Solon

A Virtual Assistant to improve productivity and learning.

Features

• using voice or keyboard shortcut to search for definitions and explanation of words or concepts
• save the searched words as a flashcard
• transform your personal notes automatically into flashcards
• create your own decks of flashcards
• start learning sessions with a goal of correct answers for each card in the choosen deck

Before building

Set up your browser

1. set your default browser. You can find the option in the search/search.cpp file. If you use Chromium for example:

system(("chromium -new-tab " + search2).c_str()); 

Replace "chromium" with your default browser:

• For google chrome: google-chrome or google-chrome-stable (on linux)
• For Firefox: firefox

2. On windows, uncomment the ShellExecute function to enable the browser function. This method may be easier if you run into issues with the browser set up.

How to build

• The default Compiler on Linux is set to g++. If you use another compiler, change the compiler inside the CMakeLists.txt file.
• Open your command line
• cd to project root directory: solon/
• Create a build directory: mkdir build
• Change into the build direcotry: cd build
• Inside the build directory type: cmake .. && make
• To execute the application write: ./solon

Required python packages

• bs4
• SpeechRecognition
• gTTS
• requests
• playsound
• To install all the packages type this into your command line: pip install bs4 SpeechRecognition gTTS requests playsound

How to use?

• First of all, I would recommend to set the program as a keyboard shortcut, to use it effortless, quickly and intuitively. You can also create a bash script with the following text:

  #!/bin/bash
  cd <path-to-build-directory>
  .solon
  

• If you already have a collection of notes, you can turn them easily into flashcard:

  1. Create a .txt file inside /solon/files/decks/.txt
  2. Copy your entire notes document into the .txt file
  3. Put a "?" at the end of each question or "#" at the front of a topic title. You will find an example inside the example.txt file.
  4. Save the file and the program will automatically create the front and back of each flashcard after execution

• Uncomment line 42-43 inside the scraping.py file.

• Every searched keyword is stored in the /files/decks/history.txt file