I would like to announce the second release of UniMRCP connector bridge for Asterisk.

The connector bridge is prepackaged with Asterisk-1.6.1.14 and UniMRCP-r1456 (> 0.9.0). These are the recommended versions to use, though other versions are also supported.

This release contains a few enhancements in speech resource module (res_speech_unimrcp), which implements the Generic Speech Recognition API of Asterisk.
* Added internal configuration file (/etc/asterisk/res-speech-unimrcp.conf) with further reference to UniMRCP client configuration.
* Supported various recognition grammars including builtin grammar, text/uri-list, multipart/mixed and everything else.
* Added an option to preload grammars for a channel
* Added an option to set properties (MRCP header fields) for a channel

It also introduces a new and great application module (app_unimrcp) gracefully contributed and actively maintained by J.W.F. Thirion <derik@molo.co.za> Molo Afrika Speech Technologies (Pty) Ltd.

Asterisk dialplan applications are:
* MRCPSynth - text to speech,
* MRCPRecog - speech recognition


The released package can be downloaded from
http://unimrcp.googlecode.com/files/uni-ast-package-0.2.0.tar.gz

For the installation, configuration and usage please refer to the wiki page
http://code.google.com/p/unimrcp/wiki/asteriskUniMRCP

Feel free to participate in the discussions with the questions and issues you may have
http://groups.google.com/group/unimrcp


Thanks for using UniMRCP,

--
Arsen Chaloyan
The author of UniMRCP
http://www.unimrcp.org

UniMRCP 0.9.0 (r1383) has been released and now is available for download.

Source Distribution
http://unimrcp.googlecode.com/files/unimrcp-0.9.0.tar.gz
http://unimrcp.googlecode.com/files/unimrcp-0.9.0.zip

Windows Installers (32-bit and 64-bit)
http://unimrcp.googlecode.com/files/unimrcp-0.9.0.exe
http://unimrcp.googlecode.com/files/unimrcp-x64-0.9.0.exe

Windows SDK Installers (32-bit and 64-bit)
http://unimrcp.googlecode.com/files/unimrcp-sdk-0.9.0.exe
http://unimrcp.googlecode.com/files/unimrcp-x64-sdk-0.9.0.exe

Dependency Packages (based on APR-1.3.8, APR-Util-1.3.9, Sofia-SIP-1.12.10)
http://unimrcp.googlecode.com/files/unimrcp-deps-0.8.0.tar.gz
http://unimrcp.googlecode.com/files/unimrcp-deps-0.8.0.zip


This release introduces new major features such as
- Implementation of MRCP recorder resource
- Support for RFC4733/RFC2833 out-of-band and in-band DTMF generation and detection
- Implementation of RTCP stack (Nuance compliance)
- Support for 64-bit platforms


For the first time 64-bit Windows binaries are available as well. Please note, 64-bit UniMRCP can be installed only on 64-bit OS, while 64-bit UniMRCP SDK can be installed on both 32-bit and 64-bit. This allows you to develop 64-bit applications even on 32-bit OS.


Changes since previous release 0.8.0 (r1199) include
- Added compile time define to support "too long" MRCP request identifiers (Issue-48, Vali)
- Fixed race condition on client stack initialization (Issue-49, Aabaziev)
- Re-factored abstract MRCP resource entity
- Loaded MRCP resources from config (unimrcpclient.xml and unimrcpserver.xml must be updated)
- Added a few accessors to mrcp_application interface in order to completely hide session interface from the application context.
- Properly processed nua's shutdown (John)
- Fixed function prototypes to compile without warnings with -Wstrict-prototypes gcc option (John)
- Fixed a few RTSP/MRCPv1 session management related issues (Issue-51, Vali)
- Fixed core dump with large in-line grammars (Issue-52, Asackheim)
- Added recorder plugin and sample recorder scenario/session
- Added DTMF generator and detector (Vali)
- Added sample DTMF recognizer scenario/session
- Reworked timer/clock related entities, added scheduler entity
- Fixed build warnings from sun studio (Mike)
- Supported both synchronous and asynchronous start of client stack.
- Fixed memory (resource) leak on client/server task termination. Threads MUST be detached first in case of async task termination (Issue-53, Derik)
- Installed uni_version.h alongside with other header files required for the integration
- Added x64 platform configuration to VS2005 build
- Fixed compilation warnings using 64-bit compilers
- Updated inno-setup scripts to be able to build both win32 (x86) and x64 (x86-64) installers.


Thanks for using UniMRCP.

--
Arsen Chaloyan
The author of UniMRCP
http://www.unimrcp.org

Happy New Year!
This is the greeting, which is likely said and heard many times during the days.
It's a good tradition and time when we may summarize activity done during the previous year and setup some goals for the new year.

The project continued to evolve during 2009, despite of the global financial crisis and resulted difficulties.
There were scheduled and periodically released five versions of UniMRCP, which introduced new features, provided bug fixes and ensured stability.
Integration with well know open source telephony platforms, utilization by several corporates, support contracts, custom development options and my strong desire keep the project going. This makes me think about the first major release of UniMRCP in 2010, which would be another value added release indicated a certain milestone. I'll follow up with the next 0.9 version during the days and come up with a few suggestions, proposals thereafter during this month.

Also it seems I've got another good tradition to polish the website of the project a bit during the holidays. Please checkout the new face.

Let it be a successful and prosperous year for all of us!
--
Arsen Chaloyan
The author of UniMRCP
http://www.unimrcp.org

At this time I'd like to declare UniMRCP can be compiled for and run on 64-bit operating systems as a native 64-bit application.

There were reports indicating UniMRCP successfully runs on 64-bit Linux, though I didn't try it myself before. However, things have been changed recently and I have tested UniMRCP enough on both 64-bit Linux and Windows.

- Linux
Everything is quite straightforward and usual on CentOS 5.3 x86-64 I tried. One should proceed with the regular installation.
./configure
make
make install

It's possible to cross-compile for 64-bit even on 32-bit Linux
CFLAGS=-m64 CXXFLAGS=-m64 LDFLAGS=-m64 ./configure
make
make install

- Windows
Visual Studio itself is a 32-bit application and it's a bit strange to me, but as of today, there is no native 64-bit version. Fortunately, 64 bit tools (compiler, debugger) are available, but those tools are not installed by default, even while installing VS on 64-bit Windows. So if you're going to play with this stuff, make sure you have 64-bit compiler installed.
I have added x64 configuration next to win32 to project files (vcproj) and property sheets (vsprops) in order to compile UniMRCP for a 64-bit platform. Now UniMRCP nicely works even on Windows 7 x86-64.
Corresponding APR and Sofia-SIP project files will be included in the dependency package to be released with UniMRCP 0.9.0 version after the New Year.

Happy Holidays,
--
Arsen Chaloyan
The author of UniMRCP
http://www.unimrcp.org

I'd like to announce the release of an open source connector bridge for Asterisk and UniMRCP.

The connector bridge is an implementation of Asterisk's Generic Speech API using UniMRCP client stack. This module allows Asterisk to connect to MRCPv2 or MRCPv1 compliant servers for speech recognition. It also allows to offload Asterisk using client/server architecture MRCP provides. Moreover, all the speech applications, which are written on top of Generic Speech API now can be easily used via MRCP too.

The complete package, which includes everything required for UniMRCP integrated Asterisk deployment, is now available for download
http://unimrcp.googlecode.com/files/uni-ast-package.tar.gz

The open development model with community driven initiatives is what I started UniMRCP with and entered the open source world for. The integration with powerful telephony platforms such as Asterisk would allow the project to further evolve and accelerate.

I have been asked many times for such an integration. Now it's your turn to give it a try, provide feedback and help carefully test and evolve the solution.

Thanks for using UniMRCP,
--
Arsen Chaloyan
The author of UniMRCP
http://www.unimrcp.org