From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from mta1.math.wisc.edu ([144.92.166.194]) by speech.braille.uwo.ca with esmtp (Exim 3.36 #1 (Debian)) id 1INw3Q-0004Td-00 for ; Wed, 22 Aug 2007 15:39:48 -0400 Received: from ulam.math.wisc.edu (ulam.math.wisc.edu [144.92.166.245]) by mta1.math.wisc.edu (Postfix) with ESMTP id D756274657 for ; Wed, 22 Aug 2007 14:39:12 -0500 (CDT) Received: from vv507j (vv507j.math.wisc.edu [144.92.166.75]) (using TLSv1 with cipher RC4-MD5 (128/128 bits)) (No client certificate requested) by ulam.math.wisc.edu (Postfix) with ESMTP id D28502BDA0 for ; Wed, 22 Aug 2007 14:39:12 -0500 (CDT) Message-ID: <019101c7e4f4$191ca7d0$4ba65c90@vv507j> From: "John Heim" To: "Speakup is a screen review system for Linux." Subject: success w/ USB headset Date: Wed, 22 Aug 2007 14:39:04 -0500 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="iso-8859-1"; reply-type=original Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2900.3138 x-mimeole: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2900.3138 X-UWMath-MailScanner: amavisd-new at math.wisc.edu X-BeenThere: speakup@braille.uwo.ca X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.9 Precedence: list Reply-To: "Speakup is a screen review system for Linux." List-Id: "Speakup is a screen review system for Linux." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Wed, 22 Aug 2007 19:39:48 -0000 I bought a plantronics 510 USB headset a couple of weeks ago. I've been struggling to get a machine with no sound card set up so that it starts talking when I plug in the headset. I finally got it working. 1. Install speakup patched kernel. I am currently using one from Shane's space on debian.org. 2. Install espeak. This actually turned out being critical. I could not get the hotplug system stuff to work with flite or festival. Actually, that may work with newer version of flite or festival but in debian etch, you get flite and festival that depend on oss. But etch runs alsa by default. The alsa-oss module didn't work with the udev subsystem. More on that below. 3. Install speech-dispatcher and speechd-up 4. Add a udev rule to load speech-dispatcher and speechd-up when you connect your headset. This is the tricky part. I can't really explain all there is to know about writing udev rules. A good place to start is here: http://reactivated.net/writing_udev_rules.html A couple of things I discovered though: 1. The alsa-oss module is not available when udev rules are run. In other words, there/s no /dev/dsp. So starting speech-dispatcher will fail if you have it configured to use the oss versions of flite or festival. I think you can recompile flite and festival for alsa. Or you can do what I did and switch to espeak. 2. I found it difficult to get udev (aka hotplug) to not try to start speech several times. I ended up writing a script that first checks if /dev/softsynth exists and exits if it does. If /dev/softsynth does not exist, it runs speech-dispatcher and speechd-up. My udev rule: ACTION=="add",SUBSYSTEM=="usb",SYSFS{idVendor}=="047f",SYSFS{idProduct}=="c001",RUN+="/usr/local/bin/startspeech %k %n" My script /usr/local/bin/startspeech: --- Begin --- #!/bin/sh if [ -e /dev/softsynth ]; then exit fi /etc/init.d/speech-dispatcher restart /etc/init.d/speechd-up restart -- End --- John Heim jheim@math.wisc.edu / 608-263-4189 If you are blind and you use linux, please subscribe to blinux-list@redhat.com