This is my first post, and I hope I’ve read enough here to avoid being charged with failing to do my homework.
I’m aiming to build an ‘appliance’ for a partially-sighted friend that will enable her to listen to the UK ‘Freeview’ (dvb-t) broadcast TV and radio channels. It needs to be voice-operated with appropriate t2s feedback sufficient to select and play the required channel. I started with a borrowed Pi 3b but couldn’t get Picroft to work beyond it wanting to set up WiFi when it was already working. I restarted with Raspbian and added Mycroft. I’m using a Plantronics headset to interact with Mycroft, a USB tuner, and amplified PC speakers for the dvb-t (broadcast) sound. By using the headset I hope to avoid the command mic picking up too much of the broadcast being played through speakers. A better solution further down the line instead of the headset might be a physical button that when pressed mutes the speakers and activates a table mic, perhaps implemented by means of some GPIO stuff. Mplayer in slave mode is doing what I want, and my aim is to use a named pipe to control Mplayer via Mycroft brokered by a suitable skill.
To recap I have a working Mycroft front end and dvb-t backend and need to insert the skill layer, preferably by adapting something nearly ready-made that outputs shell commands. I’ve read about several such skills. My Python skills are zero but I was a programmer in a past life so I’m not entirely clueless. A couple of questions for the community then:
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Which Mycroft skill or skills do you suggest I should ‘borrow’ and adapt to the above purpose?
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Has anyone else been working on applications for the blind/partially sighted using Mycroft? Seems an obvious use but I can’t find anything, here or elsewhere. As an aside, the Royal National Institute for the Blind (RNIB) website showcases a media player for the blind - special buttons, Braille remote control and other whizzy stuff - but it costs about a thousand US dollars. I’m hoping to build something that does a slightly different job and a lot more besides (via the other Mycroft skills) for rather less.
I’d appreciate the benefit of your experience and wisdom. Thanks in anticipation.