OVOS Listener - Microphone

OVOS uses microphone plugins to support different setups and devices.

NOTE only ovos-dinkum-listener has this support.

The default plugin that OVOS uses is ovos-microphone-plugin-alsa and for most cases should work fine.

If you are running OVOS on a Mac, you need a different plugin to access the audio. ovos-microphone-plugin-sounddevice

OVOS microphone plugins are available on PyPi

pip install ovos-microphone-plugin-sounddevice

or

pip install --pre ovos-microphone-plugin-sounddevice

for the latest alpha versions.

NOTE The alpha versions may be needed until the release of ovos-core 0.1.0

List of OVOS microphone plugins

Plugin	Usage
ovos-microphone-plugin-alsa	Default plugin - should work in most cases
ovos-microphone-plugin-sounddevice	This plugin is needed when running OVOS on a Mac but also works on other platforms
ovos-microphone-plugin-socket	Used to connect a websocket microphone for remote usage
ovos-microphone-plugin-files	Will use a file as the voice input instead of a microphone
ovos-microphone-plugin-pyaudio	Uses PyAudio for audio processing
ovos-microphone-plugin-arecord	Uses arecord to get input from the microphone. In some cases this may be faster than the default alsa

Configuration

Microphone plugin configuration is located under the top level listener value.

{
    "listener": {
        "microphone": {
            "module": "ovos-microphone-plugin-alsa",
            "ovos-microphone-plugin-alsa": {
                "device": "default"
            }
        }
    }
}

The only required section is "module". The plugin will then use the default values.

The "device" section is used if you have several microphones attached, this can be used to specify which one to use.

Specific plugins may have other values that can be set. Check the GitHub repo of each plugin for more details.