Adobe Premier automatic transcription

I recently interviewed a colleague for a feature in LIGO Magazine. To save myself some work, I thought I'd try out the "automatic transcription" feature of Adobe Premier CS6, which is supposed to recognize English language in audio and produce the corresponding text.

The resulting "transcription" doesn't bear any resemblance whatsoever to the original speech. It looks like the results of some Markov Chain fed with random noise:

[Speaker 6] on a date and over and said I was on to finish my few seasons in the future today's update is that the full scoop the last thoughts and to think about what to that awesome what you want to change a few then and at the same time there are the fools to the beatification expects the hall by Justin but it was these teams and so on before signing up this to free up of folk this is me crazy less than what was going on both of them this photo they expect to add to all fall for that position but that is free to copy the state for the state of something what's actually going to do next but could you describe the experiment they stick to it's a little bit so by it let's face it or to use bamboo it means do that even States I'm with you that didn't use a state to state it is the time that this phase and it was today that its feet and that the goal with just one hit it off this condition in and of course this book and a few but the so you know what today is but at the ticket on top you can with all knowing and use them it so well it's too bad though the advantage of this and are faced with today because those four you but this is a potential experiments to take the stupid thing the new all weather for this use this one popped off to contain it life it was very noisy and the this means that the person in the dust any motivation to bed and get information because the last three Super bowls this straw and you have to press the mess us up with all getting any information it fits is necessary because otherwise this so no one yet effect it for us this post off to a condition that he and the Stormont and this information center or a standup favorites to receive a ball the ball in this information into an epic mother nature it I and five as such it can fit all OpenOffice but also us to get effective public to think and that is only good things in office but not the sea so if you'd all on this second thing that you've had all the more information to the other Ken Singleton office what remains the face of this the people today it

This is what it got out of a conversation regarding quantum optics. The audio source (iPhone voice recorder app) isn't the highest quality, but I still expected a little better than this.

I admit, the idea of automatic transcription did seem a little too good to be true...

HackRF jawbreaker #485

A few weeks ago, by chance, I stumbled across Michael Ossman's blog entry titled Giving away HackRF, which promised a free beta version of some radio hardware to the first respondents. Apparently I acted just in time, because HackRF "jawbreaker" number 485 (out of 500!) just arrived here in Hannover.

This thing is curiously without much documentation, but the general idea is this: instead of implementing a radio device in analog hardware (with mixers and resonant circuits and phase-locked-loops and all that), one can instead just use a sufficiently fast digitizer and then implement all the radio demodulation in software. It's called "software defined radio".

It's very exciting to me that this stuff has plummeted in cost and advanced in performance from being simply a crazy idea about a decade ago into something that arrives for free (expected retail price ~$300) in my mailbox.

Some ideas for what to do with it:
1. Start simple with AM and FM radio receivers
2. Radio astronomy - track the crab pulsar
3. Holy grail: software defined GPS (not sure if possible)

The board is curiously without documentation. For starters we can just look at what chips are on it:

MAX 2837 - 2.3GHz to 2.7GHz Wireless Broadband RF Transceiver
MAX 5864 - Ultra-Low-Power, High-Dynamic-Performance, 22Msps Analog Front End
Xilinx XC2C64A - Complex programmable logic device (like an FPGA?)
NXP LPC4330FBD144 - "Dual-core Cortex-M4/M0 (ARM CPU), 264 kB SRAM, 2 HS USB with on-chip PHY, Ethernet, CAN, AES, SPIFI, SGPIO, SCT"

Wow, integrated electronics are amazing!

The board is populated with just two connectors: one SMA connector for an antenna (RF IN), and one micro USB connector. Then there are very many unstuffed headers.

Many thanks to Michael Ossman for providing this exciting piece of hardware. I'll try to make good on the beta program by doing something fun with it!

link: https://github.com/mossmann/hackrf