ovos-microphone-plugin-sounddevice 0.0.3a9

Description

This plugin lets OpenVoiceOS (OVOS) capture microphone audio through python-sounddevice.

python-sounddevice uses PortAudio to talk to audio hardware. PortAudio is a free, cross-platform, open-source audio I/O library. It works in C or C++ on Windows, macOS, and Unix (OSS/ALSA).

The plugin works best on macOS (Intel and Apple Silicon) and also runs on Linux. On macOS it uses CoreAudio stream settings tuned for clear wake-word and speech-to-text (STT) capture.

Install

pip install ovos-microphone-plugin-sounddevice

Configuration

The listener defaults to the ovos-microphone-plugin-alsa plugin. To use this plugin instead, update the mycroft.conf configuration file:

{
  "listener": {
    "microphone": {
      "module": "ovos-microphone-plugin-sounddevice",
      "ovos-microphone-plugin-sounddevice": {}
    }
  }
}

macOS recommended settings (clear capture)

{
  "listener": {
    "microphone": {
      "module": "ovos-microphone-plugin-sounddevice",
      "ovos-microphone-plugin-sounddevice": {
        "device": "Built-in Microphone",
        "latency": "low",
        "multiplier": 1.0,
        "blocksize": 1024,
        "queue_maxsize": 8,
        "use_coreaudio_settings": true,
        "coreaudio_conversion_quality": "max",
        "coreaudio_change_device_parameters": false,
        "coreaudio_fail_if_conversion_required": false,
        "auto_sample_rate_fallback": true,
        "auto_channel_fallback": true,
        "auto_latency_fallback": true
      }
    }
  }
}

Device selection

Set device to one of these forms:

• Exact name: "device": "Built-in Microphone"
• Substring match: "device": "Built-in"
• Regex match: "device": "regex:^MacBook.*Microphone"
• Numeric index: "device": 0
• Default input device: omit device, or set "device": "default"

Notes

• Keep multiplier near 1.0 for the cleanest signal.
• Increase multiplier only if the microphone is too quiet.
• Reduce multiplier below 1.0 if clipping or distortion appears.
• If the hardware does not support 16000 Hz input, the plugin can open the device at its native sample rate and resample to 16000 Hz for OVOS.
• blocksize controls callback cadence. Lower values usually improve wake-word responsiveness.

Related projects

• OpenVoiceOS/ovos-plugin-manager — loads and manages this plugin.
• OpenVoiceOS/ovos-dinkum-listener — the OVOS listener that consumes microphone plugins.
• spatialaudio/python-sounddevice — the audio library this plugin wraps.

License

Apache-2.0, see LICENSE.