USB synthesizers

[acollins at icsmail.net]

Hi William.  As you may be aware, you can buy generic usb to serial
converters, that could be used to attached any serial speech synthesizer to a
computer via a usb connection.  If I were writing a wish list, I could
wish that the drivers for serial synthesizers could be modified to check
for a usb serial port with a synth on it, and use that if found.  I've
been told that this is a lot of work, and I'm not a programmer, else I'd
volunteer to help.  But could you consider adding this to the Speakup
to do list?  In fact, I think the drivers, could be written to act much
like the softsynnth driver, since when you plug a generic usb serial
converter in, it gets assigned to /dev/ttyUSB and 1a number, starting at
0.  In this way, Speakup could simply use a generic usb to serial
connection as soon as the usb system becomes available  after boot up,
and any new drivers that needed to be written could be run in user
space.  It seems to me that they could be written to use the softsynthn
interface, but just written to output to a specifi synth on a specified
ttyUSB device.  Thanks for your consideration in advance.

Gene Collins

>On Mon, Feb 22, 2010 at 10:25:08AM -0600, William Hubbs wrote:
>> Actually this is being worked on.  I have sent email to the
>> manufacturer (Access Solutions) last week about getting the specs.  I'll
>> let you know what happens there.
> 
> The latest on this is that Access Solutions is being helpful.  I have a
> driver for the triple talk that is a work in progress.  This is not a
> speakup driver, but a driver that creates a device in /dev which user
> space applications will be able to communicate with.
>
>The issues I still have have to do with how to handle indexing, the
>shutup command, and reading information back from the synthesizer.
>
>This has been a slow project, because I am working on several other
>projects as well.
>
>I will keep everyone updated.
>
>William
>
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