How I managed to use the microphone in Panda3D

C++ coding using Panda3D
1

I recently spent some time trying to use a microphone as a sound input in Panda3D under Windows.
Several old posts described this possibility, but no detailed implementation was given.

So, just for those of you interested, this is how I managed to make it work.

This is a quick (and dirty?) practical approach

  1. grab MicrophoneAudioDS.cxx file from Panda3D source
    edit it and merely make public the call to open()
// private:
  virtual PT(MovieAudioCursor) open();
  1. in your c++ program add the following includes
#include "audioManager.h"
#include "microphoneAudio.h"
#include "microphoneAudioDS.cxx"
#include "userDataAudio.h"
  1. define microphone access
PT(MicrophoneAudio) mic;		// micro 
PT(MicrophoneAudioCursorDS) micCursor;// audio cursor for micro stream
PT(UserDataAudio) micAudio;	// micro  channel 2 , 44100hz
  1. then explore all possible microphone input
MicrophoneAudioDS::find_all_microphones_ds();		// check microphone options
int num_options = MicrophoneAudioDS::get_num_options();
for (int m=0; m<num_options; m++) 
   cout << "mike option "<< m << " "<<MicrophoneAudioDS::get_option(m)->get_name()<< "\n";
mic        = MicrophoneAudioDS::get_option(2); // channel 2 , 44100hz
micCursor = DCAST(MicrophoneAudioCursorDS,mic->open());

then you can get audio samples and play them with Audio Manager

2

That is not how you should use it! You shouldn’t mess with MicrophoneAudioDS at all, or include any cxx files. Use the static methods on MicrophoneAudio.

3

Agreed in the principle, but when I originally tried:

#include "audioManager.h"
#include "microphoneAudio.h"
#include "userDataAudio.h"

PT(MicrophoneAudio) mic;     // micro
PT(MicrophoneAudioCursor) micCursor;// audio cursor for micro stream
PT(UserDataAudio) micAudio;  // micro  channel 2, 44100hz

MicrophoneAudio::find_all_microphones();      // check microphone options
int num_options = MicrophoneAudio::get_num_options();
for (int m=0; m<num_options; m++)
   cout << "mike option "<< m << " "<<MicrophoneAudio::get_option(m)->get_name()<< "\n";
mic       = MicrophoneAudio::get_option(2); // channel 2 , 44100hz
micCursor = DCAST(MicrophoneAudioCursor,mic->open());

The num_options ended up being reported as 0!!!

This is the reason why I tried this (horrible) hack !

4

Having the same issue here; Was the underlying problem ever identified and resolved? Also, thank you for posting your workaround for others to use as well. :slight_smile: