Simon 1.2.0

Release Notes: 1.2.0 - A new feature was added called Pause.

[Pause(duration)] where (duration) is replaced with the number of seconds.

Pause must be between .01 and 5 seconds. Values over 5 are converted to 5 according to the documentation I read.

Pause Examples

Hi, [Pause2] -- Will pause for 2 seconds

Today is the first day [Pause2.5], of the rest of your life.
I have not tested adding two or more pauses, but you might be able to combine [pause5][pause3] to pause for 8 seconds. I will try this some day or a brave volunteer can let me know if it works.

This install will install Simon on your machine. Simon is a text to speech app with 72 English language voices that use Microsoft Cognitive Service Text to Speech API. You can filter the voices by Gender and / or Country.

Here is a video that shows you how to install Simon and a demo.
https://youtu.be/T_muhqFGEPQ

You must create a free Microsoft Azure account, an Azure Resource Group and an Azure Speech Service account. I use the Free pricing tier, which provides 500,000 free characters per month. I believe the Standard Tier is $16 per 1 million characters if you need more.

After you setup Microsoft Azure, you must create two Environment Variables on your machine.

Name: SpeechKey
Enter your key for your Speech Service account.

Name: SpeechRegion
Value: Enter your region, such as centralus

Full instructions are located at *:
https://github.com/DataJuggler/Simon

Scroll down to see the instructions.

Upgrading?
You must uninstall the old version and install the new version for now.