Disclaimer: This is just for fun and not a real Ovilus/Ghostbox.

Ovilus/Ghostbox/Spiritbox

I am learning the Rust programming language and needed a project to do.
I enjoy watching the Ghost Adventures. So, I thought it would be fun to make an Ovilus.
An Ovilus uses a word database and not recorded voices or sounds.
The Ovilus device itself speaks the chosen words (this application doesn't).

Code

I'm still learning Rust so there can be a lot of inefficient code.
Or maybe that I should use other methods/crates etc.
I also still need to write test for the code and I need to add better comments/documentation.
My first priority was to get better with Rust.

Also:
I use a Mac and I dont know if this works on Windows/other Linux systems.

How it works

I don't know how a real Ghostbox/Ovilus algorithm works or looks like.
The real Ovilus device also uses special sensors. This application does not.

So I made it very simple.

• The program contains a file with English words.
  It gets a waiting time and then it generates a random number
  between 0 and the total number of English words (more than 450 thousand).
  It uses the random number to look up the word that is on that line number.
• Then it gets another waiting time before generating a random number (1).
  Default between 0 and 100.
• After that it gets another waiting time before generating a random number (2).
  Also default between 0 and 100.
• When that's all done, it checks if both random numbers are equal.
  If they are equal then a word is found.
• Then the loop continues

In theory a ghost/spirit uses the waiting time (in milliseconds) to search for a word
and then tries to influence the outcome of the numbers.

How it looks

It's a terminal application and it will use your terminal colors.
The colors in the image are custom colors from my terminal.

What can you do with it?

You have some options when you run the program.

• increase/decrease chance to find word
  If you increase the chance to much (lowest is between 0 and 10) it will find words very often.
  You shouldn't use a to low value.
  It's better when the chance to find two equally random numbers is very low.
• increase/decrease time to search for word
  Give the ghost more or less time to search a word (in milliseconds)
• increase/decrease time to search for random number one
  Give the ghost more or less time to find a number (in milliseconds)
• increase/decrease time to search for random number two
  Give the ghost more or less time to find the same number (in milliseconds)
• after you have changed the options to reset options to default
• and of course quit the program

Used resources

Crossterm
Rand
Chrono
List with English words