How to use Google tts package in AI2

[Anurag]

Hi Friends,

I am making an app for teaching basic English to kids. I had gone through the forum but couldn't find the help I was looking for.

I want to embed language specific Google tts package in my app so that my users don't have go through the trouble of downloading and selecting a particular tts package.

For example I want to embed Spanish female tts package in my app so that the users can have the Spanish listen to voice in Spanish accent.

Also please guide me as how can i define the speech rate and voice quality via compiling the app.

[SteveJG]

http://ai2.appinventor.mit.edu/reference/components/media.html#TextToSpeech

The above link describes the commands to define speech rate and pitch... the default on both is  1     so to slow the rate slightly, use 0.85 perhaps, to speed the rate up, use 2.

This link tells you how to install the Google TTS engine that provides multiple languages                           

Google Text-to-speech - Android Apps on Google Play  

You may need to install a TTS engine if a TTS engine is not already installed.  Since Android 4, I believe most manufactures of devices include the engine.   If your device does not have a TTS engine; please let us know and tell us what manufacturer and what version of Andjroid you have.  Some devices have their own TTS engines.   You may have to use the Android Settings to use the Google engine which is what you might have to do to get App Inventor's TTS object to work with your device.

If it is installed, you should be able to use the App Inventor TextToSpeech object to select the country and language.

This tutorial is about something else, however it has a section on TTS       

Animal Canvas – a children’s educational App Inventor 2 game tutorial

                   Read the section of the tutorial called Sound.

Hope this helps.

Regards,

Steve

[Anurag]

Hi Steve,

Thanks for the reply. It helped me a lot.

I wanted to know if there's a way to include language specific tts package in my project so that my users won't have to go through the trouble of downloading the same if they don't have that language package or in case of no internet connection as my project would be working offline.

The reason is that most of the manufacturers ship default English tts package and for the rest langauges we have to download them separately.

Currently I am using Lenovo A7000 device with Lollipop running on top of it.

Regards
Anurag