OpenVoiceOS Dinkum Listener

Documentation can be found in the technical manual

Install

pip install ovos-dinkum-listener[extras] to install this package and the default plugins. Note that by default, either tensorflow or tflite_runtime will need to be installed separately for wakeword detection.

If unable to install tflite_runtime in your platform, you can find wheels here https://whl.smartgic.io/. eg, for pyhon 3.11 in x86 pip install https://whl.smartgic.io/tflite_runtime-2.13.0-cp311-cp311-linux_x86_64.whl

Without extras, wakeword and STT audio upload will be disabled unless you install ovos-backend-client separately. You will also need to manually install, and possibly configure STT, WW, and VAD modules as described below.

Using ovos-vad-plugin-silero is strongly recommended

Configuration

you can set the Wakeword, VAD, STT and Microphone plugins

eg, to run under MacOS you should use https://github.com/OpenVoiceOS/ovos-microphone-plugin-sounddevice

non exhaustive list of config options

{
  "stt": {
    "module": "ovos-stt-plugin-server",
    "fallback_module": "",
    "ovos-stt-plugin-server": {"url": "https://stt.openvoiceos.com/stt"}
  },
  "listener": {
    // NOTE, multiple hotwords are supported, these fields define the main wake_word,
    // this is equivalent to setting "active": true in the "hotwords" section
    // see "hotwords" section at https://github.com/OpenVoiceOS/ovos-config/blob/dev/ovos_config/mycroft.conf
    "wake_word": "hey_mycroft",
    "stand_up_word": "wake_up",
    "microphone": {
      "module": "ovos-microphone-plugin-alsa"
    },
    VAD": {
     // recommended plugin: "ovos-vad-plugin-silero"
     "module": "ovos-vad-plugin-silero",
     "ovos-vad-plugin-silero": {"threshold": 0.2},
     "ovos-vad-plugin-webrtcvad": {"vad_mode": 3}
    },
    // Seconds of speech before voice command has begun
    "speech_begin": 0.1,
    // Seconds of silence before a voice command has finished
    "silence_end": 0.5,
    // Settings used by microphone to set recording timeout with and without speech detected
    "recording_timeout": 10.0,
    // Settings used by microphone to set recording timeout without speech detected.
    "recording_timeout_with_silence": 3.0,
    // max time allowed without user speaking before exiting RECORDING mode
    "recording_mode_max_silence_seconds": 30.0,
    // Setting to remove all silence/noise from start and end of recorded speech (only non-streaming)
    "remove_silence": true,
    // continuous listen is an experimental setting, it removes the need for
    // wake words and uses VAD only, a streaming STT is strongly recommended
    // NOTE: depending on hardware this may cause mycroft to hear its own TTS responses as questions
    "continuous_listen": false,

    // hybrid listen is an experimental setting,
    // it will not require a wake word for X seconds after a user interaction
    // this means you dont need to say "hey mycroft" for follow up questions
    "hybrid_listen": false,
    // number of seconds to wait for an interaction before requiring wake word again
    "listen_timeout": 45
  }
}

Tips and tricks

Saving Transcriptions

You can enable saving of recordings to file, this should be your first step to diagnose problems, is the audio inteligible? is it being cropped? too noisy? low volume?

set "save_utterances": true in your listener config, recordings will be saved to ~/.local/share/mycroft/listener/utterances

If the recorded audio looks good to you, maybe you need to use a different STT plugin, maybe the one you are using does not like your microphone, or just isn't very good for your language

Wrong Transcriptions

If you consistently get specific words or utterances transcribed wrong, you can remedy around this to some extent by using the ovos-utterance-corrections-plugin

You can define replacements at word level ~/.local/share/mycroft/word_corrections.json

for example whisper STT often gets artist names wrong, this allows you to correct them

{
    "Jimmy Hendricks": "Jimi Hendrix",
    "Eric Klapptern": "Eric Clapton",
    "Eric Klappton": "Eric Clapton"
}

Silence Removal

By default OVOS applies VAD (Voice Activity Detection) to crop silence from the audio sent to STT, this helps in performance and in accuracy (reduces hallucinations in plugins like FasterWhisper)

Depending on your microphone/VAD plugin, this might be removing too much audio

set "remove_silence": false in your listener config, this will send the full audio recording to STT

Listen Sound

does your listen sound contain speech? some users replace the "ding" sound with words such as "yes?"

In this case the listen sound will be sent to STT and might negatively affect the transcription

set "instant_listen": false in your listener config, this will drop the listen sound audio from the STT audio buffer. You will need to wait for the listen sound to finish before speaking your command in this case

Credits

Voice Loop state machine implementation by @Synesthesiam for mycroft-dinkum