Ubuntu mate, along with orca screen reader on my raspberry pi B+ v.2, along with external USB audio adapter

[Jacob Kruger]

Ok, wrote clean instance of ubuntu mate operating system .img to the one SDCard for my raspberry pi B+ v.2, plugged in USB keyboard, as well as a generic, cheap, external USB audio adapter, plugged 3.5mm audio jack for speakers into it, and powered up the pi using the portable mobile phone charger.

 

Heard the speakers initialise after roundabout 30 seconds, and waited a further 30 seconds, and then hit ctrl + S, and orca screen reader started talking, with no hiccups, stuttering, pauses, etc., so seems like the pi can make use of the external audio adapter, and thus take the load off it's internals, etc, and thus work with gnome, orca, and e-speak combination.

 

Now, next issue is that all orca seems to be reporting to me in the GUI/gnome interface, almost all the time, is "japanese/chinese characters" - that same phrase over and over again...<smile>

 

This is either if I hit alt + F1, to try invoke menu system, f10 for other form of menu, or if I hit alt + F2 to bring up run dialogue, I can type in text and select it, but, it seems to be telling me something about tokyo, etc.

 

In other words, definitely seems like this might be a usable/viable option, but am guessing that the GUI's character-set/language is set to something like an odd/asian character-set, and orca is just repeating characters/encoding to me that it can't pronounce using the default voices, etc., since if I hit alt key, it reports left alt, etc.

 

Any thoughts on what I can try changing in something like the config.txt file, or something else to make sure it's using a compatible character-set or language, etc., or is there something else I should try..?

 

Either way, am just pretty much impressed that the pi, from initial bootup, immediately started routing audio output via my external USB audio adapter, and this, again, just shows you that almost anything is possible/doable, if you try a couple of alternatives - like the pi itself...LOL!

 

Stay well

Jacob Kruger
Blind Biker
Skype: BlindZA
"Roger Wilco wants to welcome you...to the space janitor's closet..."

[jacob Kruger]

Yes, got it running/working, and put the .img file up on the one site
for guys to download, but, probably wouldn't be relevant to working on a
pi 3, since it was just a pi plus v.2, but, all really did was make sure
that on first boot-up had external USB audio adapter plugged in, with
audio jack plugged into it, since that's what needed/wanted it to think
of as default audio output device/channel.

And, had to get a sighted guy to work through initial
bootup/configuration wizard, and then turn on orca for me, but, seemed
to work fine after that - although haven't done much more than test a
couple of things with it, and haven't really done much more than that, FWIW.

Stay well

Jacob Kruger
Blind Biker
Skype: BlindZA
"Roger Wilco wants to welcome you...to the space janitor's closet..."

Chris Norman wrote:
> Hi,
> Did you ever get this working properly? I just bought me a Pi3, and I
> thought this would make a wicked little setup!
>
> Cheers,