[arm-allstar] Update on Weather Scripts and TTS

[Doug Crompton]

If you have been listening here the last week or using the weather scripts you probably know by now that Google has limited repetitive use of their free online TTS converter. Google TTS is a great asset but unfortunately if everyone starts using it I guess you can understand why they would set limits. 

We made the Google TTS available in the BBB and RPi2 releases for use in ID's, Weather scripts, etc.  If you are not using weather scripts and do not intend to in the future then this Google change will probably not effect you. If you are then at least for now weather reporting will probably not work or may stop working for you in the future.

We are working on fixes for this but unfortunately at least so far none are as good as Google. Cepstral has a package for the RPi2 that works and sounds good but they are a bastard company to work with at least for amateur radio. The package is reasonable - $29.95 - but they require a $100 public broadcast license even for amateur radio for EVERY user. We also could not distribute even their demo package in the image which could then easily be upgraded to full use. So each user would have to purchase the code and license and install it on their own. Not a practical idea and few if any would want to spend the money. It is a shame when companies like this don't make exceptions for amateur radio. It could only help their business.

Espeak is probably one of the better (if you want to call it that) free packages for TTS for Linux. If you are use to the Google TTS it will sound like crap to you. For the most part understandable but not great quality. This may be our only option for general distribution.

Using Alison and the existing pre-recorded words is also an option we are looking at. It certainly would not have as much flexibility though as it would be limited to existing words but it could report weather specifics like temperature, humidity, wind speed, etc.

So the bottom line is their is no really good free or inexpensive option. If anyone has any ideas or suggestions on this please lets us know.

Google TTS will still be usable for occasional ID or text conversion. Just be careful how many times you use it on a single IP over a certain period. The period is not known! Until we make changes and have an update you should disable weather forecasts and alerts as repetitive use will make Google TTS not work at all.

73 Doug
WA3DSP
http://www.crompton.com/hamradio

 		 	   		  
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.hamvoip.org/pipermail/arm-allstar/attachments/20150729/fe3d674c/attachment.html>