Andrej Tozon shared this cool project, one that any Windows 10 IoT UWP Dev will enjoy reading…
One of the best features I’ve found in using Windows 10 IoT Core on my home Raspberry Pi (which is a small, inexpensive piece of hardware) is, it can do voice synthesis very well (i.e. it can “speak”). While Windows developers could develop applications with this same functionality for quite a long time, I was still overwhelmed when I saw such small device say anything I ordered it to. It currently may not support all the options and voices older platforms do, but it’s more than enough for scenarios like home automation, notifications, etc. The fact that Windows 10 IoT Core even supports Cortana means Microsoft has big plans for IoT Core and voice recognition an synthesis.
When building my house a few years ago, I’ve put in a pair of audio cables going to both of two floors, to be later able to install two small (but powerful) speakers into a central ceiling of each floor. A private little whole house audio/ambient music system, if you will. I’ve plugged them into an amplifier installed in my utility room and connected to a Raspberry Pi running Windows IoT Core. [Sure, it’s all possible and doable wireless as well, but I’d still trust wired installations over wireless, so if given a chance, I’d pick wires anytime].
Windows 10 IoT Core
So Why Windows IoT Core? …
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Development
What I’ll be using:
- Visual Studio 2017 – see here for downloads,
- Raspberry Pi 3 with latest Windows 10 IoT Core installed – see here for download and instructions on how to install it.
I’ll also be using …
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SpeechSynthesizer
The SpeechSynthesizer class has been around for quite a while and in various implementations across different frameworks. I’ll use the one what we’ve currently got on Windows 10 / UWP, where it sits under the Windows.Media.SpeechSynthesis namespace. …
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What’s Coming with Windows 10 Fall Creators update
There are additional options you can set to SpeechSynthesizer. Adding to existing IncludeSentenceBoundaryMetadata and IncludeWordBoundaryMetadata properties, the forthcoming Windows 10 Fall Creators update is looking to add some new interesting ones…
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Speech
It only takes a few lines to actually produce something with SpeechSynthesizer: add a MediaPlayer to the SpeechService class, along with the new SayAsync method:…
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Ready to tell time
We need another method for telling time, here’s an example:
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Deploying to a device
There are many ways to deploy your app to an IoT Core device, but I usually find it easiest to deploy from within Visual Studio.
Open project’s Property pages and select Debug page. Find the Start options section, select Remote Machine as Target Device and hit the Find button. If your device is online, it will be listed in the Auto Detected list. Select it, leaving Authentication Mode to Universal.
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Wrap up
We’ve created a small background app that literally tells time, running on a number of small devices that support Windows 10 IoT Core. In future posts, I’ll add additional features, some of them I’ve introduced in the beginning of this blog post.
Full source code from this post is available on github.
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