I was following the ROS.org wiki on trying to setup sound for it’s not immediately obvious to a n00b how to do this.
Installing sound
sudo apt-get install ros-diamondback-sound-drivers
Then I could start the tutorial correctly.
Then due to some weirdness with alsa and ubuntu asoundconf
wget http://ubuntu.mirror.cambrium.nl/ubuntu//pool/main/a/alsa-utils/alsa-utils_1.0.15-3ubuntu2_i386.deb sudo dpkg -i alsa-utils_1.0.15-3ubuntu2_i386.deb sudo cp /usr/bin/asoundconf /usr/ sudo apt-get upgrade sudo cp /usr/asoundconf /usr/bin/
You now have a copy asoundconf in /usr/ to use
I could then run:
asoundconf is-active asoundconf set-default-card 0 sudo cp ~/.asoundrc.asoundconf /etc/asound.conf
This generated errors when running asoundconf but the sound-play scripts ran properly.
rosrun sound_play soundplay_node.py rosrun sound_play say.py "hello world"
soundplay_node.py was reporting “no sound card found” but then went on to say, “ready to play”
Text to speech worked okay.
Installing extra voices
Install a British English male voice rather than the default American one.
sudo apt-get install festvox-rablpc16k
I haven’t yet looked at how to set this as the default voice.