Announcer in C#.NET using Microsoft Agent

• Download demo project - 28.9 Kb

Picture 1. I'm genie

Picture 2. I'm Merlin

Picture 3. I'm Peedy

Picture 4. I'm Robby

Overview

Microsoft® Agent is a software technology that enables an enriched form of user interaction that can make using and learning to use a computer, easier and more natural. Microsoft® Agent is a set of programmable software services that supports the presentation of interactive animated characters within the Microsoft Windows® interface I'm using Microsoft® Agent to develop this announcer. I have used four type of announcers here. They are Genie, Merlin, Peedy and Robby . More.. http://www.microsoft.com/msagent/default.asp.

This class demonstrates the use of following namespaces.

• using System.Runtime.InteropServices
• using System.Reflection
• AgentServerObjects
• AgentObjects

Things required, where to get and how to install

1. You have to add reference AgentObjects.dll and AgentServerObjects.dll. You can get this two DLLs from F:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio .NET\ FrameworkSDK\Samples\Technologies\Interop\Applications\MSAgent\AgentExplorer. Bear in mind, you have installed .NET in F:.

   Or Just go to F:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio .NET\FrameworkSDK\Samples\Technologies\Interop\Applications\MSAgent\Hello1 and take a look at read me.htm file how to get those DLLs. You just give, nmake all. This command will create AgentObjects.dll and AgentServerObjects.dll in hello1 folder.

   Or just use those DLLs from this setup. I have bind these DLLs with this setup.

   Assure those 2 DLLs in bin debug/release folder and add reference to solution explorer in you project.

2. We have to put .acs in debug or release folder. Announcer will show error if .acs file is not there. You can get four .acs files from

   http://www.microsoft.com/msagent/downloads/user.asp. There you get genie, Merlin, Peedy and Robby, Microsoft agent character files (.acs)

   and put into release or debug folder.

3. Just download and open the MicrosoftAgentApplication.sln file to use it.

   Before run this, you have to install Text to speech engine. Download Text-to-Speech Engineer tv_enua.exe American English - 1 MB from here http://www.microsoft.com/msagent/downloads/user.asp. I could not add this with my demo setup due to size restriction.

   Just click tv_enua.exe to install. Then announcer is ready to announce anything, sing a song and tell a joke.

Source code

I have given sample code to use it.

using System.Data;
using System.Drawing;
using System.Reflection; 
using System.Collections;
using System.Windows.Forms;
using System.ComponentModel;
using System.Runtime.InteropServices; 

using AgentObjects;
using AgentServerObjects;

Before we make a function to create an error files, we have to declare some variables that will be used in our function. This is an example of variables declaration and the main function is ErrorRoutine.

  AgentServer Srv = new AgentServer();  //Create a agent server
  //If unable to create show the error
  if (Srv == null) 
  {
    MessageBox.Show("ERROR: Agent Server couldn't be started!");
  }

  IAgentEx SrvEx;

  // The following cast does the QueryInterface to 
  //fetch IAgentEx interface from the IAgent interface,
  //directly supported by the object
  SrvEx = (IAgentEx) Srv;

  // First try to load the default character
  int dwCharID=0, dwReqID=0;
  try 
  {
    // null is used where VT_EMPTY variant is expected by the COM object
    String strAgentCharacterFile = null;
    //Check  microsoft agent character filename(.acs)  is empty 
    if (!strFileName.Equals(string.Empty))  
    {
    //Get the acs path
    strAgentCharacterFile = strPath + strFileName;
    }
    else
    {
    MessageBox.Show("Select Style");
    return;
    }

    if (!TxtSpeakInput.Text.Equals(string.Empty)) 
    {
    //load the acs file
    SrvEx.Load(strAgentCharacterFile, out dwCharID, out dwReqID);
    }
    else
    {
    MessageBox.Show("Enter Text");
    return;
    }
} 
catch (Exception) 
{
    MessageBox.Show("Failed to load Agent character! Exception details:");
}

   IAgentCharacterEx CharacterEx=null;
   SrvEx.GetCharacterEx(dwCharID, out CharacterEx);
   //CharacterEx.SetLanguageID(MAKELANGID(LANG_ENGLISH, SUBLANG_ENGLISH_US));

   // Show the character.  The first parameter tells Microsoft
   // Agent to show the character by playing an animation.
   CharacterEx.Show(0, out dwReqID);

   // Make the character speak
   // Second parameter will be transferred to the COM object as NULL
   CharacterEx.Speak(TxtSpeakInput.Text, null, out dwReqID);
}

Here, We can select a different announcer and enter different text to speak. Just try it. It is simple to use.

We can create our own character files. Just visit http://www.microsoft.com/msagent/downloads/user.asp to explore more..