Is there a way to make R beep/play a sound at the end of a script?
RR Problem Overview
When I run R scripts I go do something else on a different desktop. If I don't check frequently, I never know when something is finished. Is there a way to invoke a beep (like a system beep) or get R to play a sound or notify growl via some code at the end of my script?
R Solutions
Solution 1 - R
I have a package (beepr) with the sole purpose of making notification sounds in R which should work cross-platform. Run the following to install beepr and make a sound:
install.packages("beepr")
library(beepr)
beep()
More info at github: https://github.com/rasmusab/beepr
Solution 2 - R
alarm()
The alarm function. It works by sending \a to the console
Solution 3 - R
On MacOSX you can let the computer speak:
system("say Just finished!")
and you can also change the artificial voice that will speak:
system("say -v Kathy Just finished!")
You can pick any voice that is available on your computer. On Yosemite you can see which voices are installed in System Preferences -> Dictation & Speech -> Text to Speech.
Solution 4 - R
You should have it tweet when it's done: http://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/twitteR/index.html
Solution 5 - R
alarm doesn't work on my Windows machine so I created a function that does actually make noise.
beep <- function(n = 3){
for(i in seq(n)){
system("rundll32 user32.dll,MessageBeep -1")
Sys.sleep(.5)
}
}
This clearly could only work on Windows but I don't guarantee it will even run on an arbitrary Windows computer. I've only tested it on my machine but I figured I'd post it in case anybody has the same problem with alarm that I do.
Solution 6 - R
> cat('Hello world!\a')
Solution 7 - R
How about something reasonably OS independent for OSes with GUIs and web-browsers? It even works on RStudio Server!
browseURL('https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QH2-TGUlwu4')
Solution 8 - R
Not only that, you can also also put some epic music from Youtube when the program is done looping :) (For Ubuntu/Debian:)
system("xdg-open 'http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9jK-NcRmVcw'")
Solution 9 - R
UPDATE:
With macOS 10.9 (Mavericks) and later, you can post notifications using plain AppleScript:
theTitle <- "A Title"
theMsg <- "A message here"
cmd <- paste("osascript -e ", "'display notification ", '"', theMsg, '"', ' with title ', '"', theTitle, '"', "'", sep='')
system(cmd)
This removes the need to install terminal-notifier, referenced below.
--
I've got terminal-notifier installed on my Mac to get desktop notifications from the command line. You can then wrap up a call to the system() command like this (change the path, obviously):
notify <- function(msgString='Message from R', titleString='Message from R', speakIt=FALSE) {
cmd <- paste('~/terminal-notifier/terminal-notifier.app/Contents/MacOS/terminal-notifier -message ', '"', msgString, '" -title "', titleString, '"', sep='')
system(cmd)
if (speakIt) {
system(paste('say', msgString))
}
}
You can call the function like this
notify("R is done", "Message from R", speakIt=TRUE)
to get a message like this:
Update: Included @VLC's say command.
Solution 10 - R
Please use shell.exec("url") to open some YouTube clip on Windows
Solution 11 - R
Or if you're using GNU/Linux distro and have pcspkr module blacklisted (PC speaker was always annoying me), try combining system with some auditive/visual notification, e.g.
system("aplay -t wav /usr/share/sounds/phone.wav") # for auditive bell (an I mean it literary)
system("zenity --title=\"R script info\" --text=\"Script has finished with zero exit status\" --info") # for GTK dialog
You can check zenity manual if you prefer alert in, say, notification area... But, with system function, you can do pretty much anything: send an email, run some other script, reboot the machine, sudo rm -rf *.*, etc. anything... and I mean it.
But this stands only IF you're running GNU/Linux (or UNIX) distribution, otherwise, stick to Windows specific commands, though in that case, I can't give you much info...
Solution 12 - R
Inspired by beepr, this is the function I'm currently using for these kind of problems :D
work_complete <- function() {
cat("Work complete. Press esc to sound the fanfare!!!\n")
on.exit(beepr::beep(3))
while (TRUE) {
beepr::beep(4)
Sys.sleep(1)
}
}
Solution 13 - R
How about playing some music?
shell.exec("foo/Born.to.be.wild.mp3")
Solution 14 - R
take a look at this package: RPushBullet
> An R interface to the Pushbullet messaging service which provides fast > and efficient notifications (and file transfer) between computers, > phones and tablets
RPushbullet is completely free and multi platform. As for your question, you can use this library to send a Push to your browser, but obviously it becomes amazing when you need something than can notify you while you are away. Moreover, the creator of the R package is the same of the well known Rcpp, Dirk Eddelbuettel. I'd say it's worth a shot!
Solution 15 - R
How about using Windows SpeechSynthesizer?
message <- "job done!"
system2(command = "PowerShell",
args = c("-Command",
"\"Add-Type -AssemblyName System.Speech;",
"$speak = New-Object System.Speech.Synthesis.SpeechSynthesizer;",
paste0("$speak.Speak('", message, "');\"")
))
This may by nicely used in iterating operations and read something like "First job done", "Second job done" etc.:
say_something <- function(message) {
message <- paste0("$speak.Speak('", message, "');\"")
system2(command = "PowerShell",
args = c("-Command",
"\"Add-Type -AssemblyName System.Speech;",
"$speak = New-Object System.Speech.Synthesis.SpeechSynthesizer;",
message
))
}
operations <- c("1st.", "2nd.", "3rd.")
lapply(operations, function(x) say_something(message=paste(x, "job done")))
*Note, that this uses system defaul language settings. The example is based on english lector, it can be changed using SelectVoice method. To check available lectors use:
system2(command = "PowerShell",
args = c("-Command",
"\"Add-Type -AssemblyName System.Speech;",
"$speak = New-Object System.Speech.Synthesis.SpeechSynthesizer;",
"$speak.GetInstalledVoices().VoiceInfo")
)
That gives:
Gender : Female
Age : Adult
Name : Microsoft Paulina Desktop
Culture : pl-PL
Id : TTS_MS_PL-PL_PAULINA_11.0
Description : Microsoft Paulina Desktop - Polish
SupportedAudioFormats : {}
AdditionalInfo : {[Age, Adult], [Gender, Female], [Language, 415], [Name, Microsoft Paulina Desktop]...}
Gender : Male
Age : Adult
Name : Microsoft David Desktop
Culture : en-US
Id : TTS_MS_EN-US_DAVID_11.0
Description : Microsoft David Desktop - English (United States)
SupportedAudioFormats : {}
AdditionalInfo : {[Age, Adult], [Gender, Male], [Language, 409], [Name, Microsoft David Desktop]...}
Finally a function to select the lector by his "name" like "David", "Paulina" or "Hazel":
say_something <- function(message , voice) {
voice <- paste0("\"$speak.SelectVoice('Microsoft ", voice, " Desktop');" )
message <- paste0("$speak.Speak('", message, "');\"")
system2(command = "PowerShell",
args = c("-Command",
"\"Add-Type -AssemblyName System.Speech;",
"$speak = New-Object System.Speech.Synthesis.SpeechSynthesizer;",
voice,
message
))
}
operations <- c("1st.", "2nd.", "3rd.")
lapply(operations, function(x) say_something(message=paste(x, "job done"), voice="David"))
Solution 16 - R
Do this:
song <- function() {
for(i in 1:2) {
for(i in 1:4) {
for(i in 1:4) {
beep(7)
Sys.sleep(0.25)
beep()
Sys.sleep(0.22)
}
beep(2)
}
beep(11)
}
beep(4)
}
song()
You can jam out to it.
Solution 17 - R
The following code produces a beep and does not depend on a .mp3 or .wav file:
switch(Sys.info()[['sysname']],
Linux = {
system('play -n synth 0.1 tri 1000.0')}
)
Solution 18 - R
You can use notify-send command:
system("notify-send \"R script finished running\"")
Solution 19 - R
Because of these many ideas, I have created a solution without Internet access, because I work with a VPN client with Windows. So it plays a typical Windows sound, which is usually on any Windows operating system.
#Function with loop, press Esc to stopp
alarm2 <- function(){
while(TRUE){
system("cmd.exe",input="C:/Windows/WinSxS/amd64_microsoft-windows-shell-sounds_31bf3856ad364e35_10.0.17134.1_none_fc93088a1eb3fd11/tada.wav")
Sys.sleep(1)
}
}
#Function without loop alarm3 <- function(){ system("cmd.exe",input="C:/Windows/WinSxS/amd64_microsoft-windows-shell-sounds_31bf3856ad364e35_10.0.17134.1_none_fc93088a1eb3fd11/tada.wav") Sys.sleep(1) }