Continue plugin execution while indigo server speaking

Hi,

What I'm trying to achieve for my plugin is the following:

- Plugin calls for a speech notification and then the plugin continues execution without waiting for the speak to finish
- The speech "call" should do the following:
1. Execute an action group and wait for it to finish
2. Speak the specified text and wait for it to finish
3. Execute an action group

I have been trying both with the thread and threading module without success. What I have presently is this:

Within the plugin action the following:

Code: Select all

         self.debugLog(u'Speaking notification, starting separate thread for speech')
         #thread.start_new_thread( self.speakNotification, (notificationText, catProps[u'beforeSpeakActionGroup'], catProps[u'afterSpeakActionGroup'] ) )
         speakThread = speakNotificationThread(notificationText, catProps[u'beforeSpeakActionGroup'], catProps[u'afterSpeakActionGroup'] )
         speakThread.start()
         self.threads.append(speakThread)
         #speakThread.join()
         self.debugLog(u'Thread for speech notification started')

Outside the plugin class the following:

Code: Select all

class speakNotificationThread (threading.Thread):
    def __init__(self, notification, beforeAG, afterAG):
        threading.Thread.__init__(self)
        self.notification = notification
        self.beforeAG = beforeAG
        self.afterAG = afterAG
        #self.nplugin = nplugin
    def run(self):
        indigo.server.log( "Starting speak thread--")
        speakNotification(self.notification, self.beforeAG, self.afterAG)
        indigo.server.log( "Exiting speak thread--")
       
def speakNotification(notification, beforeAG, afterAG):
   if len(beforeAG) > 0:
      indigo.actionGroup.execute(int(beforeAG))
   indigo.server.speak(notification, waitUntilDone=True)
   if len(afterAG) > 0:
      indigo.actionGroup.execute(int(afterAG))

No matter what I do the plugin execution waits for the thread to finish before it continues. Is it possible to achieve this somehow?

[jay (support)]

Why not just:

Code: Select all

indigo.server.speak(notification, waitUntilDone=False)

instead of all the thread?

Because I want to execute the last action group when the speak is finished. Is it a way to accomplish this?

[jay (support)]

Just do your action group executions that need to happen while the speech is going on first, then do the speech and wait. The time between the action group executions and the speech starting will be minimal.

Thanks Jay,

I guess that'll be the solution.
I tried different threading options, but no matter what I do it seems the action execution is paused as long as the thread is running.

There is quite a lot of things happening in my action, so I wanted to start the speak as early as possible and continue running other things, in order to minimize the wait for the speak. Nevertheless, it is probably less than a second for complex situations and normally tenths of a second, so it should be OK.

I thought of starting an external script using IndigoPluginHost, but as the IndigoPluginHost takes a moment to set up and connect the delay is probably longer this way.

Thanks again.