This sample shows you how to use the Google Cloud Speech API to transcribe live audio from your computer's microphone and transmit it to a custom search API or web browser.

If you have not already done so, enable the Google Cloud Speech API for your project.

Setup a Custom Search API and make note of the value in the URL that comes after cx=, this is the identifier you will need when configuring the sample.

This sample uses a service accounts for authentication to the Speech API.

• Visit the Cloud Console, and navigate to:

  API Manager > Credentials > Create credentials > Service account key > New service account.

• Create a new service account, and download the json credentials file.

• Set the GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS environment variable to point to your downloaded service account credentials:

  export GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS=/path/to/your/credentials-key.json
  

  If you do not do this, the streaming sample will just sort of hang silently.

You also must generate a developer API key that will be used with the Custom Search Engine.

See the Cloud Platform Auth Guide for more information.

• Clone this repo

  git clone https://github.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/python-docs-samples.git
  cd python-docs-samples/speech/grpc

• If you don't have it already, install virtualenv.

  pip install virtualenv

• Create a virtualenv. This isolates the python dependencies you're about to install, to minimize conflicts with any existing libraries you might already have.

  virtualenv env
  source env/bin/activate

• Install PortAudio. The sample uses the PyAudio library to stream audio from your computer's microphone. PyAudio depends on PortAudio for cross-platform compatibility, and is installed differently depending on the platform. For example:

  • For Mac OS X, you can use Homebrew:

    brew install portaudio

  • For Debian / Ubuntu Linux:

    apt-get install portaudio19-dev python-all-dev

  • Windows may work without having to install PortAudio explicitly (it will get installed with PyAudio, when you run python -m pip install ... below).

  • For more details, see the PyAudio installation page.

• Install the python dependencies:

  pip install -r requirements.txt

• Replace the values for API_KEY and CSE_ID in speech_to_search.py with those from the Google Cloud Developer Console and Custom Search Engine you created previously.

If you see the error

fatal error: 'portaudio.h' file not found

Try adding the following to your ~/.pydistutils.cfg file, substituting in your appropriate brew Cellar directory:

include_dirs=/usr/local/Cellar/portaudio/19.20140130/include/
library_dirs=/usr/local/$USER/homebrew/Cellar/portaudio/19.20140130/lib/

• To run the speech_to_search.py sample:

  python speech_to_search.py

To demo the sample:

• Speak to transcribe what you say and send it to your Custom Search Engine. The sample will speak back the first result.
• Say "next" to read the next result.
• Say "quit" or "exit" to quit the sample.

When you're done running the sample, you can exit your virtualenv:

deactivate