HighwayofLife / say

Python command that will convert text to speech using an API. It generates an audio file from input text and plays it, providing a flexible solution for applications such as creating audiobooks, aiding in accessibility, or developing voice assistants

Text-to-Speech Conversion

This repository contains a Python script for converting text to speech using either OpenAI's or ElevenLabs' API. It will generate an audio file from the input text and play it using the mpg123 audio player utility.

Purpose

The purpose of this project is to provide a simple and flexible way to convert text to speech. It can be used for a variety of applications, such as creating audio books, aiding in accessibility, or developing voice assistants.

Future

In the future, I plan to add support for more text-to-speech APIs, as well as additional features such as saving the audio to a file, and more advanced audio manipulation to support different use cases, as well as support for different audio players and real-time audio playback.

Getting Started

• OpenAI Text-to-Speech Guide
• ElevenLabs Text-to-Speech Documentation
• PlayHT Text-to-Speech Documentation

Prerequisites

• Python 3.6 or higher
• pip
• An API key for OpenAI and/or ElevenLabs

Installation

1. Clone the repository:

git clone https://github.com/highwayoflife/say.git
cd say

2. Install the required packages:

pip install -r requirements.txt

3. Set your API keys as environment variables. You only need one or the other, but you can set both if you want to use both APIs.

I suggest using direnv to manage your environment variables. You can create a .envrc file in the root of the project with the following content, or put these in your .profile or .bashrc file, alternatively, you can just run these in the terminal before running the say.py script:

export OPENAI_API_KEY="your-openai-api-key"
export ELEVENLABS_API_KEY="your-elevenlabs-api-key"

Usage

You can run the script from the command line (Terminal, PowerShell, etc.) with the following command:

python say.py --api openai "So, today's been pretty interesting, actually. I spent the morning catching up on some reading—lots of questions about various topics like science, history, and some really creative inquiries about art. Then, I had a chat with someone who needed help planning a birthday party for their cat, which was pretty adorable. Later on, I dived into a bit of brainstorming for a user who was writing a story and needed some ideas for plot twists. Right now, I'm here, having this conversation with you. How about you? How has your day been?"

This will convert the text to speech using OpenAI's API and play the audio using your default audio player. You can use the --api flag to specify which API to use, the currently supported values are openai and elevenlabs.