1. What do I need to install the VASRE Standard Edition (SE)?

You need one or more Personal Computers (PC) in which a GNU/Linux distribution is installed and network connection is available. For a small speech application with up to four ports, one PC would be enough for your speech recognition needs. You should install the VASRE packages and purchase the licenses to launch the system.

2. What is the computer specification required for the VASRE SE?

To launch the Resource Manager (RM) with four recognition servers, the VASRE package should be installed on a computer with

• Intel 1 GHz Pentium 4 or better processor,
• 512MB or more RAM,
• 100MB of free hard disk space for installation and verification,
• and network connections.

The speed of the speech recognition engine should be roughly proportional to the CPU power, and inversely proportional to the number of busy servers on the same computer. Each server will require approximately 60MB of memory.

3. What types of Windows operating systems does the VASRE SE support?

VASRE supports Windows XP 32bit, Windows Vista 32bit and 64bit, and Windows 7 32bit and 64bit.

4. What does the name of the installation file represent?

The name of the VASRE installation file is:

VestecASRE_version_arch.exe

where version and arch represent the version and supporting architecture of VASRE. For example, the Windows installation package of VASRE SE 1.1.1 for x86 platform is named:

VestecASRE_1.1.1_x86.exe

5. Is there any prerequisite software that should be installed before VASRE installation?

Generally speaking, there is no prerequisite software for the VASRE SE.

6. Where should I copy the license files to?

You should copy the license files to \VestecASRE\License\. They will be loaded when the RM is started.

7. What is the difference between the RM and servers? How do they work together?

The RM is the control tower of your VASRE system. It manages license information, oversees the servers, and coordinates communication sessions between the servers and clients. A server is a program unit dedicated to speech recognition. Since a server can handle only one client, the number of servers needed will be decided by the scale of your speech recognition system.

8. What is the difference between the server controller and servers?

Since the distributed architecture of VASRE allows multiple servers running on a single machine, we developed a server controller, which creates server processes based on the configuration file. The configuration file specifies the number of servers to be started and the parameters to be used for the servers.

9. What is the NT service?

The NT service is a background process directly managed by Windows operating system. Upon successful installation of VASRE, the RM and server controller are registered and started as NT services. Thereafter, the RM and server controller will automatically start whenever the computer restarts. Uninstalling VASRE will cancel the NT service.

10. How can I restart the NT services?

To apply the changes in license files and server configuration, you should restart the NT services for the RM and server controller. To restart the NT services, simply restart your computer. Alternatively, you may want to run three batch files under \VestecASRE\ in the following order:

• Run StopServices.bat to stop the NT services.
• Run StartRM.bat to start the RM.
• Run StartSRVs.bat to start the servers.

For Windows Vista and 7, administrator's privilege is required to run the batch files. If you run the batch files from the Vestec ASRE menu, right-click on the menu item to select Run as administrator. If you run the batch files from the command-line window, start the command-line window with administrator's privilege: Right-click on the command-line window icon and select Run as administrator.

11. I installed VASRE. How can I verify whether VASRE is in operation?

Obtain valid license files and copy them to the license directory (\VestecASRE\License\). Restart NT services for the RM and server controller. Run the sample applications ConsoleApp.exe under \VestecASRE\Samples\ConsoleApp. If you see the output messages representing the recognition result, the RM and servers are in operation.

12. I ran ConsoleApp, but the output is different from that shown in the manual.

The output of ConsoleApp shows the progress of four steps: opening a port, adding grammar(s), processing audio, and closing the port. If it fails at the first step, check whether the RM and any server(s) are running, and if not, whether their logs reported anything. ConsoleApp will not fail at the other three steps if the grammar file and audio file exist in the ConsoleApp directory.

13. Is there any dependency between the RM and the servers?

For the Windows version of VASRE, a server will stop if the RM process terminates. If the server is currently working with a client, the server will stop after the client disconnects. Note that no such dependency exists for the Linux version of VASRE.

14. VASRE doesn't seem to work. How can I fix the problem?

You should consult the log files to find the origin of the problem. Check the log files under \VestecASRE\Log\. The RM, server controller, and servers leave their log messages in the files whose prefixes are RM-, SRV-, and Port-, respectively.

15. How can I find the log file of a specific server?

The server is identified by the port number it occupies. Go to \VestecASRE\Log\, and you will find the log files whose names are:

Port-PORT_YYYY-MM-DD.log

where PORT represents the server port number, and YYYY-MM-DD represents the date when the log file was created.

16. I purchased a multiple-port license, but only one server seems to work. How can I launch more servers?

You should update the server configuration file \VestecASRE\Bin\VasreSRVs.cfg, and restart the NT service for the server controller. Use -ns option to specify the number of servers to be started. With the server configuration file, you can also specify the IP address of the RM, n-best parameter, search accuracy, and so on.

17. How can I start servers from remote machines?

Assume that the RM is running on Machine A and you would like to start servers on Machine B. Install the package on Machine B, and update \VestecASRE\Bin\VasreSRVs.cfg to specify the IP address of Machine A using -rm option. You should also register the RM on Machine A and the servers on Machine B as the exceptions of Windows Firewall. Open Control Panel on Machine A, and run Windows Firewall. Select Exceptions tab, and click Add Program... button to open Add a Program dialogue box. Click Browse... button, select \VestecASRE\Bin\RM.exe, and click OK. Restart the servers on Machine B by running StopServices.bat and StartSRVs.bat. Open Windows Firewall dialogue box of Machine B, and register C:\Windows\Temp\Vasre.exe as an exception as you did for Machine A.