Jean Claude,
If I am not mistaken, the Emic2 is based on an epson chip, the V1L30130 or
similar
This came out a few months before I retired and I took a look at the
documentation for the chip its self.
It was entirely beyond my feeble little abilities so i passed it to another
"real" programmer who had the same reaction.
I assume the Emic2 is a module with the epson chip or a chinese knockoff at
its core
We'll see what Joe Steven finds out about it.
Hopefully they've improved it and/or the docs.
Tom Fowle
On Fri, Dec 20, 2019 at 06:08:49AM -0500, Jean-Claude Provost wrote:
Hi,===========================================================
I'd played with this EMIC2 DecTalk &, was a bit disappointed... In spite of
its claims to support the DecTalk protocol &/or voice parameters, I was
pretty much unable to achieve any other voice modifications other than the
rate & volume. That, I found, was quite a drag singce the default voices
were not very sexy sounding for my liking...
I called for support & the guy who took the call seem to have no idea what I
was talking about & provided no help whatsoever... Hence my considering the
MP3 approach for applications where pre-defined speech is sufficient.
Cheers,
Jean-Claude Provost
-----Original Message-----
From: raspberry-vi-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <raspberry-vi-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
On Behalf Of Tom Fowle
Sent: Wednesday, December 18, 2019 11:06 PM
To: raspberry-vi@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [raspberry-vi] Re: Pi 0 W espeak as a stand alone speech synth?
Mike,
Lots of interesting possibilities, many of which I hadn't thought of.
In the case which started me thinking of this, a ham transciever kit uses an
Arduino Uno using a touch screen for visual control. Folks on the
blind-hams list want to make it accessible.
Turns out there is a "dec-talk" on a chip module the EMIC2 costing about
$50.00 so that will probably be how they do it. I think the EMIC2 uses a
basic serial interface.
The guy working on the project, Joe Steven does JAWS scripting so feels
confident he can hack the Arduino code readilly.
Tom Fowle
On Wed, Dec 18, 2019 at 08:33:04AM +0000, Michael A Ray wrote:
Hello,world.
As a programmer of thirty years, the last twenty with Linux and
considerable experience of APIs and client/server systems, I always
think much more deeply when trying to work out an idea.
I like the idea of something like a Pi Zero being a speech synth for
an Arduino. Speech and sound in general is something lacking in Arduino
server.
There are speech synth chip shields for Arduino, but they are very
expensive.
There could be a number of ways of connecting an Arduino to a Zero:
1. I2C
2. SPI
3. UART
4. TCP/UDP with an Ethernet shield on the Arduino
The first three are three different methods of serial connection. If
you chose I2C, then more than one Arduino could connect to the I2C bus
on a single Pi.
With SPI and UART the connection would be one to one.
In all these serial connection methods you would need to design some
kind of protocol. Possibly based on the old Hayes MODEM protocol.
With TCP or UDP connection via an Ethernet shield on the Arduino, I
would go for delivering JSON strings to the Pi which it could easily
parse and speak the contents.
The advantage of doing it this way is any device on your network, or
on the other side of the world if you exposed your Zero, could make
your Zero speak.
In all of these cases, the lack of hardware-handshaking on USB to
serial adaptors is irrelevant. It is only SpeakUp that needs this.
In this architecture the Arduino becomes the client, and the Zero the
speech server. But I would use a regular Pi, since sound on the Zero
is non-existent without some fiddling.
If the Ethernet protocol used was UDP rather than TCP, no connection
is necessary and multiple clients can connect at the same time.
Same is true for TCP, but you would need a server capable of forking
to handle requests.
This is a nice idea.
I will look into whether there are any eSpeak binding for node.js, in
which case writing a server for the Pi would be trivial. There
certainly are for Python, and again such a server there would be
fairly easy.
And delivering UDP packets from an Arduino Ethernet shield is simple.
Mike
On 18/12/2019 04:12, Tom Fowle wrote:
Hi Mike,
Wow, this is a more complex answer than I expected, will require study.
I was thinking of designs for Arduino with the 0W acting as an
external speech synthesizer some ham kits and like projects.
However it seems like modules like the emec2 are probably better
suited to this kind of work.
Thanks for detailed reply.
Tom Fowle
On Tue, Dec 17, 2019 at 11:08:30AM +0000, Michael A Ray wrote:
Hello,
I think there is little chance of this working.
Reasons are stated below.
I think that in the past all external hardware speech synthesisers,
such as the DECTalk Express, and the Dolphin Apollo and Juno range,
were all connected by serial ports, not USB ports.
All these hardware synthesisers depended on hardware handshaking.
Using the serial port pins as signals to do such things as pause
speech, or flush the buffer.
As a consequence, at least SpeakUp, the console screen reader, was
written to utilise this.
I don't think USB to serial adaptors based on the PL2303 and FTDI
chips support hardware handshaking. The FTDI chip might, but the
PL2303 almost certainly does not.
In addition, I do not think there are any speech-dispatcher modules
written for hardware synthesisers connected in any way.
It might be possible to produce something with an Arduino, with an
attached MAX232 TTL to RS232 level adaptor and a speech synthesis
shield. But such shields for the Arduino are expensive.
One way to go would be to write a version of speechd-up, or
eSpeakUp that connects over TCP to another machine running a TCP
synth.
Such TCP client and server programs are easy to write with either
Python or node.js.
Then a server running on a more powerful machine could be the speech
is not already.
But what hardware are you suggesting that is so weak that a Pi Zero
is more powerful? Or is it just because the Zero would only be the
synth and not be doing anything else?
I have a Python client/server pair half-written which makes
Emacspeak speak in Windows Subsystem for Linux, WSL. But I am sure
it is only a matter of time before WSL is sound enabled anyway. If it
Pi Foundation.
Mike
On 16/12/2019 05:34, Tom Fowle wrote:
Has anybody run the Pi 0W with espeak and a serial I2C interface
to create theequivelent of a stand alone speech synthesizer?
The purpose being making devices accessible which have serial or
i2C ports but not enough power to support text to speech themselves.
If the 0W can't hack it, which PI would do the job at the lowest cost.
Thanks
tom Fowle WA6IVG
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--
Michael A. Ray
Analyst/Programmer
Witley, Surrey, South-east UK
"Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but
when there is nothing left to take away." -- A. de Saint-Exupery
https://cromarty.github.io/
http://eyesfreelinux.ninja/
http://www.raspberryvi.org/
===========================================================
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Administrative contact: <mike.ray@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
-----------------------------------------------------------
Raspberry Pi and the Raspberry Pi logo are trademarks of the Raspberry
views and attitudes expressed by the subscribers to this list do not reflect
This list is not affiliated to the Raspberry Pi Foundation and the
those of the Foundation.
Pi Foundation.===========================================================
Mike Ray, list creator, January 2013
The raspberry-vi mailing list
Archives: //www.freelists.org/archives/raspberry-vi
Administrative contact: <mike.ray@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
-----------------------------------------------------------
Raspberry Pi and the Raspberry Pi logo are trademarks of the Raspberry
and attitudes expressed by the subscribers to this list do not reflect those
This list is not affiliated to the Raspberry Pi Foundation and the views
of the Foundation.
Foundation.
Mike Ray, list creator, January 2013
--
Michael A. Ray
Analyst/Programmer
Witley, Surrey, South-east UK
"Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but
when there is nothing left to take away." -- A. de Saint-Exupery
https://cromarty.github.io/
http://eyesfreelinux.ninja/
http://www.raspberryvi.org/
===========================================================
The raspberry-vi mailing list
Archives: //www.freelists.org/archives/raspberry-vi
Administrative contact: <mike.ray@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
-----------------------------------------------------------
Raspberry Pi and the Raspberry Pi logo are trademarks of the Raspberry Pi
and attitudes expressed by the subscribers to this list do not reflect those
This list is not affiliated to the Raspberry Pi Foundation and the views
of the Foundation.
===========================================================
Mike Ray, list creator, January 2013
The raspberry-vi mailing list
Archives: //www.freelists.org/archives/raspberry-vi
Administrative contact: <mike.ray@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
-----------------------------------------------------------
Raspberry Pi and the Raspberry Pi logo are trademarks of the Raspberry Pi
Foundation.
This list is not affiliated to the Raspberry Pi Foundation and the views and
attitudes expressed by the subscribers to this list do not reflect those of
the Foundation.
Mike Ray, list creator, January 2013
===========================================================
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Archives: //www.freelists.org/archives/raspberry-vi
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-----------------------------------------------------------
Raspberry Pi and the Raspberry Pi logo are trademarks of the Raspberry Pi
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This list is not affiliated to the Raspberry Pi Foundation and the views and
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Mike Ray, list creator, January 2013
