Flickr credit: danyork

Noticing this weekend: a) how much our 18-month-old loves to play with the phone; and b) how limited her actual “conversation” is with anyone on the phone… I decided to have a wee bit of fun and make an app that would “talk back to her”. And thus was born the Toddler Amusement Line!

You call the number and it simply loops through saying a canned set of phrases (currently “hi”, “hello”, “how are you”) 10 times with a pause between each. You can try it yourself at:

+1-617-870-3360
Skype: +990009369991480349
SIP: sip:9991480349@sip.tropo.com

Here’s all it took in python on Tropo:

import time

for i in range(0,10):
    for text in ("hi", "hello", "how are you"):
        say (text)
        time.sleep(2)

say("Thank you. Goodbye.")

I start out setting up a loop to go through the inner for loop 10 times. Main reason to do this is so that I don’t create an infinite loop running on Tropo. If the caller hangs up before the app is done, the loop will just keep going and then end. If they stay on, they’ll just get the “Thank you. Goodbye.” message.[1]

The inner loop just cycles through a series of phrases, saying each one, waiting 2 seconds and then saying the next.

If you’d like to experiment with creating an app like this yourself, here’s all you have to do:

1. Go over and login to Tropo (you can create a free developer account if you don’t already have one).
2. Create a new application.
3. Choose “Tropo Scripting” as the type.
4. Give it a name.
5. Click on “Hosted File” and choose “Create a new hosted file for this application”
6. Give it a file name ending in “.py” (I used “tal.py”)
7. Copy/paste the python code above into the “File Text” area. (Tip: when you move your mouse over the code, some icons will appear in the upper right corner of the block of code – the second icon will copy the code to your clipboard.)
8. Click “Create File”.
9. Click “Create Application”.
10. Start calling!

That’s it… your app is now ready to be called via either Skype or SIP. If you want to add a regular old phone number to it, just click the “Add a new phone number” link and choose from one of the available area codes. (There is no cost for a US phone number – they are free to developers.)

Now, as an added bonus, you could use one of the various international voices available for the “say” command and change the sound of the outgoing text-to-speech. For example, here the app has been changed to be a British female voice:

import time

for i in range(0,10):
    for text in ("hi", "hello", "how are you"):
        say (text, {"voice":"kate"})
        time.sleep(2)

say("Thank you. Goodbye.")

You can see the full list of available male and female voices in the “say” command reference or read our two previous blog posts with more examples about the female and the male voices.

Have fun! And may it amuse your toddler… or anyone else who calls ;-)

[1] And if you do the math, the inner loop is probably 3 seconds for each text (1 second to say and 2 to wait). 3 pieces of text at 3 seconds each equals 9 seconds for the inner loop. Do that 10 times for a total of 90 seconds. I don’t know about your toddler, but mine has probably put (or thrown) the phone down well before 90 seconds and has moved on to something else :-)