content: setting-up-itfdb-with-a-voice
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| ryan | technology | In a [previous post](/itfdb.html) I wrote about my Raspberry Pi experiment to have the SenseHat display a scrolling message 10 minutes before game time. One of the things I have wanted to do since then is have Vin Scully’s voice come from a speaker and say those five magical words, `It's time for Dodger Baseball!` I found a clip of [Vin on Youtube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4KwFuGtGU6c) saying that (and a little more). I wasn’t sure how to get the audio from that YouTube clip though. After a bit of googling1 I found a command line tool called [youtube- dl](https://rg3.github.io/youtube-dl/). The tool allowed me to download the video as an `mp4` with one simple command: youtube-dl https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4KwFuGtGU6c Once the mp4 was downloaded I needed to extract the audio from the `mp4` file. Fortunately, `ffmpeg` is a tool for just this type of exercise! I modified [this answer from StackOverflow](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/9913032/ffmpeg-to-extract- audio-from-video) to meet my needs ffmpeg -i dodger_baseball.mp4 -ss 00:00:10 -t 00:00:9.0 -q:a 0 -vn -acodec copy dodger_baseball.aac This got me an `aac` file, but I was going to need an `mp3` to use in my Python script. Next, I used a [modified version of this suggestion](https://askubuntu.com/questions/35457/converting-aac-to-mp3-via- command-line) to create write my own command ffmpeg -i dodger_baseball.aac -c:a libmp3lame -ac 2 -b:a 190k dodger_baseball.mp3 I could have probably combined these two steps, but … meh. OK. Now I have the famous Vin Scully saying the best five words on the planet. All that’s left to do is update the python script to play it. Using guidance from [here](https://raspberrypi.stackexchange.com/questions/7088/playing- audio-files-with-python) I updated my `itfdb.py` file from this: if month_diff == 0 and day_diff == 0 and hour_diff == 0 and 0 >= minute_diff >= -10: message = '#ITFDB!!! The Dodgers will be playing {} at {}'.format(game.game_opponent, game.game_time) sense.show_message(message, scroll_speed=0.05) To this: if month_diff == 0 and day_diff == 0 and hour_diff == 0 and 0 >= minute_diff >= -10: message = '#ITFDB!!! The Dodgers will be playing {} at {}'.format(game.game_opponent, game.game_time) sense.show_message(message, scroll_speed=0.05) os.system("omxplayer -b /home/pi/Documents/python_projects/itfdb/dodger_baseball.mp3") However, what that does is play Vin’s silky smooth voice every minute for 10 minutes before game time. Music to my ears but my daughter was not a fan, and even my wife who LOVES Vin asked me to change it. One final tweak, and now it only plays at 5 minutes before game time and 1 minute before game time: if month_diff == 0 and day_diff == 0 and hour_diff == 0 and 0 >= minute_diff >= -10: message = '#ITFDB!!! The Dodgers will be playing {} at {}'.format(game.game_opponent, game.game_time) sense.show_message(message, scroll_speed=0.05) if month_diff == 0 and day_diff == 0 and hour_diff == 0 and (minute_diff == -1 or minute_diff == -5): os.system("omxplayer -b /home/pi/Documents/python_projects/itfdb/dodger_baseball.mp3") Now, for the rest of the season, even though Vin isn’t calling the games, I’ll get to hear his voice letting me know, “It’s Time for Dodger Baseball!!!” 1. Actually, it was an embarrassing amount ↩︎ | 2018-03-15 | setting-up-itfdb-with-a-voice | In a [previous post](/itfdb.html) I wrote about my Raspberry Pi experiment to have the SenseHat display a scrolling message 10 minutes before game time. One of the things I have wanted to do since then is have Vin Scully’s voice come from a speaker and say those five magical … | Setting up ITFDB with a voice | https://www.ryancheley.com/2018/03/15/setting-up-itfdb-with-a-voice/ |