SNARP (Simple Noise Activated Recording in Python) is, as the title suggests, a program to record audio. It is primarily developed on the N900.

Eventually I'll split it up into a recording part and a Graphical frontend. The frontend would probably be specific to the N900 Maemo 5 QT Widget set.

To use SNARP from the UNIX command line, specify an output wav file to write to as a positional argument. By default, snarp.py reads wav data from stdin:

$ cat test.wav | python snarp.py output.wav

The audio in the output will have frames from silence sections of the input removed, but otherwise be a frame-for-frame copy of the input.

Reading data from the standard input makes it particularly easy to read from different audio devices using command line audio programs and pipes. Sox (cross platform) and arecord (Linux) are suggested. Using Sox' rec program to record system audio input, trimming out silences with SNARP:

$ rec -t wav - | python snarp.py output.wav

To specify an input file rather than reading from the standard input, use the -i flag:

$ python snarp.py -i test.wav output.wav

You may need to override the min and max sample levels used to define silent periods:

$ python snarp.py -i test.wav --silence-min -100 --silence-max 100 output.wav

Other options and usage information can be found with python snarp.py -h.

Use arecord via pipes to emulate SNARP's original default behavior:

$ arecord -D hw:0,0 -r 8000 |\
      python snarp.py --silence-min 120 --silence-max 135 output.wav

And SNARP's original "podcaster" behavior:

$ arecord -D front:CARD=Podcaster,DEV=0 -r 48000 -f S24_3LE |\
      python snarp.py --silence-min -1500000 --silence-max 1500000 output.wav