Talk to Your Laptop...

[HappySeagull]

I haven't seen it mentioned.

If you see an old version of "Dragon Naturally Speaking" at the thrift or a yard sale, pick it up and see if it'll work for you...
I have version 5.0 and it's quite an interesting alternative to controlling your laptop via bluetooth.

Usage: A typical usage for me is,
"Wake Up! Press F2. Press Minus. Press Minus" Go to sleep."

In OpenCPN, this translates to: waking up the microphone,Centering the screen on Ownship, zooming out two stages and putting the microphone to sleep. You can run almost everything on the Windows laptop with practise.

Pretty handy for
:a smallish sailboat and your laptop need be in the dry-place.
:crammed into an enginespace hands dripping with filth and using a pdf version of your engine's manual....

I use a microphone on a long wire but a bluetooth one might be handier, if you can stand setting bluetooth up.
Wind and pervasive sloshing noise at the microphonecan be overcome by "calibrating" in Dragon.

[Rico_Leprichan]

That option is now standard in the windows 7 & 8 operating systems. And I think maybe XP. So no need to purchase dragon.

[HappySeagull]

..it seems pretty limited in XP, that I've been able to find. "Dragon " just worked, for the $ I paid.

[Rico_Leprichan]

Originally Posted by HappySeagull

..it seems pretty limited in XP, that I've been able to find. "Dragon " just worked, for the $ I paid.

It is limited in Xp (fired up my old laptop), so dragon is good. In windows 7 you have full control of your comp with voice commands.

[delmarrey]

Dictation comes standard on the iPad 3.

[DeepFrz]

I have a friend who sends me email on a regular basis, all typed by voice command. He uses Win 7. He has a bit of a speech impediment so it took him a while to get the settings right but now it is very good. I used to get some head scratching stuff from him when he first started using voice.

[Rico_Leprichan]

Yea, takes a lil while, but works great after it learns ya.

[HappySeagull]

Originally Posted by Rico_Leprichan

Yea, takes a lil while, but works great after it learns ya.

...you have that right! It's a good lesson in elocution to get something comprehensible on the page! without the ummms and strange slurs I mouth in real life.

I guess not many use it for laptop and ipad control...it's a pain to set up alright- but if anyone is using it for Opencpn, can you report if "Left Arrow", "Right Arrow" works to pan the chart. I can't get it to.