Posts

tl;dr - How to generate different types of noise in Python. Fixing An Annoyance I’ve recently been experimenting with using different types of noise to help me relax. As I quickly learned, there are several different types of noise named after different colors. Before starting on this project, I really could only say that one sounded “harsher” than another. I started looking for playlists on Spotify and Youtube for different types to try and see which would help me focus and which would be the most relaxing. Some types mimic sounds in nature like a rain storm, or a waterfall, etc.. The most basic type of noise is white noise and I definitely found it to be the hardest to listen to for any length of time. There are other types like red and pink noise which have the higher frequencies reduced. These types of sound way less like static and are much easier on the ears. ...

What I’m Working On I’ve recently been working on a simple API called Tiny Sound Box to play local sound files in my homelab. The idea being that Home Assistant or any other app I have deployed can play notifications to me out loud. Plus, by using the wyoming-cli app I discussed in a previous post, I can create custom spoken notification messages. For example, I could have a “now on battery backup” message play when the power goes out and I switch to my UPS backup. ...

Last time… In my previous post I discussed creating a client for the Wyoming Protocol called wyoming-cli that could request spoken audio to be generated from text. I decided to continue working on this project and add what I think is the next logical piece of functionality, ASR or automatic speech recognition. This means I should be able to provide either audio data from a microphone or from an audio file and have the speech transcribed. As a bonus since these servers are typically used for talking to smart assistants, getting a response doesn’t take very long. ...

The Setup I was working on a side project the other day and I needed to generate some spoken audio from generated text. This is called “Text to Speech” or “TTS”. There’s also “Speech to Text” or STT, and a few other acronyms to memorize for fun. I’m a huge fan of Home Assistant and last year they had several updates for their “Year of the Voice”. These updates gave the project functionality like those home smart speakers that were super popular for a while. One benefit of having this in Home Assistant is privacy! All your requests to “turn off the kitchen light” will be safely stored away from prying eyes, on a server you trust. ...