file-is-my-command

Execute commands using files

Introduction

This project came to life when I wanted to control my computer using a voice recognition device (ex: Alexa, Google assist etc.) and discovered the complexity of acheiving such a simple task.

What I discovered was:

• I had to use an online file storage in order to make this project free of charge
• Use files as a mean of communication
• Use IFTTT to enable voice recognition device to interact with popular online drive storage (official website: https://ifttt.com/ )
• Have an app that would check the drive folder and execute the desired and allowed tasks

Here are the steps to make a voice recognition device interact with our PC:

• User triggers a command using his voice: "Hey google trigger pc off"
• Voice recognition device checks IFTTT for a known receipe
• If a receipe is found the receipe will be executed (ex: put a file named "test.txt" in our dropbox drive)
• On our PC we have our drive synchronized, so when something / someone adds a file in the drive it is downloaded automatically
• An app, file-is-my-command will monitor the drive folder and if it finds "test.txt" it will run a shutdown script

The goal of this app is to:

• Monitor a folder where we put files in it (FTP, synchronized drive etc.), this folder is referred as command directory
• When we detect that a file is a command we will delete the file and then perform the associated script
• All files located in the command directory are not necessarly commands, you are free to configure wich file should be considered as a command
• For security reasons command files are not executed, we only parse the file name

Installation and setup

Requirements

• Java version >= 8
• Windows 10 (not tested for prior versions but should work)

Important notes

- Command file will be deleted before executing the associated script (otherwise we would have an infinite loop)

Windows

Setup:

• Place jar in a desired location (ex: C:/myDir)
• Create a config.json file in C:/myDir/config.json
• Create the folder that will contain the C:/myDir/scripts
• Create the folder that will be checked by the app: C:/myDir/commands
• Create a batch that will run the jar: C:/myDir/run-jar.bat
• Install the windows service that will execute the jar and start the service (the additional WinSW files should be placed in C:/myDir)

Optional: you can use WinSW to wrap the jar into a windows service thus not needing the run-jar.bat.

File hierarchy:

project
|   config.json
|   file.is.my.command-X.X-SNAPSHOT.jar
|   run-jar.bat
|   WinSW.NET4.exe (optional)
|   WinSW.NET4.xml (optional)
|   
|
|___scripts
	|
	|_  sleep.bat
	|_  myCustomScript.bat
|
|
|___commands (put here the files that will trigger command)

File example:

run-jar.bat

REM Move to the batch file location
REM For admin user default dir is in system32
REM Note: you can specify the location in the action tab in taskscheduler rendering the below line redundant
cd "%~dp0"
REM run the jar, absolute path not needed since we are in the correct dir
java -jar file.is.my.command-1.0-SNAPSHOT.jar

sleep.bat

@echo off
REM kill vlc
taskkill /F /IM vlc.exe /T
REM kill chrome
taskkill /F /IM chrome.exe /T
REM wait 4 seconds
ping -n 4 127.0.0.1 > nul
REM Shutdown windows machine
shutdown.exe /s /t 00

Configuration

Here is an example of config.json:

{
	"scriptDir": "scripts",
	"commandPath" : "K:\\fileismycommand\\command",
	"commands": [		
		{"fileName": "shutdown-laptop", "script": "sleep.bat"}
	],
	"logEverything" : true
}