Droid Project

This project runs a Node.js server on a Raspberry Pi to control the "Droid" robot. It provides a web interface and API for controlling audio playback, video playback, thermal printing, and ElevenLabs Text-to-Speech (TTS).

Overview

The Droid server exposes endpoints to:

• Upload and play audio files (.wav) using mplayer.
• Upload and play video files (.mp4, .mov) using mpv.
• Print text and images to a connected USB thermal printer.
• New: Generate speech from text using ElevenLabs API (requires .env with API key).
• Manage the system service.

Installation & Setup

Prerequisites

• Raspberry Pi with Linux (Raspbian/Pi OS recommended).
• Node.js and npm.
• Python 3 with escpos, pigpio, Pillow, requests, python-dotenv.
• mplayer and mpv installed for media playback.

Configuration

Create a .env file in the Droid/ directory with your API keys:

ELEVEN_LABS_API_KEY=your_api_key_here

Media Players Installation

sudo apt-get install mplayer mpv

Setup Service

To install and enable the Droid systemd service, run the install script:

./scripts/install.sh

Usage

Manual Execution

node server.js

Access the web interface at http://<PI_IP>:3000.

API Endpoints

• GET /files: List available audio files.
• POST /play?file=<filename>: Play an audio file.
• POST /printText: Print text to the thermal printer.
• GET /tts/voices: List available ElevenLabs voices.
• POST /tts/generate: Generate audio from text (saves to voices/).

Key Files

• server.js: Main Node.js application.
• droid_tts.py: Bridge script for ElevenLabs TTS operations.
• elevenlabs_client.py: Standalone Python client for ElevenLabs API (decoupled from Wattson).
• print_image.py: Printer control script.
• public/: Web frontend assets.