Merge branch 'sounddevice'

programs/speechSynthesis/README.md

@@ -2,32 +2,46 @@
 
 ## Installation
 
-Through pip:
+Note that **Python 3.9+ is required**. Through pip:
 
 ```bash
-pip3 install mycroft-mimic3-tts
+pip install piper-tts
 ```
 
-Alternatively, install from sources: https://github.com/MycroftAI/mimic3
+Alternatively, install from sources: <https://github.com/rhasspy/piper>
 
 ## Download voice models
 
-All voice data is located in a separate repository: https://github.com/MycroftAI/mimic3-voices
+All voice data is stored in Hugging Face: <https://huggingface.co/rhasspy/piper-voices>
 
-To manually issue the download of all Spanish voices, run:
+By default, `speechSynthesis` assumes `--context speechSynthesis --from speechSynthesis.ini`, i.e. it will spawn a `ResourceFinder` instance and look for a `speechSynthesis.ini` placed in a `speechSynthesis/` directory following the [YARP data directory specification](https://www.yarp.it/latest/yarp_data_dirs.html). These default context and configuration file can be modified via command line arguments, although it shouldn't be necessary. Voice models need to be downloaded either manually or via `piper` into the sibling directory of the .ini configuration file.
+
+It is advised to import the `speechSynthesis` context after installating the speech repository:
 
 ```bash
-mimic3-download 'es_ES/*'
+yarp-config context --import speechSynthesis
 ```
 
-In case the process gets stuck, download and unpack the files into `${HOME}/.local/share/mycroft/mimic3/voices`. However, you'll probably need to download the *generator.onnx* file separately (via GitHub) since it is handled by Git LFS.
+This command will copy the installed context into a writable user-local path such as `$HOME/.local/share/yarp/contexts/speechSynthesis`. Change into this directory and run `piper` (see examples below) to automatically download the voice models, or download them manually from the Hugging Face repository and place them here.
+
+The following command will output nothing, it simply downloads the model (if available in Hugging Face) and blocks the terminal since it expects input from stdin (kill it with Ctrl+C after the download is complete):
+
+```bash
+piper --model es_ES-davefx-medium
+```
 
 ## Troubleshooting
 
-Try this:
+Try this (requires `pip install aplay`):
+
+```bash
+echo "hola, me llamo teo y tengo 10 años" | piper --model es_ES-davefx-medium --output-raw | aplay -r 22050 -f S16_LE -t raw -
+```
+
+Alternatively, keep the application open while reading from stdin:
 
 ```bash
-mimic3 --voice es_ES/m-ailabs#tux "hola, me llamo teo y tengo 10 años"
+piper --model es_ES-davefx-medium --output-raw | aplay -r 22050 -f S16_LE -t raw -
 ```
 
-To enable GPU acceleration, run `pip3 install onnxruntime-gpu` and issue the `mimic3` command with `--cuda`. The `speechSynthesis` app also accepts this parameter.
+To enable GPU acceleration, run `pip install onnxruntime-gpu` and issue the `piper` command with `--cuda`. The `speechSynthesis` app also accepts this parameter.