Linux audio flows

The following link is thanks to mru in beagleboard irc channel. the link to the discussion is here.

The interesting thing is unless you work at oss/alsa layer, there are too many higher sound server options...

IMHO, flexibility vs scaring folks off... ;)

Overo: yet another low cost OMAP3 development board

Gumstix guys have been a fun bunch known to create tiny little boards at low costs.. Overo seems to be their solution for OMAP3! check it out here. lots of the linux guys hacking are in the beagle community too.. you can find many(such as Steve Sakoman) in the beagle irc also if you are interested..

IRC games: Customizing Festival voice

Setting basics up:
I use x-chat2 with uberscripts and festival plugin. Tired of the default festival voice, Today's effort was to change the voices ;). I found this to be the best available resource.
Here are the instructions in command format. You can just copy paste the following.

sudo apt-get install festival festlex-cmu festlex-poslex festlex-oald libestools1.2 unzip
sudo apt-get install festvox-don festvox-rablpc16k festvox-kallpc16k festvox-kdlpc16
cd ~/tmp
mkdir hts_tmp
cd hts_tmp/
wget -c http://hts.sp.nitech.ac.jp/archives/2.0.1/festvox_nitech_us_awb_arctic_hts-2.0.1.tar.bz2
wget -c http://hts.sp.nitech.ac.jp/archives/2.0.1/festvox_nitech_us_bdl_arctic_hts-2.0.1.tar.bz2
wget -c http://hts.sp.nitech.ac.jp/archives/2.0.1/festvox_nitech_us_clb_arctic_hts-2.0.1.tar.bz2
wget -c http://hts.sp.nitech.ac.jp/archives/2.0.1/festvox_nitech_us_rms_arctic_hts-2.0.1.tar.bz2
wget -c http://hts.sp.nitech.ac.jp/archives/2.0.1/festvox_nitech_us_slt_arctic_hts-2.0.1.tar.bz2
wget -c http://hts.sp.nitech.ac.jp/archives/2.0.1/festvox_nitech_us_jmk_arctic_hts-2.0.1.tar.bz2
wget -c http://hts.sp.nitech.ac.jp/archives/1.1.1/cmu_us_kal_com_hts.tar.gz
wget -c http://hts.sp.nitech.ac.jp/archives/1.1.1/cstr_us_ked_timit_hts.tar.gz
for t in `ls` ; do tar xvf $t ; done
sudo mkdir -p /usr/share/festival/voices/us
sudo mv lib/voices/us/* /usr/share/festival/voices/us/
sudo mv lib/hts.scm /usr/share/festival/hts.scm
cd ../
rm -rf hts_tmp/

NOTE: I have chosen just the smallest of the voices. In the link I provided previously, MonkeeSage explains other voices.

Testing, Selecting and Configuring the default voice
Start up festival. Note that festival is a "lispy". () form each sentence. (quit) is to quit, (SayText "Hello World") causes festival to speak "Hello World".
Procedure for testing and selecting voice

1. (voice.list) - list all voices available.
2. (voice_) - select as the current voice
3. (SayText "Hello World") - Say the text Hello World
   
4. Repeat steps 2 and 3 till you find the voice which you are ok with.
5. (quit) - to exit from festival
   

Example:

(voice.list)
(voice_rab_diphone)
(SayText "magnetic interferance from money/credit cards")
(voice_ked_diphone)
(SayText "waste water tank overflowed onto computer")
(voice_kal_diphone)
(SayText "nesting roaches shorted out the ether cable")
(voice_nitech_us_jmk_arctic_hts)
(SayText "need to wrap system in aluminum foil to fix problem")
(voice_nitech_us_bdl_arctic_hts)
(SayText "Groundskeepers stole the root password")
(voice_nitech_us_rms_arctic_hts)
(SayText "your keyboard's space bar is generating spurious keycodes")
(voice_nitech_us_slt_arctic_hts)
(SayText "Communications satellite used by the military for star wars")
(voice_nitech_us_clb_arctic_hts)
(SayText "We didn't pay the Internet bill and it's been cut off")
(voice_nitech_us_awb_arctic_hts)
(SayText "Your cat tried to eat the mouse.")

(Disclaimer: all of the above wordings were "borrowed" from bofh.txt from uberscript)

Next step will be to create/edit your own ~/.festivalrc file using your fav editor(gedit, vim etc..). Mine is as follows:

(set! default_after_synth_hooks
(list (lambda (utt) (utt.wave.rescale utt 1.6 t))))
(set! voice_default 'voice_nitech_us_slt_arctic_hts)

Note: you can change the voice_nitech_us_slt_artic_hts to which ever voice you choose.

50 years of integrated Circuits!!

Jack Kilby invented IC this very day 50 years back :).. And guess what? in his memory, Texas Instruments has started Kilby Labs. We have come some way in the last 50 years.. and beagleboard is one of the shining lights of what our technology really is :)

arm and cortex documentation

thanks to beagle board irc (#beagle on freenode), found this link useful:
http://infocenter.arm.com/help/topic/com.arm.doc.ddi0344e/index.html
It is literally a goldmine for those working on ARM processors!