Installation

How to install the developer version of Parula on your Linux PC. (A Windows installer and Android version for end-users are planned for the future.)

1. Hardware dependencies

   1. Microphone: You must have a good microphone. Typical computer/notebook microphones are not sufficient.

      • For example, the Sony PlayStation 3 Eye camera or a conference microphone.

   2. Loud speaker, obviously.

   3. Normal desktop CPU.

      • Raspberry Pi 4 is planned.

2. Install OS dependencies

   • Ubuntu, Debian etc.

     • # apt install yarnpkg mpg123 mpd sox libasound2-dev default-jre-headless default-jdk git

   • Fedora, RedHat etc.

     1. Install RPM Fusion (for mpd)

        • # dnf install https://download1.rpmfusion.org/free/fedora/rpmfusion-free-release-$(rpm -E %fedora).noarch.rpm

     2. # dnf install mpg123 mpd sox alsa-lib-devel java-1.8.0-openjdk-headless java-1.8.0-openjdk-devel git

     3. Install Yarn

        1. Complete step 3 below.

        2. $ npm install -g yarn

   • Mac

     1. # brew node yarn sox mpd mpg123 openjdk git

     2. Skip step 3.

3. Install node.js

   1. Download node version 14.x.

      • node version 16 and 18 do not work.

   2. Extract the archive somewhere.

   3. ln -s/your/path/to/node//usr/local/bin/node

4. Install MaryTTS

   1. git clone https://github.com/marytts/marytts/

   2. Build it with ./gradlew

   3. Install voices by running``wget grep location.*cmu-slt download/marytts-components.xml|sed -e "s|.*href=\"||" -e "s|\".*||"``` unzip voice-cmu-slt-5.2.zip or alternatively starting the UI app./gradlew runInstallerGui`

      • en-US cmu-slt

      • en-US cmu-rms

      • en-GB dfki-spike

      • en-GB dfki-prudence

   4. Restart the server: ./gradlew run

   5. Open http://localhost:59125 in a browser, to check whether the server is running and the voices are listed in the dropdown.

5. Download data files

   1. Download the Parula app data files

   2. cd to the Parula source directory

   3. mkdir data

   4. cd data/

   5. tar xjf /path/to/parula-data.tar.bz2

   6. mkdir deepspeech-0.9.3-models

      • The DeepSpeech model version needs to match the version of DeepSpeech npm module perfectly.

   7. cd deepspeech-0.9.3-models/

   8. Download the DeepSpeech 0.9.3 model file and DeepSpeech 0.9.3 scorer file into this directory.

   9. They are 1.2 GB, so while they download, you can already adjust config.json, see step 6.3. below.

6. Install node packages

   1. cd to the Parula source directory

   2. yarn install

   3. cp config-min.json config.json

   4. Adapt config.json

7. Run Parula

   1. cd to the Parula source directory

   2. yarn start

   3. You should see

      (...)
      Applications loaded:
        clock: success
      (...)
      Listening to your command...

   4. Say "Hey Edison, what time is it?"

   5. Find more commands to say by looking at app/*/intents.en.json

8. Configure the applications

9. Create your own voice apps :-)

   1. Implement your voice commands in JavaScript, with the help of npm modules.