Voice-TeX

Inspiration

We drew from our own high school and university experience for this project. Mathematical formatting is always a pain, so we wished there was an easier way of translating our thoughts into text. Lo and behold, our project was born.

What it does

Voice-TeX is a Google Home/Alexa application that takes a mathematical equation as speech input. Voice-TeX then sends this speech input to a Python server which converts the speech into LaTeX code and displays it on a webpage (and optionally in an email).

How we built it

We relied on Voiceflow to take audio input from the user, converting speech into a string, and sending that to a Google Cloud Server. The server then processed the string into LaTeX, outputting it to the webpage and email (optional).

Challenges we ran into

A major issue was integrating Voiceflow with other APIs namely, Google Cloud’s API. Additionally, Voiceflow had several major limitations, particularly when it came to recognizing speech related to mathematical symbols.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Figuring out how to make a Python web server and connecting it to Google Cloud. This our first hackathon so it was difficult to gauge the amount of time required to complete the project. On top of that, this was our first time using the Voiceflow API, and we were all pleased as to how it turned out.

What we learned

We learned to always have snacks on hand and that coffee doesn't help when you’ve only had 2 hours of sleep. Also people are willing to wait 1+ hours for free bubble tea.

What's next for Voice-TeX

Adding more mathematical symbols and connecting to Wolfram API to solve equations on prompt.

Built With

• google-cloud
• google-home
• javascript
• python
• voiceflow