Speech Recognition Control.exe. In effect, you should be able to press the 0 button on your keyboard and the system will be triggered. In most cases the 0 button of your remote control will also work.

Training:

Training is an essential part of getting this to work. Without going through the training process, this is unlikely to work for you. The process is simple, but it will take each member of your family a bit of time. Each training session takes around 10 minutes.

I needed to make the system understand my Australian accent so I had to be very patient with it. I ran through the training session 3 times in the first week. I then spent a lot of time using the system to have it understand me well. It took around 3 weeks before it really got a hold of my voice. Much of the problems were related to me saying commands that didn't exist yet, but you should not have the same problem if you use the “What can I say sheet”. I am now 6 months into this project and it understands me around 95% of the time (given the right environment). I hope the rest will be solved by using better equipment.

Open up the Speech Recognition applet from the Control Panel. Click on “Train your computer to better understand you”.

Follow the prompts. You will see the screen to your right. Speak the text in the box. Not only will the tutorial learn your voice very effectively, you will learn the many features of Windows Speech Recognition. It is really quite amazing what the system is capable of.

Once the computer understands the line you have spoken, it will progress automatically. I found that it did not progress each time. I would wait 2 seconds and then repeat the line. This felt like the system wanted me to say it again to get another sample of my voice. Some pages I needed to repeat up to 4 times.

It is worth doing this training session a few times over the following days or weeks. Putting in the time early on will save frustration later on.

Once training has taken place, my understanding is that the system will continue to better understand you over time. That is how it has been for me. When the computer does understand you, you are able to transfer your voice profile from computer to computer, so you will only need to go through it once.

Troubleshooting and Tips:

• Many of the problems are likely to come from inadequate training. If you haven't trained it, you may have trouble seeing the system work effectively.
• When editing the xml files, alter the xml file rather than the macro. Ensure you delete unnecessary macros so that any two macros don't conflict.
• Ensure the correct microphone is selected. Using the “Setup your microphone” option within WSR is a good place to start.
• This system uses keyboard shortcuts, so if you are press either [, ], \, 0, * or -, the function will occur rather than the character appearing on the screen. These buttons are rarely used in a media centre setup. A dedicated machine is recommended to avoid this problem. The keys can be changed in Speech Recognition Control.ahk if necessary.
• A reboot is often a sure fire way of getting it going again. I do this weekly, but I needed to do it more frequently when I was going through the training.

When it will work:

• It will work where there is a quiet environment without much background noise.
• It will work if you train it adequately, and continue to improve the more you use it.
• If you live alone, this is likely to work fantastically well for you.
• If you are a quiet and patient person.
• When everyone in the household uses it.
• It will work exceptionally well in a sound proofed room.

When it will not work:

• If there is any background noise i.e. all the noise we have always taken for granted.
  • If the shopping is being put away
  • If a neighbour is mowing their lawn
  • If kitchen appliances are running near your TV room, i.e. dishwasher
  • If the rain is loud on the roof
  • If someone is eating chips in the TV room
• If you have young kids, the technology is unlikely to work for them or around them.
• When inadequate training has taken place.
• If you yell at it – a natural tone works best. If it isn’t working, there is likely another problem.
• In a corporate environment. Each person would need their own office which would be a good outcome, but also an unrealistic one.
• If your system is busy with other tasks and resources are drained. i.e. My system struggles a little when recording 4 channels at once.

Resolving the problems:

Sound proofing the room is a solid way of fixing some of the problems, with the added benefit that sound won’t escape from the room. Saying this, it won’t be a practical option for many people.

Some of the problems can be controlled somewhat by isolating the rooms which are going to use this technology. We can put noise gates and effects on the intercepted voice, but this is only going to go so far. Sound can only be altered so much, and the human voice uses a huge frequency range, so to cut out any frequencies will affect the incoming signal detrimentally. No matter how long we wait into the future, technology will have very little impact in resolving the majority of these issues.

As I said earlier, we need to create an environment that allows the system to operate. This is likely to impact on the ways that we want to use it. Some considerations will need to be made by people in your household for voice control to work effectively in your home. The majority of the problems are cultural and can be resolved by changing how and when we do things. It will be up to us individually to adapt to the technology to give it every opportunity to work. I believe that using the technology (and making minor alterations in the way we do things and in our homes to accommodate it) will result in very positive outcomes for everyone who grabs it with two hands and runs with it. Time will tell…

This system is much more complicated than simply installing software and watching it do it’s thing. As people are using the system and someone talks to them while the microphone is open, the system will fail. Naturally a little anger may go towards that person. The same will occur as they are using the system towards you. The result could be that we give up on using the system altogether, or we all take a bit of extra time to think before we talk so as to be sure that the system isn’t in use. The only technology I can think that may help this is to install a light that goes on when the microphone is open (On Air). But as far as I can think, that is as close as technology can get to fixing such problems.

Why use voice?:

Keyboards and mice have been necessary tools to help us communicate with computers over the last 50 years. They were created because there was no way to control computers by voice at the time. Now that computers have got to such speeds that enables voice control to work, we can start commanding a computer using our natural form of communication, speech. In time, we will be able to control all electrical devices in our home in much more simple ways.

Each voice tag can perform any task or tasks we want. The result is that we can say one word to set off a series of tasks automatically. A good example is changing volume. If we want to change the volume from 40% to 20%, using a traditional remote, we would need to press the volume down button 20 times. With voice, we can go directly to the volume we want.

Anything a computer can control can be triggered by a voice tag. This has great potential in home automation, and controlling anything electronic around the house. This is better than the current home automation where the switches are relocated to a single panel on a wall. Other tasks can be automated without any human input. This is the start of a fully encompassing system which will make our lives easier.

Speech Recognition vs Voice Control:

Voice control and speech recognition are very different things. Speech recognition is when we expect a computer to recognise anything we say, and then have the computer convert it to text. This is very complicated because our language has many thousands of words and even more combinations of words. Everyone’s voice is different and accents and lisps have a huge impact on what the computer hears. I am yet to see a free program that does this reliably.

Voice control is based upon a set of various predefined commands, where the computer decides which command it should perform based on what it hears us say. This narrows down what the computer expects to hear from us down to a few hundred commands. Because of this, voice control is much simpler to get working, and the results are much more reliable.

How and why my system is different to others:

The main difference between my system and others is the volume drop that occurs before we give commands. This is what makes it all possible and practical. Without this functionality, it will never work in rooms we listen to our media in. It is possible in quieter rooms to have the computer respond to a keyword to open up listening for commands, but as this system will already be in place, I will probably retain it throughout the house as this system develops.

This same volume drop allows for the use of a microphone that is free standing. We don’t need to use a headset for the system to work. This keeps our hands free, which is pretty much the point of using voice in the first place.

It would be very easy to have the computer tell me what it is doing each time I say a command, as most other commercial packages do. But I don’t want a relationship with my computer. I don’t want it to take 5 seconds to tell me it is going to do something I don’t want. When I give a command, I want the computer to perform that command instantly without whingeing. That is why I have not added this feature.

It would be very easy to add in commands for playing genres or artists. The code already exists here (look for Windows Media Player), but yet again it complicates the list of words by adding in thousands of extra commands the computer needs to choose between. The script would need to be altered slightly so it does not clash with my commands. For these reasons I chose to take it out of this script. It will be easy to add this functionality later, but the way I use the system, I don’t see much benefit to it apart from it being a neat trick. (Update: The included Advanced commands script will add in this functionality. I have removed some of the ambiguity requests. It seems to work quite well for me now.)

I have made the commands a little longer than what some other systems use. This helps the software better understand what it is meant to do. i.e. There is not a big difference between the sound of the words play or replay. I have extended them to be Instant Replay and Play TV, which are both very unique sounding commands. This makes the system a whole lot more reliable. Once I have installed adequate sound equipment in my house, it may be possible for the computer to differentiate between the shorter versions, in which case I will change the script to respond to those words. In the meantime our voice profile is learning our voices to give much more reliable responses into the future. (Update: The new script includes both the longer and shorter commands. The longer commands are more reliable, but the shorter commands do work when the computer understands them.)

Resources:

Windows Media Center keyboard shortcuts – Link to Microsoft
WSR Macro Library and Samples – Link to MSDN, Microsoft

Conclusion:

This system works for me exactly as I have explained in this article. Hundreds and hundreds of hours have gone into these scripts and macros through testing and tweaking. I am hopeful this will work really nicely for you. The format it is in opens doors for easy expandability for future projects. There are many commands which stretch well outside of Windows Media Centers’ normal capabilities. Please keep coming back to Inspect My Gadget to see where this system leads me. There are plenty more projects in the pipeline, and voice control allows what was once my imagination to become a reality.

Remember, most of the problems will be able to be resolved by changing your environment or training the system more. There is a good chance I will delete comments complaining that the software doesn’t work for the first few weeks as it is not helpful to anyone. It took months to learn how to type, and this requires the same effort. If you believe it doesn’t work, I think it is likely you will never have voice control in your home.

After a weekend of research and testing, I finally came up with the 50 lines of script that complete the media centres autonomy. This has effectively eliminated the need for me to go into the backend of the media centre at all. All the data is moved automatically to the correct locations, making it unnecessary to control the system with anything beyond a remote control.

I needed the script to distinguish what type of recording had taken place, whether it be a TV episode, a special or a movie. I then needed to move the various types of video to different locations and change the filename of the movies so that Media Center Master could identify the recording. It would have been nice to use meta data as identifiers of the shows, but I found that data to be very unreliable.

I run the script on a schedule through Windows Task Scheduler at 5am each morning, but it can also be launched on demand.

Because different channels show different information on the TV guide, it is impossible to make a script that will work in every instance. It manages to get the majority of moves right. Generally, it is fine to watch the occasional TV episode from the movie library. Once it is watched, deleting the file will resolve these errors. Otherwise a manual move will be required.

It is likely you will need to make minor alterations to the batch file yourself. I have my recorded TV located at D:\Recorded TV, and my movies at E:\Movies. If your files are located in different locations, you will need to make alterations. It is configured to only work with files in the dvr-ms format, though it would be very easy to change the script to move around .wtv files.

The way the script works is to break up the filename into various components.

If the filename has an Sp– at the start of it, I know it is a special so it is moved to D:\RecordedTV\Specials.
If the filename has a “)” followed by text or “M–” at the start, I know it is a movie so I alter the name and copy it to the E:\Temp. Once copied, I move the files to E:\Movies and make individual folders for each movie. The individual movies get copied into their own directory.
Any other files get put in their own directory in Recorded TV based on the title of the file.

You can download the script here (right click, save target as). It is in txt format so that you can’t inadvertently run it. If you don’t know how to convert the file to a batch file without help, please ignore this article to reduce the risk of something going wrong. Understanding how to write batch files is a very useful skill so it is worth learning, just don’t use this script as your first script. It’s quite complicated as far as batch scripts go.

Important: While it is unlikely you will lose files by running this script, it is important you understand what is going on with it. If you run it on your current media library, it will perform each task and the results may not be what you wanted. This script was written based on a Sydney TV guide. Different countries are bound to have various different identifiers. Treat this script as examples of how to make your own script.

This script is based on file2folder.bat which now has a GUI to put in the settings. These tools may also be helpful in creating your automated file management.

Remote potato turns your media centre into a media server and a web server. This lets us access our media centre from anywhere. For my own amusement, I scheduled my weeks viewing from Lady Elliot Island. This island is 80km’s off the coast of Australia, and is the most remote place I have ever been. Situated in the Great Barrier Reef, it is only accessible by plane. The mainland is not visible in any direction from the island. The software worked fine. When I returned home, all the shows I had scheduled were on my computer waiting for me to view them.

Remote Potato can be viewed with the stunning Silverlight interface or a very reasonable html interface. This is the first time I have noticeably seen Microsoft’s Silverlight in use and it is a real treat. It will also detect various mobile phone types and deliver an appropriate webpage to your phone. This is excellent if you want to schedule your shows while you are out and about.

Remote Potato has an excellent TV guide which is very quick and easy to navigate through. Simply find the show you want to record and choose if you want to record the single episode/movie, or the series. If you go into the movie section, it will list all the movies currently in the guide. This makes it possible to very quickly select what movies you want to record. Channel logos can be added by using My Channel Logos.

The Recorded TV, Music and Picture sections let you view the media on your computer from anywhere. You will need a very adequate internet connection at both ends to stream video, but it is all built into Remote Potato. This will work very well in years to come as our internet connections improve.

Remote Potato is under very active development now and there are new features being added all the time. The installation is straightforward, though there is plenty of support in the forums if you get into trouble. You will probably need to setup port forwarding and create an account with Dyndns.org so that you can access your media centre using the same address each time.

For more detailed setup instructions on setting up Remote Potato, please visit DeanHatesCoffee.com as he has an excellent write up on it.

Remote Potato is available for free (donations welcomed) from Fatattitude.

There are a couple of ways to restore factory settings. The most popular method requires you to hold down various buttons for set durations, resulting in a frustrating finger tangle. You will need to look up your manual for the specific combination your device uses.

Luckily, there is an easier way that should work for everyone!

Windows Mobile devices normally come with a program called Clear Storage. This program is used to restore your factory settings without the need to use complex button combinations. It is found in the Settings > System tab.

All you need to do is enter 1234 and press YES. This is a very easy way to restore factory settings.

The drawback with restoring factory settings is that all the data and programs on the device will be wiped, including ringtones and software you may have purchased. ActiveSync or WMDC will normally contain the installers for any 3^rd party programs that are installed on the device, and data such as mail, contacts and calendar can be synced up to Outlook. This makes restoration a quick process. It’s hardly worth fault finding when it is this simple.

I thought it would be worthwhile to make a very simple guide which you can use to do some of your own fault finding. Why not see if the problem is something you can fix yourself quickly.

This may save you a call to the help desk, or at the very least, assist the help desk staff to support you in a more efficient way.

This guide is aimed at people who turn on their computer in the morning and expect everything to work as it did the day before, and every other day before that. If the computer is not working as it normally does, this guide will hopefully get you up and running. I have tried to make this guide as non technical as possible.

Topics covered in this article include:

• Unable to log in
• Unable to access the Internet and Email
• Unable to print
• Mouse and/or keyboard not working
• Turning on your computer to find a blank screen
• Calling the Help desk

Each of the above topics will only take a minute or two to check. This is surely much quicker than spending 5 minutes to the help desk, and even longer if you need to wait for a technician to come out.

Unable to login to your computer:

The most common reason why a computer won’t login is an incorrect password or username. Check that your username hasn’t been changed from its default (your normal username) to another staff members username. If this is correct, then move onto the password.

Check that your caps lock is not on, and that your shift key is not stuck down. You can test your password out in the username box. This way you can ensure that when you type it, and you see the dots replacing characters, the correct information is going into the box.

If you are sure that your username and password are correct, the next step is to ensure you have a working network connection. Most companies keep all the usernames and passwords on a central database. If your computer can’t access the network, it has no way to authenticate itself with the database, and it won’t be able to let you login. 

The easiest way to confirm whether or not you have a network connection, is to look at the back of your computer. The network port, pictured on the right (probably the only port with lights) should have a cable going into it, and the lights should be flashing. If the lights are flashing, you will need to ring the help desk for them to look at your login.

If the lights aren’t flashing, check that the network cable is securely in place at both the wall and computer ends. Ensure you apply pressure to the connection rather than simply looking at it. Often cables can be slightly disconnected.

If you are unable to get the lights flashing, check if other staff around you are able to login, and if they can’t, check with them to see if the help desk has been informed. If the help desk hasn’t been informed, give them a call. This will let the help desk focus on the problem at hand, rather than answering more calls reporting the same issue.

Unable to access the Internet or receive Email:

The most likely cause for this is that your network connection is currently unavailable. If you know that other staff members near you are on the same network as you, check with one of them to see if they are able to receive email or access the Internet. A wireless network may be working, while a wired network is not, and vice versa.

If they aren’t able to get on the network, ensure the help desk is aware that the network is down in your area, either by asking staff if the help desk has been phoned already (preferable), or by ringing the help desk yourself.

If they are able to access the network, you have narrowed the problem down to being your computer only. The next step is to check that your network cable is plugged in correctly. This may have been knocked out by a cleaner dancing away whilst vacuuming.

Network cables go from the wall (normally) to the back of your computer. Check on the back of your computer to see if the cable is plugged in. Network ports have lights on them. If the lights are flashing, you know that the cable is connected properly. If there are no lights, push the cable in at both the computer and wall, to ensure a secure connection.

If the lights come on during this check, your network may well have come back up for you. Try your Internet and Email again to see if it working. If you are unable to get lights, or you have had lights flashing since your check, there is not much more you can do but call the help desk. The information you have gathered will surely speed up the technician in finding a solution for you.

Let the help desk know…

1. When the problem started to occur.
2. If colleagues are able to connect to the Internet.
3. If there are lights flashing on the network port of your computer.
4. If you are using a wireless or cabled network.
5. If you are sure the cables are plugged in securely.

Unable to print:

There are a few quick checks you can do to find out why you are unable to print. These tips are mostly for networked printers. Local printers often don’t have displays, so they are harder to fault find.

First off, check that you are able to access your Internet or Email. The problem may be bigger than simply being unable to print. If you are able to get the Internet, read on. Otherwise scroll up for tips on how to check your network.

Check to see if the printer is turned on, or if there are any error messages on the printers display. There are a number of messages that can hold up printing. Incorrect paper size, paper jams, no paper or the requirement of a PIN can all stop the printer. Try to clear these messages by following the prompts.

If the error message is “Offline”, check that the network cable is securely plugged into both the wall and the printer. 

Go into the Control Panel on your computer and open up Printers and Faxes. Under the printer you are trying to print to, check to see if the printer says ready or offline. This is useful information for the help desk.

You can also double click on the printer, so you can see the print queue. You will be able to see what print jobs are waiting to be printed, and possibly, who has printed them. It may be that the person who is first in the queue has disconnected their computer before their print job was completed. If you can track this person down, they can clear the blocked job out of the queue.

Also ask a colleague if they are able to print to the same printer. If they can print, you can assume that there is something wrong with your setup. If they can’t print, you can assume that there is a problem with the wider network or the printer itself.

A printer is often fixed by turning it off, waiting a few seconds and turning it back on. This will clear a lot of errors and allow the printer to reconfigure itself with the network. 

You may have successfully fixed it following these steps, as a loose cable is often the cause. If not ring the help desk and inform them of your findings.

1. Does your computer reporting the printer to be offline or ready?
2. Are there any error messages?
3. Can others print to the printer?
4. Does the printer report as being offline?
5. Is the network cable secure?

All this information will greatly speed up the fix for the help desk or technician.

Mouse or Keyboard not working:

Corded mice and corded keyboards are very reliable. Ensure that the cables are plugged into the computer and that the cables are not damaged. If you are getting a little bit of movement with your mouse, ensure that under the mouse is clean and not clogged up with dust or a hair. The same goes for keyboards. If some keys work but not others, it is most likely that there is some dirt or other objects under the keys. Be warned, cleaning out a keyboard is not an easy task.

Cordless mice often show up in work requests in my workplace. The most likely and frequent cause is that the batteries are dead. Try replacing them to see if that fixes the problem.

The next step is to ensure they are “connected”. Click the connect button on the receiver and then on the mouse or keyboard.

If you are not up and running with these tips, give the help desk a call. Let the help desk know if there are any lights, under or on the mouse. Also tell them the checks you have already done.

1. Is it a corded or cordless mouse?
2. Are there lights on the mouse?
3. Have you tried changing batteries?
4. Have you tried to “connect” your mouse or keyboard to the receiver?
5. Are you getting any movement or key presses?

There are some really odd problems that can effect the keyboard and mouse, and how they respond. It is sometimes nothing to do with the mouse or keyboard at all. They are just how the problem shows itself. This i something the help desk can help you with.

Turning on the computer to find a blank screen:

The most common cause for this is loose cables. Ensure the computer is turned on. Check that there are active lights on the computer itself. Also, check to see if there are any active lights on the monitor.

Physically check that the video cable (usually blue headed) is firmly in place at both the monitor and computer. Apply pressure to it. as well as this, ensure that power cords are securely plugged in.

If you are using a laptop, and you are trying to view the picture on an external monitor, try pressing the Fn+f? combination. This will cycle the output of the laptop from the internal display to the various external displays.

These tips will fix most of the problems associated with a blank display. If they have not fixed it, give the help desk a call. Let them know…

1. Are there any lights on the monitor?
2. Are all the cables securely connected?
3. Is your computer a laptop or desktop computer?
4. When did the problem start occurring?

Calling the help desk

The help desk wants to fix your problem as quickly as possible. The help desk staff are likely to want to fix your problem over the phone if they can, as they will get the job ticked off next to their name.

The technicians on site will also want to fix the job as quickly as possible so that they can get back to the office to watch some more YouTube.

It is important to have as much information as possible before ringing the help desk, no matter what the problem is. A common example I see is that “an error has occurred”. There are thousands of error messages in computing. The information that will be helpful to the help desk is what the error code is, and what program it happened in. This will surely speed up the technician in finding a solution to your problem.

It is important to give the help desk the most accurate information you can. Telling them incorrect information will often result in the help desk operator being unable to help you, and when the job is logged for a technician to come out, they are likely to try fixing the problem based on what you have told them. Incorrect information will often send the technician down the wrong path, and take much longer to fix.

It is OK to say “I don’t know”, as this will not plant false ideas in the technicians head as they think through a few possible solutions before they visit you.

Technicians don’t normally mind if the problem is caused by something the user shouldn’t be doing. Being open and honest is the best way to have your back in working order.

Conclusion:

I hope this article has helped to get you back on track. One thing is for sure, the help desk staff will appreciate the information you have tracked down for them.

Please stick around and check out some other articles at Inspect My Gadget.

Wouldn’t it be nice if they were able to bring all their email accounts together into the one place, but still have control of them individually. This is quite possible with Exchange, and it works fantastically well.

I love having access to an Exchange server. It beats other mail protocols hands down for accessibility and control. Your mail can be accessed through a web front-end, or a full blown desktop client in the form of Outlook. Once you have your mail you can send off messages to and from a supported phone with Push technology. There is not much you can’t do with it.

I have four email accounts that each go into my Exchange account. This means that I am able to access each and every email, from any of the accounts, through my email client, my phone, or through a web interface.

This article will show you how to set this up for yourself. It is really very simple to set up, and the time saved from accessing various account individually will be significant. There will be much less email clutter to tidy up as well. There will only be one Inbox that you need to control and monitor.

There is only one minor drawback that I have come across with this setup. If you want to receive email from multiple accounts on your phone, or the web interface, you will need to leave a computer on to receive the mail from the various accounts. This computer will bring the mail from the various accounts into the one location. You may be able to scam such features from your Exchange Administrator if you are very lucky.

This is not an issue if you only access your mail from the one computer.

Setting up the multiple accounts:

This configuration works in both Microsoft Outlook 2003 and 2007, though it may work in other email clients. This article is written specifically for Microsoft Outlook 2007. Setting this up between the two clients is slightly different, but it is very easy so I am sure you will be able to follow this if you are using Microsoft Outlook 2003.

The first step is to make sure that your main account is an Exchange server account. This is the account/mailbox that all the other mail will be viewable from as we add them.

The next step is to create your additional accounts. We will run through this quickly. Ideally, these additional accounts will be POP3, or HTTP protocols. It is not possible to access multiple Exchange accounts from the one Exchange account. To do that you will need to utilise the “Delegate” features.

Follow these steps:

Click “Tools”
Click “Account Settings”
Click “New”
Follow the wizard

The final step is to ensure the new mail will go into your Exchange mailbox, rather than a new set of Personal Folders. It will probably do this by default.

Click “Change Folder”

Here you can create a folder specifically for your new email account, or you can send the mail directly to the Inbox.

If you want to send mail from multiple computers, and you decide to setup multiple accounts on each computer, you should decide which computer will act as the server. If you receive mail from POP3 accounts on multiple computers, you may find that you end up with multiple copies of the same email message.

You can disable receiving mail from certain accounts, within Outlook. Open the Tools Menu > Send/Receive > Send/Receive Settings. You can then remove the accounts you don’t want to receive mail from out of the default send/receive group.

Sending email:

When sending a new email message, you are able to select which account the mail is sent from. Simply write your email and click on the “Accounts” button. You will then be able to pick which account the message is sent from. It is very quick and simple.

Replying and Forwarding email:

If you use this Exchange setup, it will work well for you when replying and forwarding email. The account that your email will be sent from, will default to the account you received the email on.

You can easily change which account you send the message from by clicking on the “Accounts” button as shown above. You then see a simple pull down menu with all the available accounts which you can choose between.

If you are not on the computer setup as above, you can create the accounts you want to send the mail from, or send mail from your Exchange account. If you are concerned about making your private email address public, consider one of the first options instead.

Filtering mail into individual folders:

If you want to keep your emails from the various accounts separate, you are able to create a folder for each account, and then use rules or the “Change Folder” option in “Account Settings”, to send mail as it is received into their corresponding folder.

If you want your sent email to be split up according to the account they were sent from, create a folder within “Sent Items” for each account. You can then create a rules to filter your sent emails into each of these folders as each email is sent.

I don’t bother with this step as it would force me to look in multiple folders to access my mail. If you do want to use separate folders for each account, it may be worth setting up your rules so that they send the messages into their folder only once the email has been read.

Signatures:

It is possible to setup a different email signature for each account you send your mail from. Once this is setup in Outlook, your signature will change automatically as you change your account. This works really well if you have both your work email and your personal email working together in the same Exchange account.

To set this up, follow these steps:

Click “Tools”
Click “Options”
Click “Mail Format”

Create a signature for each account, or however many signatures you want. Then select each account and associate it with a signature.

Once you click “OK”, your signatures will follow you around as if you were using multiple email clients.

Conclusion:

Outlook was designed for this functionality. There is nothing magical about this configuration, we are just making the most out of Exchange and Outlook.

I hope you have enjoyed this article and found it useful. Please stick around and check out some other articles at Inspect My Gadget.

Vista task scheduler is a very powerful tool. We can set it up to run programs only if the computer is idle. This serves two purposes. The backups will be made automatically and the backups will not interfere with your normal usage.

A huge added bonus is that we can use any backup program we like. We are not limited to backup programs that have scheduling built in. All we need is a backup program that can start backing up as soon as it is launched, which just about all of them can do.

This article is specifically for Windows Vista. XP’s scheduled tasks does not have the idle features built in, though it may be able to be achieved with a third party program.

Setup your backup/sync program:

The first step is to set up your backup program so that it can be launched from a shortcut or the command line. Launching it should launch the sync or backup.

You will need to look up these instructions for your individual program to figure out how to make this happen. The information should be readily available for any backup utility that is well known. What good is a sync or backup program that is too complicated to use?

Setting up Task Scheduler:

Open “Task Scheduler” (inside accessories of the start menu)
Click “Create New Task” (not basic)
Give it a name “Backup or Sync”
Go to the “Triggers” tab
Click “New” (defaults to schedule)
Enter the frequency and time you want your backup/sync to occur(I recommend to do it hourly as it will not run if you are by your computer)
Click “OK”
Go to the “Actions” tab
Click “New” (defaults to run program)
Browse for your program and put in the necessary arguments; E.g. -run
Click “OK”
Go to the “Conditions” tab
Here, define how long you want the computer to be idle before activating the backup/sync.
Click “OK”

You have now configured all the basics. There are many other options you can change to suit your needs, but they go beyond what is required to sync or backup.

Conclusion:

As you can see, this is very easy to setup. Gone are the days of manually starting your backups or syncing. When your hard drive crashes, you can be calm, knowing that your important information is tucked away somewhere safe.

I hope you have enjoyed this article and found it useful. For more effort saving types check out some other articles at Inspect My Gadget.