Via Voice

NOTE: This text to speech engine is no longer distributed by IBM but can still be found on Amazon. The instructions here are for legacy implementations and sadly most of the links are broken.

To use it with MisterHouse, you need to install Brad Reed's ViaVoiceTTS.pm module from http://www.reednet.org/ViaVoiceTTS Broken link , then set your mh.ini parameters voice_text=vv_tts or voice_text=viavoice (vv_tts is a bit fancier, queuing up speech and has more mh.ini options).

Download and install (as root) these rpms:

  tar -xvf viavoice_asr_sdk_3.tar  ( 3 MB)
  tar -xvf viavoice_dict_rtk_3.tar (78 MB)
  rpm -ivh ViaVoice_runtime-3.0-1.2.i386.rpm
  rpm -ivh ViaVoice_sdk-3.0-1.1.i386.rpm

Note for our usage, you can get by without the gui menus, so if rpm tells you that you have down level or missing libraries (e.g. libgdk), you can probably ignore that by adding the rpm --nodeps option.

As the *.txt instructions from the tar file state, you should probably run the viavoice code as non-root. Here is one way to allow non-root access to the microphone:

  chmod go+rw /dev/dsp*
  chmod go+rw /dev/audio*

Make sure your microphone is selected as the recording source with this command:

 aumix -m R  (-l R for line,  -c R for CDROM)

Documentation is in /usr/doc/ViaVoice and test and example code is in /usr/lib/ViaVoice/samples. /usr/doc/ViaVoice/rt.readme.txt suggests creating a new userid with this java app:

 /usr/bin/vvstartuserguru

If that doesn't work, you can add a user with this command:

  source /usr/bin/vvsetenv
  /usr/lib/ViaVoice/bin/vvuser -userid winter -setdefault

To enable viavoice from MisterHouse, review the viavoice_* parameterss in the mh.ini file (defaults should work if you run MisterHouse on the same box as the server), set parameter voice_cmd=viavoice, run mh/bin/viavoice_server_start, start MisterHouse and enable the viavoice_control.pl from the 'Select Code' ia7 MrHouse web menu. Use the Tk 'VR mode' button and/or the phrase(s) in viavoice_awake_phrase to enable the awake VR mode.

The viavoice SDK FAQ can be found here at http://www-4.ibm.com/software/speech/dev/faq_linux.html Broken links .

For Apple OS X users, here are some hints from Jon Boehm:

1. Install Xdarwin, remember the 10.2 patch if your running Jaguar.

2. Upgrade Perl to 5.8 http://developer.apple.com/internet/macosx/perl.html

3. Install Perl modules required by MisterHouse. Some of the packages will not install nicely. If something fails you will need to do Goggle searches like: "OSX GD" to get some help. Specifically for GD get the translated version of this page "Installazione di php+apache+mysql su OSX" and note the packages that need to be installed before GD. Note: make sure XDarwin is running before you run "make test' for GD

See also

mh/code/bruce/viavoice_control.pl