Jasper Installation Script

Introduction

This repository contains an installation script for all the libraries and dependencies of jasper.

While the jasper project provides an image for the model 1 of the Raspberry Pi, there is no image for the model 2. Instead of mastering a big image, I just provide a ready to run installation script.

The installation script will work on a model 1 or a model 2 Raspberry Pi (Bananapi to be verified). Everything was tested with Raspian-Wheezy.

Note that jasper and therefore also jasper-install does not work with Raspbian-Jessie, since Jessie ships it's own version of the python module requests. Jasper overwrites the Jessie-version during installation which breaks pip. As a consequence, the jasper installation is incomplete and all later install steps relying on pip also fail.

Configure Installation

After download of the package (or after cloning the repository) you will find the installation script jasper-install together with some support files in the root-directory of the project. Configuration is done using the file jasper-install.cfg.

The file contains constants used by the installation program. Usually you don't have to change any contstants except the value of DEFAULT_USER and those named INSTALL_xxx. These constants select which modules the install script actually installs. You can set the value of these constants to 0 (don't install) or 1 (install).

For a Pi model 1, you must set INSTALL_phonetisaurus_src=1. For a model 2, you are free to install from the Jessie package repository (INSTALL_phonetisaurus=1) or from source.

Some of the modules do just basic tasks, so you should not change the value - these constants are labelled required. Besides these modules, you are free to select the STT and TTS engines you wan't (but observe the dependencies). To understand the background, you should definitely read the documentation on the project site of Jasper.

Install Jasper

The installation script jasper-install assumes that you start of with a clean installation of Raspbian-Wheezy (after initial configuration with raspi-config). You need at least 4 GB free disk-space on the root-partition, i.e. a 8GB (micro-) SDHC with expanded root-partition should do fine.

A simple

sudo ./jasper-install all

should do the job. The script will create a (large) logfile named jasper-install.log, please check that file for errors.

Besides all you can pass the names of one or more individual modules to jasper-install. This is more of a development feature to verify the correct operation of the given install-task. To see all available options of jasper-install, just run jasper-install -h.

If you connect with ssh and don't want to keep the connection open all the time, you can also start the installation with

nohup sudo ./jasper-install all > /dev/null &

To monitor the progress in this case, you can use the command

tail -f jasper-install.log

or

./jasper-install -S

The last command extracts a summary of the logfile.

The install script installs a number of packages using the normal package management system of Debian (apt). Others are downloaded and compiled from source. All files are installed below $PREFIX, which defaults to /usr/local, i.e. you can copy this directory to another computer to save some time during installation of a second machine(see the section below labeled Cloning the Installation for details).

Some Timings

Note that jasper-install takes a lot of time to finish. This depends on the speed of your internet connection, the speed of your SD-card, overclocking and the number of configured modules. Also, installation time is much faster on a model 2, since the compilations of the source modules use all four available processors.

Running Raspbian off of an HDD/SDD speeds things up by about 5% for the model1 and by 50% for model2. Search the web for instructions on how to move your root-partition to an USB-attached HDD/SDD drive.

A complete installation will take

• 7-8h on a Raspberry Pi Model 1
• 3-5h on a Raspberry Pi Model 2
• 2h on a Raspberry Pi Model 2 with a root-filesystem on HDD/SDD

OpenFST is the module taking longest, compile and linking of it alone takes more than 5h on a model 1 (about 2h on a model 2).

Changes to the original install instructions

There are some changes compared to the original install instructions from Jasper's project site:

• this script installs all programs globally
• you can tailor the installation to your needs, e.g. if you don't plan to use phonetisaurus, you don't have to install all the programs needed by this STT-engine
• you can run the jasper-program with the simple command jasper, or you can install jasper as a system service`
• Jasper is not added to a user's crontab (use the system service if you want to start Jasper automatically at boot time)
• OpenFST is downloaded from the OpenFST-site in a slightly newer version
• added configure-option to OpenFST to speed-up compilation
• required package python-pocketsphinx was missing from the instruction
• New download-address for phonetisaurus
• only compile necessary binary for phonetisaurus
• New download-address for phonetisaurus FST model
• Download acoustic model and lexicon for Julius
• create default profile.yml with all configuration-options (non-active STT/TTS-engines are added as comments)

Cloning the installation

Since download and compile of all the prerequisite packages takes so long, you can take a shortcut to clone Jasper to other computers.

The following steps are necessary:

1. Copy everything below $PREFIX (i.e. /usr/local) to the new computer. You can use rsync for the task if you enabled root-login on the target computer (clone):

   sudo rsync -avz /usr/local/ root@clone:/usr/local
   

2. Copy all jasper-install-files to the target computer.

3. Edit jasper-install.cfg.clone to reflect your jasper-install.cfg (read the comments in jasper-install.cfg.clone).

4. Run

   sudo ./jasper-install -f -C jasper-install.cfg.clone all
   

Running jasper

To run jasper as a foreground process from your normal user account just run the command jasper (your user account must be a member of the audio group and you should have configured this user as the DEFAULT_USER in jasper-install.cfg). If you like to see how jasper processes your commands, run

jasper --debug

Note that the install-script will create a default jasper configuration profile for the default user (as defined in jasper-install.cfg). If you are not happy with the profile, you can delete it and run

$PREFIX/lib/jasper/client/populate.py

This will run you through the default configuration provided by jaser itself. You can find details about the initial configuration on the Jasper project website.

As an alternative, you can install jasper as a system-service. If not already done during installation, run

sudo ./jasper-install -f service
sudo update-rc.d jasper start

The last command is only necessary if you want to start the service at once. Otherwise, it is automatically started at boot-time.

The configuration file for the service is in $PREFIX/lib/jasper/profile.yml.

Sometimes, the service has problems to start right after installation and reboot. In this case, delete the directory $PREFIX/lib/jasper/vocabularies and restart the service.

Renaming Jasper

If you have trouble pronouncing "Jasper", then you can change the signal word from "Jasper" to "Thomas". You just have to define INSTALL_thomas=1 in jasper-install.cfg. Note that this changes the file $PREFIX/lib/jasper/jasper.py and some files in "$PREFIX/lib/jasper/static. If you want to return to the original state, you should fetch the files from Jasper's Github-project.

To change the name after installation, you can run

sudo ./jasper-install -f thomas

to install this feature (regardless of the value of INSTALL_thomas).

If you prefer a different name, you should follow the instructions on the project website of Jasper.