In the past couple days I've sorted out how to use ALSA and now have basic audio output working.  The basic skeleton of the app is in place too.  Right now it just listens on a mic, runs PocketSphinx's keyword spotting, and plays a sound when a keyword is detected.

If you're curious you can find the code on github here: https://github.com/tdicola/DemoManMonitor  This is still very much in development and not really ready for anyone to consume.  I've tried to make the components somewhat loosely coupled so it wouldn't be difficult to add support for other audio sources, sinks, or even speech rec engines in the future.

For next steps I plan to get the code working on the Raspberry Pi to sort out any issues or performance problems there as early as possible.  Will also order a small thermal printer and other small things to get started on the hardware soon.

Once a complete hardware & software prototype is working I want to come back to improve the speech rec/keyword spotting accuracy.  Right now with no special training or adaptation for my voice it can pick up some words very well (like 'bullshit') but others it totally misses (I have yet to see it pick up 'fuck' correctly from my speech).