YakYak is a utility for the local generation of synthetic voice through use of Wyoming-Piper. It can be used from the command line or called from python. It opens a TCP socket to Wyoming-Piper running in Docker anywhere on your local area network. It scales to run efficiently on large multi-core computers or small single board computers.
To install YakYak, a python virtual environment is recommended.
cd some_directory
sudo apt install python3.8-venv
python3 -m venv .venv
source .venv/bin/activate
pip install yakyak
Install ffmpeg for mac
brew install ffmpeg
Install ffmpeg for Ubuntu
sudo apt install ffmpeg
If you don't already have docker, or better yet docker-desktop, you can download and install it from docker.com.
If you don't already have a wyoming-piper docker-compose.yml file, create one using YakYak. Warning, this will overwrite an existing docker-compose.yml file.
yakyak --docker > docker-compose.yml
Now you can start wyoming-piper in a docker container
docker compose up -d --force-recreate
It will take a little longer the first time running YakYak, the Wyoming-Piper app needs time to download voice files.
piper -h localhost -t mp3
Observe successful test results
INFO:root:Server localhost:10200 is online
INFO:root:Success, test: mp3
As with many Linux applications, YakYak supports standard in, and standard out. It also supports file input with the -i command and -o for file output. For a complete set of commands type yakyak --help.
yakyak --help
Create an mp3 file with "Hello world"
echo Hello world | yakyak -f mp3 -o hello_world.mp3
If you are on Linux and have aplay installed, you can do this:
echo Hello world | yakyak | aplay
This assumes that Docker is running on the same machine.
If Docker is running on a different machine on your network, you can do this:
echo Hello world | yakyak --host a_different_machine.local | aplay
Create the file test_yakyak.py
with the following content:
from yakyak import is_server_online, piper_tts_server
print(f"{is_server_online(
'localhost',
10200,
)=}")
print(f"{piper_tts_server(
'localhost',
10200,
'Hello World',
'hello_world.mp3',
'mp3',
'en_US-amy-medium'
)=}")
Now test it
python3 test_yakyak.py
Observe that the server is online and a file hello_world.mp3 is created. Play the mp3 and you will hear "Hello world".
run.py
check_ffmpeg_version()='ffmpeg version 6.0 Copyright (c) 2000-2023 the FFmpeg developers'
is_server_online(
'localhost',
10200,
)=True
INFO:root:Server localhost:10200 is online
run_test(
'localhost',
10200,
'mp3',
)=(True, 'Success, test: mp3')
INFO:root:Success, test: mp3
await piper_tts_server(
'localhost',
10200,
'Hello World',
'run_test.mp3',
'mp3',
'en_US-amy-medium'
)=None
Process finished with exit code 0