Project 1 – Building a talking clock with a Bash script

This project will expose you to the Bash shell scripting language. You will build a talking clock that tells the time every minute using an executable and an Internet-based web service. Once the clock is up and running, you will use an automation tool called Cron to schedule and run tasks at a particular time or at regular intervals.

The talking clock will have the following features and functions:

• Automatically start every minute and run in the background without any visible interface to the desktop user

• Read the system time to get the local time on your Pi

• Produce a correctly formatted time string to announce the time, for example, you might say "The time is now nine fifteen AM"

• Convert the time string to audio and play it

• Exit the script

Creating project files and directories

First, you will open a Terminal window to create the project files and directories, update our system, and load a new utility application:

1. At the command line of the...