title: Android "speak failed: not bound to tts engine"
body: <p>My android application has text to speak feature and more then one activity uses this feature. So created a static helper class to made this easy.</p>
  
  <pre><code>import java.util.Locale;
  
  import android.content.Context;
  import android.speech.tts.TextToSpeech;
  import android.speech.tts.TextToSpeech.OnInitListener;
  import android.util.Log;
  
  public class TextToSpeechController implements OnInitListener {
  
      private static final String TAG = "TextToSpeechController";
      private TextToSpeech myTTS;
      private String textToSpeak;
      private Context context;
  
      private static TextToSpeechController singleton;
  
      public static TextToSpeechController getInstance(Context ctx) {
          if (singleton == null)
              singleton = new TextToSpeechController(ctx);
          return singleton;
      }
  
      private TextToSpeechController(Context ctx) {
          context = ctx;
      }
  
      public void speak(String text) {
          textToSpeak = text;
  
          if (myTTS == null) {
              // currently can't change Locale until speech ends
              try {
                  // Initialize text-to-speech. This is an asynchronous operation.
                  // The OnInitListener (second argument) is called after
                  // initialization completes.
                  myTTS = new TextToSpeech(context, this);
  
              } catch (Exception e) {             
                  e.printStackTrace();
              }
          }
  
          sayText();
  
      }
  
      public void onInit(int initStatus) {
          if (initStatus == TextToSpeech.SUCCESS) {
              if (myTTS.isLanguageAvailable(Locale.UK) == TextToSpeech.LANG_AVAILABLE)
                  myTTS.setLanguage(Locale.UK);
          }
  
          // status can be either TextToSpeech.SUCCESS or TextToSpeech.ERROR.
          if (initStatus == TextToSpeech.SUCCESS) {
              int result = myTTS.setLanguage(Locale.UK);
              if (result == TextToSpeech.LANG_MISSING_DATA
                      || result == TextToSpeech.LANG_NOT_SUPPORTED) {
                  Log.e(TAG, "TTS missing or not supported (" + result + ")");
                  // Language data is missing or the language is not supported.
                  // showError(R.string.tts_lang_not_available);
  
              } else {
                  // Initialization failed.
                  Log.e(TAG, "Error occured");
              }
  
          }
      }
  
      private void sayText() {
          // ask TTs to say the text
          myTTS.speak(this.textToSpeak, TextToSpeech.QUEUE_FLUSH,     null);
      }
  
      public void stopTTS() {
          if (myTTS != null) {
              myTTS.shutdown();
              myTTS.stop();
              myTTS = null;
          }
      }
  
  }
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I am using this helper class like this.</p>
  
  <pre><code>TextToSpeechController.getInstance(this).speak(readableMessage);
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>But sometimes i see an error like line beloew at LogCat.</p>
  
  <pre><code>"speak:failed not bound to tts engine"
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>No exception thrown but nothing readed by TTS.
  I realized that if i triggered activity from BroadcastReceiver, i got this error. Otherwise if manually open activity from application code works with no problem.</p>
  
  <p>Here is the BroadcastReceiver code</p>
  
  <pre><code>private final BroadcastReceiver mHandleMessageReceiver = new BroadcastReceiver() {
      @Override
      public void onReceive(Context context, Intent intent) {
          String newMessage = intent.getExtras().getString(EXTRA_MESSAGE);            
          String readableMessage = intent.getExtras().getString(READABLE_MESSAGE);    
  
          Bundle b = new Bundle();
          b.putString(EXTRA_MESSAGE, newMessage);
          b.putString(READABLE_MESSAGE, readableMessage);
          Intent newIntent = new Intent("android.intent.action.MAIN");
          newIntent.setClass(context, Speak.class);
          newIntent.setFlags(Intent.FLAG_ACTIVITY_NEW_TASK);
          newIntent.putExtra("MessageReceived", b);
          newIntent.putExtra("CallType", CallType.NOTIFICATION);
          context.startActivity(newIntent);           
      }
  };
  </code></pre>