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I am trying to install Jasper (Jasper is an open source platform for developing always-on, voice-controlled applications) on Raspberry Pi 2 (Jessie). I have a mic to give the commands, but it does not seem to be working. As per the documentation

  1. Plug in your USB microphone. Let’s open up an ALSA configuration file in vim: sudo vim /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf

  2. Change the following line: options snd-usb-audio index=-2, to this: options snd-usb-audio index=0

  3. Back in the shell, run: sudo alsa force-reload (Does not work, says "could not find alsa")

  4. Next, test that recording works (you may need to restart your Pi) by recording some audio with the following command: arecord temp.wav (throws error "arecord: main:722: audio open error: No such file or directory")

I have looked at one of the solutions on this site, but it did not work for me.

The Jasper instructions are: Manual Installation

mic: Kinobo USB Microphone

speaker: Logitech S150 USB Speakers with Digital Sound

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sarvs
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  • The Jasper instructions are outdated and partially wrong (index works only if used with all drivers); please use the slots method instead, and file a bug with Jasper. – CL. Jan 14 '16 at 07:36
  • As per the instructions mentioned I did try the slot # This sets the index value of the cards but doesn't reorder. options snd_usb_audio index=0 options snd_bcm2835 index=1

    Does the reordering.

    options snd slots=snd-usb-audio,snd-bcm2835 Should I comment options snd_usb_audio index=0 options snd_bcm2835 index=1

     – sarvs Jan 14 '16 at 14:40
  • The index options are no longer needed. – CL. Jan 14 '16 at 18:51
  • That did not help. I still get the same error. But if I change the command from arecord test.wav to sudo arecord test.wav. It starts the recording. I tried sudo usermod -a -G audio , it still did not work. Any idea. – sarvs Jan 14 '16 at 20:38
  • What are the permissions on the device files in /dev/snd/? Is your user in the audio group? – CL. Jan 14 '16 at 20:51
  • @CL. drwxr-xr-x 4 root root 220 Jan 14 20:54 snd I added the user to audio group uid=1000(pi) gid=1000(pi) groups=1000(pi),4(adm),20(dialout),24(cdrom),27(sudo),29(audio),44(video),46(plugdev),60(games),100(users),101(input),108(netdev),997(gpio),998(i2c),999(spi) – sarvs Jan 14 '16 at 21:01
  • The permissions of the snd directory itself do not matter; look at the files inside. – CL. Jan 15 '16 at 12:17

4 Answers4

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Here is a solution you might find helpful:

arecord -D hw:2,0 -d 5 -f cd test.wav -c 1

D option specifies recording device. Since this specific test mic is on “card 2”, “device 0”, the value is “hw:2,0” here. This command creates “test.wav” as a 5-second, CD-quality wave file. Since it’s a mono mic, specify “1” as the number of channels with “-c” option.

To play, simply secure-copy the "test.wav" to download the file on to whatever device is logged-in to the Raspberry Pi (in my case, it's a MacBook). Hope that helps!

alexanderjsingleton
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    +1 for explaining all the of the options so well. Thanks for taking your time. – Chase Roberts Feb 27 '21 at 16:29
  • Thank you- if interested, check-out my blog-post detailing the above in addition to other helpful instructions: https://www.alexanderjsingleton.com/hack-to-spy-building-a-raspberry-spy-pi/ – alexanderjsingleton Feb 28 '21 at 20:32
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Use arecord -Dhw:cardID:deviceID test.wav

For MIC You can find the card ID and device ID of kinobo USB from arecord -l

For Play The aplay -l ---> will display Card Id and Device ID

$ aplay -Dhw:CardID:DeviceID test.wav

Note:

user73636
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Try this:

sudo arecord --format=S16_LE --duration=5 --rate=16000--file-type=raw out.raw

To play, you will then need to run this:

aplay --format=S16_LE --rate=16000 out.raw
Aurora0001
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Azhar ali
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-1

Installing PulseAudio could be so helpful on Linux systems. From a Linux.com Article

PulseAudio could account for 90% of the audio needs of a regular Linux session. To install use :$ sudo apt-get install pulseaudio

Final thoughts Your ALSA may have issues. Just try resetting it:

$ sudo /etc/init.d/alsa-utils reset

For more information alsa use and reset, these was my source

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rheniytron
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  • Your answer, while it may be correct, is somewhat terse. Could you edit your answer, and expand why the "issues" that you refer to occur, and why the reset is necessary? – Greenonline Jun 14 '17 at 13:39