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    #16
    Can't connect

    Emotion,
    I upgraded to 1.5 and now it won't connect. Initially HSPro kept on restarting so I disabled the check emotion script and that fixed it. Then I also deleted all of the old Emotion devices and even did an uninstall and a reinstall of Emotion 1.5.
    Originally it was set to 192.168.1.52, but now I also notice that the local speaker connects at 127.0.0.1 so I went ahead and changed the connection to 127.0.0.1. However, the homeseer webserver is still using 192.168.1.52, even locally. The emotion status is still saying "Initializing Connection to 127.0.0.1..." and is stuck on that. Any thoughts? Thanks

    Comment


      #17
      Hi Texasblueguitar,

      Your problem sounds different perhaps to the one in this thread with the dll but I can see where you're coming from as the additional Emotion devices were discussed here to include everything that may have been related to the original problem.

      I think your problem may be due to not having any Status Device code at all (e.g. Z99). You can create one by going to the Connection tab in Emotion and clicking on the Create button. I've just done a test now where I've deleted Z99 from HomeVision and it says "initialising Connection to 127.0.0.1" (I also tried 127.0.0.1). After I clicked the Create button and OK'd the confirmation and clicked on Connect, Emotion successfully connected.

      It doesn't matter if you pit 127.0.0.1, localhost or the name or IP adress of your machine in the Emotion settings. The only time you may get problems is when you have more than one network card or device acting as a network card in your machine. In such case, Emotion will need to bind to the same address that HomeSeer binds to. If the Speaker app is working OK, then use that address.

      Comment


        #18
        Originally posted by Emotion View Post
        Has the vt-eng.dll issue now cleared? By my calculations, that'll be 5 days now...
        Hi Emotion,
        Unfortunately it lasted 2 days.. then I got a vt_eng.dll crash again. I also noted that I get a pop-up from homeseer (different from the crash one) which is short and says (only from memory, I'll write it down next time!) "Failed to load TTS".

        Now I thought it was only when I use emotion that I swap voices depending on who emotion is talking to, so I set all the voices to the one VW_KATE in Windows, HS-Pro and in Emotion, so theoretically, the voice I need would always be loaded after the first time?

        I have had family staying for easter, I would have like to show the emotion, but needed HSPRO to stay running. I'll enable it when they leave this week and make an update.

        in case VW_KATE voice is a problem, I'll try VW_Paul and perhaps a microsoft voice to try to isolate.

        cheers,
        Phil

        Comment


          #19
          Hi Phil,

          Can you have a chat with June Hostetter from Neospeech [mailto:y?u?n@neospeech.com] (remove the ? question marks) as she claims this dll is not related to TTS but which it clearly seems to be from your Process Explorer findings.

          I think that way may be quicker to resolve rather than us acting as middle people. I'm not ruleing out Emotion being the problem here it's just that we haven't got that TTS engine in order to recreate the problem (I was half hoping they'd let us have a demo version so that we could test it!)

          Comment


            #20
            Originally posted by Emotion View Post
            Hi Phil,

            Can you have a chat with June Hostetter from Neospeech [mailto:y?u?n@neospeech.com] (remove the ? question marks) as she claims this dll is not related to TTS but which it clearly seems to be from your Process Explorer findings.

            I think that way may be quicker to resolve rather than us acting as middle people. I'm not ruleing out Emotion being the problem here it's just that we haven't got that TTS engine in order to recreate the problem (I was half hoping they'd let us have a demo version so that we could test it!)
            Hi Emotion,

            I'm just trying out an experiment. In neospeech VW directories, I have seen vt_eng.dll in the voices kate16K/lib and Paul 16K/lib. In the repective 8K directories, it is called vt_eng_8k.dll.
            There are also sapi5 .dll in the 16K directories, so prove whether HS-Pro is speaking through SAPI5 or not, I created a temp sub directory in kate and paul trees and MOVED the offeding vt_eng.dll into the temp directories.

            Restarting HS-PRO and HS speaker, showed no startup issue with the vt_eng.dll files missing. I made both homeseer and Emotion speak. Both voices work fine so far ( 10 minutes..) however, HS-PRO prints this exception in the log whenever it speaks TTS now:

            9/05/2011 2:44:26 PM - HSTouch Server - Error speaking to file: Class not registered (Exception from HRESULT: 0x80040154 (REGDB_E_CLASSNOTREG))

            This kind of implies HS-PRo is doing something with vt_eng.dll although the TSS speach sounds fine when that file does not exist.

            I'll see how this runs. Another test I can do is to use 8K voices but they don't sound as good and see if the vt_eng_8k.dll has an exception like vt_eng.dll does in the 16K voices.

            I'll run with the two vt_eng.dll files missing for a bit and see what grops up. It may be HS is loading vt_eng.dll and doesn't need to, or that it is using a function from that dll that is not significant and could then not load it any more in the future.

            I could be asking for a memory leak problem or something trying this, then it may narrow down what we can tell neospeech who thinks only the SAPI5 files hsould be loaded.

            It is possible given HSTouch Server is reporting the exception when vt_eng.dll is removed, I think the clue is HS is using something in vt_eng.dl to send speech to HStouch clients.???? I'll try my hstouch client on the iphone and see if it has stopped speaking... HStouch server may be the culprit in a previous update...

            cheers,
            Phil

            Comment


              #21
              Hi Phil,

              Your conclusions seem to make sense, although I really would go to all lengths not to use 8k voices!

              Let us know how you get on

              Comment


                #22
                Originally posted by Emotion View Post
                Hi Phil,

                Your conclusions seem to make sense, although I really would go to all lengths not to use 8k voices!

                Let us know how you get on
                Hi emotion,

                Well, I have managed to determine by moving the vt_eng.dll 16k files from their relevant directories that only HS Touch server plugin seems to complain in the HS log, when HS or emotion speaks. (as per my post above)

                I believe that HSPRO uses SAPI5 to speak, and loads vt_eng.dll specifically to write wave files of the speech that can be used by hstouch server and other apps to send the speech elsewhere or be played on the hstouch client for example.

                Without the vt_eng.dll in place, hstouch sever gives an exception in the HSPRO log (but HSPRO remains running), speaker says the text properly (probably by sapi5) but hstouch iphone client does not say the speech.

                Since the only error was from hstouch server, I deleted that plugin and re-installed it... Moved the vt_eng.dll back in place..

                So far after about 48 hours, no vt_eng.dll HS2 exception crashes! Running with emotion 1.5.

                I know not to get too excited yet, but feel since I know HSPRO is loading vt_eng.dll for at lest one plugin, that they are using a feature in that dll that sapi5 can't do (or maybe it can, I don't really know) and that is write speech to a wav file or equivalent.

                Possibly I had a corrupted hstouch server plugin install.

                I this is the fix, I'm very sorry to have suspected emotion as the innocent plugin and thankyou for your help and support. I'd be glad to have emotion running full time again. I think emotion shows up this issue because it is such a prolific speaker!

                fingers crossed!
                Thanks and regards,

                Phil

                PS yes I don't want 8k voices when 16K sound so good!

                Comment


                  #23
                  Hi Phil,

                  It's been a week - how's it gone?

                  Comment


                    #24
                    Originally posted by Emotion View Post
                    Hi Phil,

                    It's been a week - how's it gone?
                    Hi Emotion,

                    I wish I had better news. I was really sure I was onto something as I ran for about 4 days without issue. Now I have vt_eng.dll exceptions again.

                    I don't get them when emotion is not running. I know HSPRo is using vt_eng.dll functionality for at least HStouch server to pass audio to the touch clients as when I delete vt_eng.dll everything works except audio on HSTouch clients as explained above. I don't think I need to contact the voice people know I know that.

                    I have noted that when using mediaplayer function on HSpro (eg a url streamning a radio station) if Emotion speaks sometimes the medial player stream playing stutters and repeats words about 10 times and then I get a vt_eng.dll exception. At this time, the emotion window stops updating the log entries. When I kill HSpro (because of the exception) then emotion scrolls up a bunch of entries that may have been buffered from HSpro.

                    I like to use HSpro to stream some local radio stations as I work from home a lot, so there is plenty of chance for emotion to speak while HSpro mediaplayer plugin is running and using the audio.

                    Nothing else speaking (eg HSpro events and speech I have it saying in scripts) seems to triger a vt_eng.dll exception while mediaplayer is running from HSpro.

                    One thing I thought is that perhaps, due to media player using the audio, there may be a conflict - vt_eng.dll is trying to deal with the media stream and emotion speech writing a wave file/stream from two sources. I wonder if emotion can determine mediaplayer is playing and pause it before speaking and then unpause it? HSpro does not seem to speak over meadiaplayer when it is speaking. (I'll verify that)

                    thanks again,
                    Phil

                    Comment


                      #25
                      OK, so something is happening when Emotion is running that is causing vt_eng.dll to crash that isn't happening when Emotion is not running.

                      All Emotion TTS speech is handled by HS by calling the HS commands and methods. It does not use wav.

                      Emotion uses hs.SpeakEx, hs.SetVoice and hs.StopSpeaking commands. If iTunes is installed, then it will pause iTunes - speak - and then resume iTunes if this option is selected (selected by default). No other TTS or other sound related methods exist in Emotion - it does not access it directly, it all goes via HS (except iTunes which it accesses directly)

                      You may wish to eliminate the iTunes pause feature as being an issue by deselecting that option in Emotion (although you probably haven't got iTunes installed).

                      There may be an issue with hs.SetVoice perhaps? I guess the only way to eliminate that would be to ensure everything uses the same voice as a temporary measure to see if the crash occurs.

                      hs.StopSpeaking only happens very rarely - this is when Emotion purges whatever is in the speech buffer to say something important. The only time this happens is when Emotion is quit or when the Alarm goes off (only the Alarm, not Forbidden places) - I doubt that hs.StopSpeaking is the issue, although I have been wrong before!

                      The only other thing I can think of is that perhaps your machine is resource constrained and by running Emotion tips it over the edge! Perhaps you could run Performance Monitor and set up a counter log for %processor (or choose the standard log set) and leave it running. If you can determine exactly when the crash occurs, you should be able to line that up with how well your PC was performing at the time by viewing the graph of the counter logs
                      Last edited by Emotion; May 18, 2011, 11:55 AM.

                      Comment


                        #26
                        Hi Emotion,
                        Sorry it's been a while, I have been doing the methodical trial and error by disabling other plugins etc (i hope Homeseer3 plugin sandboxes? may stop plugins interracting).

                        I have finally figured out that it is the HStouch plugin that is causing the vt_eng.dll crash with the HS Neospeech voices.

                        I have yet to log a ticket, but from what I can see, the VT_ENG.dll is used to do TTS write to an audio file which HStouch then sends to the clients on iphone etc to speak.

                        I have been running for 2 weeks now with HStouch plugin disabled (annoying as I use it with my iphone!) and no vt_eng.dll exceptions have occured.

                        I am using latest Emotion and it's talking away without issue.

                        When I get to the bottom of this I'll let you know. Since Emotion is the most vocal plugin I have, and because of some of the other symptoms onscreen ( log window etc) it seemed Emotion was the cluprit.

                        Thanks again for all the help. You support is excellent, as is the plugin.

                        cheers,
                        Phil

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