Voice Notification System

Want to make the computer remind you the time every hour, so you don't lose track?

Here's a simple voice (I've chosen a female US speaker for this ;-) notification system that will remind every hour the time.

Pre-requisites:

festival

To install festival:

sudo apt-get install festival

Download:

http://www.speech.cs.cmu.edu/cmu_arctic/packed/cmu_us_clb_arctic-0.95-release.tar.bz2

And extract to:

/usr/share/festival/voices/english/cmu_us_clb_arctic_clunits

make sure the directory name ends with clunits.

Next, we must make the downloaded voice the default voice.

Edit, festival.scm which is located here:

/usr/share/festival/festival.scm

And append the line:

(set! voice_default 'voice_cmu_us_clb_arctic_clunits)

save the file and now...we are almost done.

Now to configure festival to speak:

Create a file (say, speak.sh) in your $HOME folder, with these contents:

---------------------

#!/bin/sh

festival --tts <<>

"$*"

EOF

---------------------

Next, create another file (say sayHourly.sh) in any folder (say at $HOME folder) with the following contents:

--------------BEGIN---------------

#!/bin/sh

if [ `w USERNAME -hos | wc -c` -eq 0 ]; then

exit;

fi;

tim=`date '+%l %p' | sed 's/AM/A.M/'`;

/home/USERNAME/speak.sh "It is $tim"

----------------END--------------

(replace USERNAME, with your username)

All set, now to create a cron job that runs your sayHourly.sh every hour. You can customize this to do anything else.

Run: (as yourself)

contab -e

Add this in one line of the file:

---------------------

0 * * * * /home/USERNAME/sayHourly.sh

---------------------

Don't forget to replace USERNAME, with your username.

Now we are all done, enjoy the American Girl telling you the time every hour!