Network Programming in .NET

This is an API I discovered while hunting on Rapid API, and it seems like an interesting find, and potential future addition to RegCheck – It’s a Driver License verification API for the US, in some 37 states, which is most of the country – here; https://rapidapi.com/appaio/api/drivers-license-verify-usa/

  var driversLicense = new
        {
            State = "FL",
            DriversLicense = "W426-545-30-761-0", // This particular driver is deceased
            Firstname = "", // Not required in Florida
            Surname = "", // Not required in Florida
            Last4SSN = "", // Not required in Florida
            DateOfBirth = "", // Not required in Florida
            ZipCode = "" // Not required in Florida
        };
        var payload = JsonConvert.SerializeObject(driversLicense);
        using (var web = new WebClient())
        {
            // Get Key here: https://rapidapi.com/appaio/api/drivers-license-verify-usa/
            web.Headers.Add("x-rapidapi-key", "*** Put Rapid API key here ***");
            var result = web.UploadString("https://drivers-license-verify-usa.p.rapidapi.com/DriversLicenseLambda",
                payload);
            Console.WriteLine(result);
            var json = JObject.Parse(result);
            var valid = json["valid"];
            var endorsements = json["endorsements"];
            var validity = json["validity"];
            var information = json["information"]; 
        }

Speech to Text : Specifically for captchas

This is no ordinary speech to text API, it is specifically designed to crack audio captchas

If you use AWS Transcribe, or Google Cloud Speech to Text on a captcha audio, then you will have poor results, because it’s a general-purpose speech to text API, designed to transribe video, narrated text, and phone calls. This API is different, it is designed to quickly and accurately solve the short, distorted, random letter and number assortment found in captcha audio.

• Audio can be provided as a URL or Base64 encoded data
• Standard alphabet and NATO alphabet supported (Alpha, Bravo, Charlie …)
• Returns on average in 5 seconds.

You can always call the API multiple times, most websites don’t count failed attempts.

Read more about this new API at https://www.audiocaptcha.com/

Create an account on Rapid API, and get an API key for this API. Once done, you can try out the API for free, by setting a HTTP header “x-rapidapi-key” to your API Key, then posting to the following URL:

https://audio-captcha.p.rapidapi.com/AudioCaptchaLambda

{
"url" : "https://pepite.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/65UHC.wav",
"base64" : "",
"useNato" : false
}

With the above JSON – Obviously, the Wave file URL here is a demo, but it was extracted from a real captcha.

Otherwise, you can provide the audio in base 64 format in the base64 field and omit the URL element.

If the audio is in the NATO alphabet (Alpha, Bravo, Charlie …) then you change useNato to true, otherwise, it’s assumed to be (A,B,C,D …)

If you’ve had experience with AWS Transcribe, you will notice that despite it’s excellent accuracy, it is unfortunately very slow, which can make things awkward if your application is time-sensitive.

One alternative was IBM Watson, which I personally found to be much faster than AWS Transcribe, by an order of magnitude, and it does support keyword matching, which is great if you are looking out for key phrases in audio. However, I did find it was less accurate than AWS transcribe.

You can get started with IBM Watson for free, without a credit card, and you can subscribe to the free version of the speech to text API (500 minutes free per month), which gives you enough to test with. This example assumes you already have an API key, and service URL, which you can get from the IBM website.

So, in this example, I am using a pre-recorded WAV file, which is included in my project (Build action set to copy always). The WAV file is a 8Hkz format, which is really low quality.

So, lets include the NUGET package by typing;

Install-Package IBM.Watson.SpeechToText.v1 

Then, we’ll write a bit of code to test this out – The project type is a .NET Core, Console app.

var bAudio = File.ReadAllBytes("Sample.wav");
var memAudio = new MemoryStream(bAudio);
const string apiKey = "xxxxxx";
var authenticator = new IamAuthenticator(apiKey);
var service = new SpeechToTextService(authenticator);
service.SetServiceUrl("https://api.eu-de.speech-to-text.watson.cloud.ibm.com/instances/yyyyy");
var results = service.Recognize( memAudio, model: "en-US_NarrowbandModel");
Console.WriteLine(results.Response);

In terms of complexity, this is certainly easier than the equivalent code for AWS Transcribe, since you don’t need to upload to S3, poll on the results, then download from S3 again.

It’s pretty much the same price as AWS at $0.02 per minute, but has different pricing tiers, so it’s hard to compare like-for-like.