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_posts/2017-09-03-kalliope-assistant-on-qemu.md

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+---
+title: Kalliope, a voice-controlled personal assistant (running on qemu)
+updated: 2017-09-03 12:00
+tags: [qemu, ssh, assistant, voice, parabola, debian, kalliope]
+description: How to setup Kalliope, a voice-controlled personal assistant, if you don't run an officially supported distro like Debian
+---
+
+Hello again,
+
+It's been some time I wanted to try out a personal vocal assistant that is 100% 
+free software, in working condition and simple to customize. Unfortunately 
+there aren't that many that satisfy all the those conditions.
+
+There is however an interesting project called 
+[Kalliope](https://github.com/kalliope-project/kalliope)
+which apparently has all the requirements I was looking for
+(we are very close anyway :) ) [Here's a video posted by one of the authors](https://youtu.be/PcLzo4H18S4)
+
+<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/PcLzo4H18S4" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
+
+### Introduction
+
+There are a few aspects of Kalliope that I've grasped in a few hours of 
+usage and that I would like to share. First of all basic configuration is done 
+through [YAML](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YAML) files, 
+where you need to describe expected input and outputs for each case. Inputs are 
+vocal commands, while outputs can be a composition of voice, shell scripts or 
+ad-hoc python scripts. You will find examples once you install a specific 
+language "starter".
+
+According to the [official 
+documentation](https://github.com/kalliope-project/kalliope/blob/master/Docs/installation.md#prerequisites)
+there are just a handful of supported GNU/Linux distros.
+Unfortunately no Arch Linux derivative (including Parabola) is among them. 
+Infact, after trying both the [manual 
+installation](https://github.com/kalliope-project/kalliope/blob/master/Docs/installation.md) 
+and an [AUR](https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/kalliope) package
+and given [the](https://github.com/kalliope-project/kalliope/issues/328) 
+[results](https://github.com/kalliope-project/kalliope/issues/331) I decided to 
+switch to one of the officially supported distros: Debian (at least for the 
+moment).
+
+### Alternative installation
+
+Now, since I don't have any working installation of Debian 8 (Jessie) I 
+attempted to run it inside QEMU. To do this I used my 
+[qvm](https://github.com/frnmst/qvm) script I made some while ago.
+Once I had Debian up and running I tried the 
+[microphone](https://github.com/kalliope-project/kalliope/blob/master/Docs/installation.md#test-your-env)
+[test](https://github.com/kalliope-project/kalliope/blob/master/Docs/installation/raspbian_jessie.md#raspberry-pi-configuration).
+It turned out that I didn't have any soundcards available in the virtual 
+machine. A [couple of options](https://github.com/frnmst/qvm/commit/1a1ba5c55537735b890de48bf767663aa39074d3) 
+added in the qvm script did the trick. Now I could
+record and listen to my voice through QEMU.
+
+According to the
+[official documentation](https://github.com/kalliope-project/kalliope/blob/master/Docs/installation/debian_jessie.md#debian-packages-requirements), 
+with Debian 8, the `contrib` and 
+`non-free` repositories should be enabled before installing all the 
+dependencies. Fortunately, only one of them is [non 
+free](http://metadata.ftp-master.debian.org/changelogs/non-free/s/svox/svox_1.0+git20130326-3_copyright): 
+`libttspico-utils`. I simply removed that from the installation command and 
+left the `sources.list` file as-is:
+
+```
+# apt-get update
+# apt-get dist-upgrade
+# apt-get install git python-dev libsmpeg0 flac dialog libffi-dev libffi-dev libssl-dev portaudio19-dev build-essential libssl-dev libffi-dev sox libatlas3-base mplayer libav-tools
+```
+
+After that, I continued with the [official 
+documentation](https://github.com/kalliope-project/kalliope/blob/master/Docs/installation.md#installation).
+I followed *Method 1 - User install using the PIP package*. **Apparently 
+every other component is free software, but this still needs to be verified 
+thoroughly**. Because I removed `libttspico-utils`, which is an offline text to 
+speech engine, I had to use another one. All of them except `espeak` are 
+online TTS. [Here](https://github.com/Ultchad/kalliope-espeak) 
+you will find the installation instructions for espeak. The speech to text 
+system used is Google's one because, although cloud-based, it's much more 
+precise than the offline STT at the moment.
+
+Finally I downloaded the [english 
+starter](https://github.com/kalliope-project/kalliope_starter_en)
+version and tested it out. Everything worked.
+
+{% include image.html file="0.png" alt="kalliope 0" caption="Kalliope is 
+waiting for the trigger word" %}
+
+{% include image.html file="1.png" alt="kalliope 0" caption="Kalliope has
+listened and executes a command" %}
+
+### SSH
+
+After testing all of this stuff, using the `-x` option for qvm, I made 
+another "discovery", by running qvm with:
+
+    $ ./qvm -n
+    $ ./qvm -a
+
+i.e: connecting via SSH only. Apparently this also has the ability to route the 
+audio. If you put this into the account, including one of the [previous 
+posts]({{ site.baseurl }}/notes/qemu-ssh-tunnel.html),  maybe in some way 
+you could have one instance of Kalliope running in QEMU with an unlimited (!?) 
+number of remote IO audio devices...
+
+Cheers!
+