Hardware Reference
In-Depth Information
Figure 2-4:
Toy post-surgery
showing no ill
effects. Touch
the wires
together to
make the toy
move.
Making It Talk
You'll use the espeak text-to-speech (TTS) program to read aloud the tweets.
How TTS Works
A TTS engine typically works by splitting the words into syllables and then synthesising the
word by concatenating (combining) corresponding sounds. In most TTS engines, the com-
puter has no understanding of the words, so the output is monotone. However, TTS is an
exciting area of research in computer science, attempting to make it sound more human.
Latest research efforts include modelling the human voice box to generate more realistic
sounds on virtual vocal chords, and another project to try and understand what is being said
to vary pitch, delivery speed and rhythm.
After you've followed the instructions below to install espeak, you can see more about
what espeak is doing if you run it with
-X
. For example, from a terminal run
espeak -X
“hello world”
.
