[BRLTTY] BRLTTY and Raspberry PI

[Dave Mielke]

[quoted lines by kperry at blinksoft.com on 2022/05/01 at 01:41 -0400]

>BRLTTY seems to require the PcSPKR module which is the PC speaker module.  Raspberry PI does not have that module compiled with the kernel so you can't modprobe it. Is there steps to get BRLTTY working with Raspberry PI command line?

No, brltty doesn't require the pcspkr kernel module. The default for the alert tunes is to use it, but brltty continues along just fine without it - it's just that, you won't hear any of the alert tunes.

Brltty, as it should, logs the fact that it can't use the pcspkr kernel odule, but that's only a warning. This is how brltty works. If there's a feature that it wants to use but can't, then it continues without that feature as best it can.

>I have tried
>
>Sudo apt install brltty 
>
>And I have tried compiling my own out of the source.   

Please take care that you don't install your own build over top of the raspbian-supplied version. In other words, please configure your own brltty in a way that installs it to some other location (e.g. usr/local/).

Also, you can run brltty right out of your build tree. To do this, you use the run-brltty script. Doing it this way means that you don't need to install it.

>I don't see any options in the configure script to do something else than PCSPKR for a linux build.

Because that setting isn't done via configure. When brltty is running, you go into its Preferences Menu, and then into its Event Alrts submenu. In there, you can change the Tune Device from Beeper to PCM (which means your sound card). Then you'll hear the alert tunes out of your speakers.

>I am also not sure if BRLTTY is running after it errors with no
>PCSPKR or not 

As mentioned above, it isn't an error - it's just a warning. If you'd like to be sure that brltty is running, check for it with the ps command. The quickest way (to me) is to do: pgrep -x brltty

>because this is the first time I have tried this with a Orbit
>reader 40 in both emulation of vireo mode and not.  

Note that 6.4 didn't yet contain proper support for the Orbit Reader 40. You'll need the development code for that. It'll be in 6.5, which I expect to be releasing in a couple of weeks.

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