
Show HN: Project Maya - dutchbrit
Project Maya has started! For those who haven't read about Maya, please look here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4103344<p>Our goal is to build an open source application that can run in your browser and on iOS/Android without being dependent on app stores.<p>We currently have a working "sneak preview" version viewable over here: http://frontend2.com<p>Want to dig into the source? https://github.com/SchizoDuckie/project-maya<p>We recommend you to check it out in Google Chrome/iOS/Android.<p>Our team currently consists of 5 people. If you think you'd be a good addition, please shoot me an email, sam.granger@gmail.com<p>Feedback so far is more than welcome!
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SchizoDuckie
Basically, our initial sneak preview does the following:

    
    
      * generate wav files of words via the google translate api
      * save these wav files into the database (base64 encoding was an (unfortunately failed) experiment
      * do initial setup and fill of the words database
      * showing an html5 clickable grid with words and an icon, based on the database query, of all the words found.
    

todo:

    
    
      * create multiple pages from database, list them and switch
      * allow queuing of multiple phrases, and play them as a sentence
      * add custom words via web ui and a little php servicelayer
      * html5 offline storage for all wav files
      * get tablet browsers to fix data uri's for the <audio> tag!
      * have a proper design with customizable icon lib
    

Not bad for a project kickstart in half an evening. Are we infringing on any
patents yet?

~~~
ktizo
_Are we infringing on any patents yet?_

Don't even think of looking, and sing loudly with your fingers in your ears if
anyone tries to inform you. Otherwise you are willfully infringing and the
damages are trebled.

[http://heinonline.org/HOL/LandingPage?collection=journals...](http://heinonline.org/HOL/LandingPage?collection=journals&handle=hein.journals/gmlr10&div=11&id=&page=)

~~~
huhtenberg
*tripled

~~~
ktizo
Same thing. <http://www.thefreedictionary.com/trebled>

~~~
huhtenberg
Interesting.

 _Treble_ is favored in a few specific contexts (in the game of darts, for
instance), but _triple_ is generally favored everywhere else. Even in British
English, where _treble_ is most common, _triple_ appears approximately three
times for every instance of treble. In American English, _treble_ is almost
unheard of except in relation to sound and music.

From here - <http://grammarist.com/usage/triple-treble>

~~~
ktizo
I use both, often without noticing. I think I tend to be more likely to use
treble or trebled at the end of sentence and triple or tripled in the middle
of one. Note, I am not claiming this as any sort of sensible usage, am just
commenting on how I tend to use the words. My pronunciation of words like
grass or bath is also similarly scattered. This confuses folk when they try
and work out what class background I am from, which is something of an
obsession for many people here in the UK.

------
creamyhorror
You are cool people.

Right now the grid buttons can't be unclicked, it seems (on a Galaxy
Note/Android 4.0.3 here). Is that intentional? I can't scroll either. I assume
a reset button will be coming eventually, along with a play-phrase button. How
are you thinking of organising the words into panes?

In its current state I can't see this violating any patents, since it's
essentially a soundboard. (
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soundboard_%28computer_program%...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soundboard_%28computer_program%29)
) It would be hilarious if it turned out soundboards (those programs/pages
that play funny phrases and sounds when you click on buttons) actually
violated PRC's patents.

Will you (eventually) be bundling the app as .apk/.ipa for distribution? That
seems like a great way to ensure it stays out in the wild forever (better
still if the audio can be included, so it won't break).

~~~
SchizoDuckie
There is already a simple sqlite database that holds info on all the sounds. a
name, an icon, a backgroundcolor, and the page it's on.

Pages haven't been coded yet, but are already available in the database. A
simple sqlite crud interface should suffice for that.

More important, as you notice is the UI. Right now it just show the toggle,
gets the wav file and hits play. This will be fixed hopefully tonight, so that
you can gather a couple of audio files in a que to form a prhase. Should be
peanuts, but is was 02:30 am for me last night. This is the progess up to
that.

And indeed, it's just a sound board, but in my opinion so is the software that
started all this.

We haven't decided yet on packaging, but since i believe everyone on the team
are mobile developers, that should not be a problem at all.

~~~
creamyhorror
> And indeed, it's just a sound board, but in my opinion so is the software
> that started all this.

Agreed, and that's why this is the Lord's work you're doing. Heck, you might
invent some better methods for users along the way. Keep going man.

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dutchbrit
Clickables.

Previous HN post about Maya's story:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4103344>

Preview: <http://frontend2.com>

Github: <https://github.com/SchizoDuckie/project-maya>

~~~
SchizoDuckie
I've just put a new version on github.
<https://github.com/SchizoDuckie/project-maya/commits/>

Features:

    
    
      * Massively cleaned up codebase. Removed images folder, pure css3 styling.
      * Created a words list, that holds tiles to build a sentence
      * Created play and clear button to operate on the words list
      * Hacked around with setTimeout to play next in queue because audio onended is not fired??
    

More to come soon :)

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Tim-Boss
This post has restored some of my faith in humanity. The world of software...
no, screw that, the ENTIRE WORLD would be a better place with more people like
you guys in :)

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primitur
I believe you should be using MOAI for this:

<http://getmoai.com/>

The reason is that its a high-performance cross-platform tool that can be used
to target Android, iOS, NaCl (Chrome), Windows, Linux and Mac OSX. You can
write one codebase which will run on all of those platforms, and I think you
will be _very_ much more productive with this toolkit, which is designed for
exactly this kind of use (multimedia/graphics/audio content - i.e. games).

Please check this out, honestly. MOAI is the perfect tool for this application
- HTML5 is _not_ , due to the problems with audio playback involved in HTML5
clients right now.

~~~
SchizoDuckie
I seriously disagree. HTML5, even though it has it's (workable) shortcomings
at the moment, can do this. Why would you base an opensource project on a non-
free, non-standard framework that nobody heard of?

Sure, what it promises is nice, but no.

~~~
primitur
Well, I'm using MOAI, for starters, and see its power.

Plus there's that whole "sound is utter crap in HTML5" thing, yo.

Also, moai can run where html5 cannot.

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sdoering
Great Idea,

visting your frontend2.com-site, I encountered, that I am not able to scroll
in Chrome and that I am not able to activate a sound twice.

So "give me more and more" would not be possible.

But keep up the great work, please.

~~~
SchizoDuckie
It's a very first start. I worked on getting the basics done, hopefully
tonight i can update it with pages, flowing, queuing, etc. Thx for your
feedback!

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kirinan
Here is a list of tasks I have setup for this project for myself (I'm one of
the engineers working on):

-List of milestones/tasks so other people can work on this as well -SCM (Bug Tracking etc) system setup (Any suggestions for a hosted free version of SCM Systems HN?)

Hopefully I will have this done tonight. I want to get as many people involved
as possible as I think we can do a lot more than just help these people!

~~~
viraptor
Pivotal tracker is still free for open projects, I think and integrates with
github, so you may want to look at that.

~~~
kirinan
Thanks sir! This looks like exactly what we need. I will be setting something
up tonight!

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huxley
This is great (and I'm glad you are doing something practical to help), but I
was wondering if you have reached out to Maya's family to see if this tool you
are building will fit their particular needs?

I remember reading that they tried out lots of different products before
settling on SfY, so there may be issues that aren't immediately obvious to
people who don't have a lot of experience with AAC.

~~~
dutchbrit
I've been in contact with her family, and SfY :). We want to make this as user
friendly as possible.

~~~
huxley
Brilliant, that is great to hear.

SfY brought the cost down significantly but I really hope this project could
make it available to even more people. Best of luck!

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deepGem
Appreciate what you guys are doing. Tested it out on Samsung Galaxy note
running ICS. Quick feedback:

The application detected that I was a first time user and injected some sounds
into the database +1

There is a 1-2 second delay between the tap and the sound.

Guess you guys are already working to sort these out. Looking forward to see
this application in its full glory. Any twitter handles to follow ?

~~~
dutchbrit
Sure, you can follow me here <http://twitter.com/samgranger> :)

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joering2
Great project, I +1 this.

I was looking into hacking google translate myself, but failed, or perhaps did
not spend enough time. Can you guys post a code on how to tap into word
translation speech in google?

~~~
SchizoDuckie
It was almost too simple to be true:

[https://github.com/SchizoDuckie/project-
maya/blob/master/aud...](https://github.com/SchizoDuckie/project-
maya/blob/master/audio/speechgen.php)

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franze
cool project

now another approach: you could produce all the wav-s in-browser. see my (100%
open source) mvp at <http://lalo.li/> \- yeah, you would need to do a lot of
tuning/optimization of the speech-synthesizer to get a decent voice, but it
would be possible.

think in the long term it would be a much more scaleable approach ... there
are a lot of words out there .... than storing wav-s in the browser.

~~~
SchizoDuckie
Lalo.li is awesome, but unfortunately, you're using WebWorkers and
TypedArrays, that's too high-tech for tablets. Also, this would require
loading a waveform on a tablet from a data uri, which is also not supported,
according to my tests on either iOS or Android with Crome :(

My original prototype (that worked) was to store the wave files as a base64
encoded data URI into the database, but that's been rendered obsolete by this.
Now we'll have to rely on pure wave files. Nothing that we cannot overcome,
but it would have made the whole concept even more portable.

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hk_kh
Really nice initiative,

When you have some free time, do you mind organizing some milestones and tasks
on github so random people can help without being active on the project?

I would not mind adding/fixing planned things from time to time.

