No, got distracted by other things. Need to get back to that, and as it happens, I have a little time right now, so let’s see…
Looks like ResponsiveVoice is moving toward a rent-seeking Javascript/page-based service and away from delivering sound files to be played externally. They old interface works directly still, but it’s not easy to find any information about it on their site (I ended up finding it on stackoverflow). I have a working test URL but the same fails in the Sonos plugin for reasons I haven’t yet discovered/am still looking into. But, as a service for the Sonos plugin, its days may be numbered.
Hi Patrick,
Have not had any luck getting RV to work since your last post. Had MaryTTS installed on a Windows 10 VM that was working for a while, but has also died. Have you looked at Polly or Voice RSS as possible alternatives?
Thanks,
Roger
I haven’t had any time to play with TTS since 5/23–I got my kids through various exams and then a bunch of travel. The last month has been a blur.
Anyway, I can’t see why MaryTTS would just stop working, unless it got updated and some change is affecting the Sonos plugin (or Sonos got updated and broke its interface to MaryTTS). I’ve got some time now that the aforementioned activities are done, so let me see what I can figure out in my own setup.
Disclaimer: Just to make sure I’m managing expectations, I have no plan of making TTS a feature of Reactor. The only reason I’m looking at this is for my own education/entertainment, and if I can learn some things that I can pass on to others to help them be successful using RV, MaryTTS, or any other TTS, with or without Reactor, or if it exposes some bug or limitation of Reactor that I can address, or something in the Sonos plugin (which I also use) that I can pass on to its developer, that’s great, but that’s the sum total of it.
OK. So I’ve got no problem running MaryTTS on a local server (Linux VM) and playing back through Sonos. I should say, I now have no problem. I’m not sure where the Sonos code I have came from… it seems to be installed via the Vera app marketplace… but I had to fix several things to get it to play nice. And there’s no chance ANY of the TTS options would have worked the way it was.
Vera says I have Sonos 1.4 installed, but the code is slightly different from the 1.4 that’s in the old Trac database. And there’s mention of a 1.4.2 in the old forums, but I haven’t located that code yet. So, I now need to go on a spelunking expedition to find that mysterious upgrade, and also see which sources have what versions.
OK. That didn’t take too long to unravel. Looks like the app store 1.4 and Trac 1.4 are the same. The version I had running was actually from an update I found elsewhere and posted, which appears to contain changes specifically done for openLuup, but these changes break Sonos (or at least TTS) on Vera Luup.
Anyway, upshot is, MaryTTS working fine on Vera with Sonos 1.4 (pure), with no changes/hacks needed.
I should mention I’m using a Reactor activity to drive TTS on Sonos… there’s no version of the Sonos plugin I have that has a working UI for TTS in its control panel. Others also seem to have this issue, so maybe I’ll dig into that as well. The Playback interface also doesn’t work–none of the JS stuff does, it appears.
EDIT: I’ve got ResponsiveVoice fixed. I’m working on packaging it up.