Trouble playing audio file

sdetweil

@mZuil if u bring up YouTube do you get audio?

my Ubuntu has lost access to my sound device
. haven’t figured that out yet

mZuil

@sdetweil Yeah, the monitor I use has speakers and I have tried to reproduce YouTube and even this mp3 o wav file without the Magic Mirror started and it works, but when I call some functions to execute the audio with the Magic Mirror it doesn’t work. I am generating this audio with gtts and I don’t know if the problem is because those two actions are executed at the same time:

const gTTS = require('gtts');
var play = require('play').Play();
var gtts = new gTTS('text to speak', 'es-es');
gtts.save('/tmp/hello.wav', function (err, result) {
  if(err) { throw new Error(err) }
  console.log('Success! Open file /tmp/hello.mp3 to hear result.');
});
play.sound('/tmp/hello.wav');

The code below is one of the many attempts I have tried :(
Thanks for the response!

sdetweil

@mZuil can u run this piece of code from a terminal window?

put the code in xxx.js

then
node xxx.js

does it work?

mZuil

@sdetweil Sorry, I couldn’t try it before.
It doesn’t work :( I am a beginner and I don’t understand well what is happening, could you help me, please? :crying_face:

sdetweil

@mZuil what does the play() library say about sound output configuration?

https://github.com/Marak/play.js#readme
requirements:

One of the CLI based audio player

CLI means Command Line Interface

I think you should have seen this error

      console.log('No suitable audio player could be found - exiting.'.red);

sdetweil

@mZuil none of the players listed in his code and doc are installed on raspberry pi os by default.

bugsounet

@sdetweil the problem is not there…
The problem is you can’t play a file when it’s not fully created!

2 solutions:
Make a promise
Or play the file when the file is created

sdetweil

@bugsounet ah yes good catch. I jumped to play()…

move the play() inside the callback on save()

players will be the next problem

bugsounet

just because sometime i'm kind... (my favorite sentence!)

Try this:

const gTTS = require('gtts');
var player = require('play-sound')(
  opts = {
    player: "mpg123" // use only `mpg123` for playing sounds
  }
);
var gtts = new gTTS('text to speak', 'es-es');

// main file player 
function playing (file) {
  player.play(file, (err) => {
    if (err) throw new Error(err)
  });
}

gtts.save('/tmp/hello.wav', (err, result) => {
  if(err) { throw new Error(err) }
  console.log('Success! start playing result.');
  // right ! sound file is created let's play it !
  playing("/tmp/hello.wav");
});

Notes:

You need to install mpg123 app with sudo apt-get install mpg123
I replace your play library by play-sound for better compatibility
Don’t forget to install this library npm install play-sound
You can see manual of play-sound library there

mZuil

Thanks to both of you!
I have just tried the code and it works in a js file, but when I try to replicate this code in the MMirror I get the error that opts is not defined. Where do I have to declare opts?