Asterisk TTS: Introducing Today in History

If you're a history buff and want a convenient way to find out everything that ever happened Today in History, then this week's text to speech (TTS) application for Asterisk® should be just what you need. Pick up any phone connected to your Asterisk system and dial T-O-D-A-Y (86329 for the spelling-impaired). The script will retrieve today's historical events and today's birthdays of interest from Yahoo News and play the results back to you over the phone using either Flite or Cepstral to handle the TTS translation. To speed up the retrieval process, you can also set this up as a cron job to download the latest events each day while you're sleeping. Thereafter, when you dial T-O-D-A-Y, the results are played back for callers instantaneously.

Prerequisites. If you're using PBX in a Flash, then all of the tools you'll need are already in place. And we have a script for you that will install the application in just a few seconds. For other users, you'll need an Asterisk server with PHP5 and either Flite or Cepstral to handle the text-to-speech chores.

Overview. If you've previously installed other Nerd Vittles text to speech applications, then the drill this time around is quite similar. There's a PHP/AGI script which gets stored in /var/lib/asterisk/agi-bin. In this script (nv-today.php), you can change the default Flite TTS engine to Cepstral by changing the $ttspick variable setting from 0 to 1. Then there is a snippet of dialplan code that needs to be added to the [from-internal-custom] context in extensions_custom.conf for FreePBX installations. Once you reload your Asterisk dialplan, you're ready to go.

How It Works. The PHP/AGI script only does real work once a day. It always checks to see if there is an existing /tmp/today.txt file with today's file stamp. If there is, it exits gracefully. If today's file doesn't exist or if the file's time stamp is earlier than midnight, then the script downloads the latest information for today in history and creates a text file of the data. Then either the Flite or Cepstral TTS engine is called to convert the text file into /tmp/today.wav. The dial plan code is used to answer calls to extension 86329. Then it runs the PHP/AGI script, and finally it plays back /tmp/today.wav. Note: The PHP/AGI script, if run as a cron job or from the command prompt, should never be run as the root user, but only as the asterisk user. Otherwise, the today.txt and today.wav files cannot be replaced by the script when it subsequently is run from the dialplan.

Script Installation. If you're using PBX in a Flash, log into your server as root and issue the following commands:

cd /root
wget http://bestof.nerdvittles.com/applications/today/today.pbx
chmod +x today.pbx
./today.pbx

Automatic Updates Using crontab. If you'd like to automatically generate the Today in History files each day, add the following entry to the bottom of /etc/crontab:

01 0 * * * asterisk /var/lib/asterisk/agi-bin/nv-today.php

Manual Installation. For those using a different Asterisk aggregation that includes PHP5, FreePBX, and Flite, add this code to /etc/asterisk/extensions_custom.conf in the [from-internal-custom] context:

exten => 86329,1,Answer
exten => 86329,2,Wait(1)
exten => 86329,3,Set(TIMEOUT(digit)=7)
exten => 86329,4,Set(TIMEOUT(response)=10)
exten => 86329,5,Flite(Please stand bye while we retrieve: Today in History.)
exten => 86329,6,AGI(nv-today.php)
exten => 86329,7,Playback(/tmp/today)
exten => 86329,8,Wait(1)
exten => 86329,9,Hangup

Then issue the following commands from the command prompt after logging in as root:

cd /root
mkdir today
cd today
wget http://bestof.nerdvittles.com/applications/today/today.zip
unzip today.zip
rm -f today.zip
cp nv-today.php /var/lib/asterisk/agi-bin/nv-today.php
chmod 775 /var/lib/asterisk/agi-bin/nv-today.php
chown asterisk:asterisk /var/lib/asterisk/agi-bin/nv-today.php
asterisk -rx "dialplan reload"

Running the Application. Now you're ready for a test run. Pick up any phone connected to your Asterisk system and dial T-O-D-A-Y. After a brief pause to download the data, today's events in history and today's birthdays will be played back over your phone using your favorite text to speech voice. To eliminate the pause the first time the application is run each day, simply add the crontab entry as outlined above. Enjoy!

Free DIDs While They Last. Sipgate is giving away a free U.S. DID with free incoming calls plus 200 free minutes for outbound calls. Better hurry. Here's the trunk setup for FreePBX-based systems:

Trunk name: sipgate

type=peer
username=ACCTNO
fromuser=ACCTNO
secret=ACCTPW
context=from-trunk
host=sipgate.com
fromdomain=sipgate.com
insecure=very
caninvite=no
canreinvite=no
nat=no
disallow=all
allow=ulaw&alaw

Registration Strong: ACCTNO:ACCTPW@sipgate.com/YOUR-DID-NUMBER

ACCTNO is the account number assigned to your sipgate account. ACCTPW is the password for your account. YOUR-DID-NUMBER is your 10-digit DID.

Finally create an inbound route using your actual 10-digit DID and assign a destination for the inbound calls.

Need help with Asterisk? Visit the PBX in a Flash Forum.
Or Try the New, Free PBX in a Flash Conference Bridge.

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