DRIVER: mControl Text to Speech Driver

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Embedded Automation is proud to release the mControl Text to Speech driver (beta version).

The Text to Speech driver will enable you to use the Microsoft Speech API 5 in order to make your Vista or XP machine (32 or 64 bit) speak text as part of a macro action. This is done through a socket connection, so everything can be hosted on one machine, or the mControl server can be on one machine, and the speech command can be spoken on another machine.

There are two parts to the driver. There is a controller and a TCP client. The controller sends TCP messages from the mControl server to the TCP client. The TCP client, an executable, takes these messages and sends them to the Speech API. The voice used will be the computer's default voice, which is modifiable by the user in the speech section of the control panel. Different voices should allow for different languages. The driver has been successfully tested on XP and Vista machines.

Source code and instructions are also included in the download. This driver can be used as a model for communication with other windows APIs. The

The beta version of the driver can be downloaded here. You will need to add the relevant libraries for your version of mControl to the \mControl\server\plugins folder. For mControl v2.1 RCGOLD2, these can be found in the lib folder of the TTS driver download. For newer versions, you will need to find these files by downloading the DDK and the Generic Driver for your version of mControl. If these files are not in the plugins folder, the speech device you created will show up as unavailable.


http://www.embeddedautomation.com/mc...rol%20v2.1.zip

The zip file contains:

-Documentation (installation, setup)
-Source code
-xml and dll files for the controller
-exe, exe.config and SpeechLib.dll files for the TCP client
-necessary referenced libraries


Here are a few screenshots that show some of the functionality:

Client :



mControl Editor Text to Speech macro action:



More tips on writing drivers will follow.