RESOLVED: Node-red-contrib-play-audio Lost Its Voice (files)

Dashboard
1

Things were working fine then audio output stopped a few days ago. In the Play Audio module the voice selection drop-down is missing, no TTS voices are available to select.

I saw there was a 2.5.0 module update so I installed it and rebooted. No change. Then tried to remove the module and reinstall but the remove took it back to 2.4.0 which could not be removed (showed 1 node active but none were).

Where can I download the TTS voice files and where do they live on the file system?

Node-Red is running on a Raspberry Pi with Raspbian and Node-Red up to date.

Peter

2

so 2.4 was working and 2.5 isn't ? - or was 2.4 also not working ?

3

I did not install 2.5 until after audio stopped working. So it broke without a forced update for the Play Audio dashboard module from the admin GUI. But I do need to check the apt logs because I think there were recent Node-RED updates when I did a system update a few days ago.

Peter

4

(sorry to butt in, but I have a similar problem)

What do you mean by the title/subject:

Node-red-contrib-play-audio Lost Its Voice (files)

With attention to the (files) part.

Do you mean the files are now missing, or that the sound is not being played?

5

  1. In the Play Audio module the list of TTS voices is empty. I can no longer select a voice to use. There used to be 3 options to pick from.

  2. When a message payload is sent to the Play Audio module, the Admin dashboard shows “speaking” but no sound is heard.

  3. I do not know if the voice files are physically missing from my system or not. I could find no voice files on the system searching for tts but maybe the name doesn’t contain tts.

Peter

6

Just to check, you have played other audio on the device outside of NR to make sure the pi still plays audio...right?

7

This appears to actually be an issue with the Chromium browser on the Pi. The Pi is in a comm closet and not setup with a display and peripherals. I mostly manage it using RDP from a desktop or laptop. What I observed this morning:

  1. If I RDP into the Pi (this is from a Windows 10 desktop), the problem is as I described. In the Play Sound module no sound is heard and the module lists no voices to be selected. This is using Chromium on the Pi to access the Node-RED admin dashboard.

  2. If I use the Edge browser from my Windows desktop and go into the Node-RED admin dashboard (no RDP), speech is heard and voices can be selected in the Play Audio module. (I can select from David, Zira, and Mark.)

So what I experienced as a change in behavior is actually behavior differences between 2 different methods of accessing the Node-RED admin dashboard. So I do not have an issue with Node-RED itself.

There is a third method, of course, for accessing the Node-RED admin dashboard - using a monitor and keyboard directly attached to the Pi. So I moved the Pi to a display and this yields the same results as #1 - no audio when Play Sound is speaking and no voices available for selection. I did play some wav files outside Node-RED and verified sound is working on the Pi.

The net of all this: There is an anomaly with Chromium on the Pi in both hearing sound from the Play Sound module, and in properly showing the tts voice options when editing a flow. But I can do what I need using a remote browser and will move on now...

Peter

1 Like
8

Thanks for letting us know. Yes the Pi version is somewhat cut down apparently.

9

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