Hello,
I am super new at this. I have never done anything with Raspberry Pi until this project. I am have gotten to connect to the internet but haven’t gotten pass that because I can’t figure out how to get a sound output or the voice to work. I have tried the modification from the Picroft documentation site but nothing works. Am I supposed to proceed through the set up completely then change the voice interface? What am I missing? Please help.
FWIW, I tried to get Picroft running with that bonnet but failed. I describe it briefly in Picroft - Headphones - No Output Sound - #13 by mcdonc
I read that and just don’t really understand how to do the set up with it.
Well, as I mentioned, even though I was able to get it to output sound, it really didn’t work very well at all. But basically I had to configure it so that it used PulseAudio. To be honest, I’m not even sure I can recall the steps. But that would be the place to start searching on the forum. In reality, however, you might want to use a different mic/speaker combination.
Hey Sin, have you been through Adafruits setup guide already?
I noticed they have a page dedicated to audio setup for this device which includes the necessary drivers:
Yeah i install the drivers and it still didn’t work. I think i am just going to switch to a different combination. This is for a school project and I only have to much time to mess with it.
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I think that’s wise. FWIW, the best experience I had was with the AIY voice hat v1. It’s no longer made, but it may be available on EBay and so on. If you don’t care about looks, I’ve also had pretty good luck with logitech usb speakphones.
Have you tried the AIY Voice ‘bonnet’ v2? I was wondering if you have a comparison between that and the V1 hat.
I haven’t messed around with this.
I am currently looking into support for that 2mic hat.
As soon as i have it working, i will report back.
I’m working on trying to get the voice bonnet setup but I’m not sure which option to select on the setup wizard?
How do you want Mycroft to output audio:
- Speakers via 3.5mm output (aka ‘audio jack’ or ‘headphone jack’)
- HDMI audio (e.g. a TV or monitor with built-in speakers)
- USB audio (e.g. a USB soundcard or USB mic/speaker combo)
- Google AIY Voice HAT and microphone board (Voice Kit v1)
- ReSpeaker Mic Array v2.0 (speaker plugged in to Mic board)
I’m guessing maybe the Google AIY but I tried that along with adding in the extra lines from the Picroft setup page but no luck so far.
I have an instance with the AIY Voice bonnet v2 working. Basically, you have to enable the google repositories and install the drivers. I followed this and mycroft used both the mic and the speaker as default.
Anyone got Picroft working with Adafruit voice bonnet ? I didn’t find the solution …
Tried installing the Adafruit software, adapting the default.pa file … Got the mic working and the speaker connected to the Pi. But no way to have the whole thing working. Gonna try again later
I finally did it by installing first Raspberry Pi OS, then Adafruit Voice Bonnet, and last Mycroft on top of all that. I now have to switch to french.
Got it working in french. Now let’s get to the skills
So you didn’t use Picroft at all?
I’m new to Mycroft but not to software in general. I got the Pi 4 working with the Voice Bonnet with (almost) no trouble by following the Adafruit directions. The only real software problem is that the test of the microphone that they specify did not work (it threw an error, which might be related to Mycroft having been running in the background). The only hardware problems were that if your heatsink is too tall, it won’t fit on the header. And regardless, it is unlikely to fit under the fan in a case.
Regarding setting it up: I installed Picorft before I had this device so I said to skip the setup (or I may have said to use the headphone jack). After I did that, it was able to output over HDMI regardless. I did not have to make the changes to /etc/pulse/default.pa suggested here In fact it did NOT work well at all after those changes.
After installing the bonnet it just started working. No Picroft changes.
All that said it is not really a sensitive as, say, Alexa. I have to speak loudly and slowly. (Maybe the alsa level controls need tweaking). But it does work.
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Oops: Slight change. The audio is still coming from HDMI, not from the Bonnet. Probably a bit of tweaking involved.
Yet more to the above. I have never gotten the 3.5mm output of the Voice Bonnet to work. The microphones were working for a while, but I managed to mess that up when fooling around with the alsa config. Going back to the original it still does not work. Grrrrr.
Ah, too bad I did not see this. But regardless, I just bought a Playstation Eye and the microphone works wonderfully. I just plugged it in and it worked! (I was using a USB sound card before so I may have had to do a bit of tweaking, but the setup script include USB microphone, I think). Anyway, I’m using the standard output from the Pi for the speaker. No need for a separate output device.