Lego EV3 Sound file .rsf format

Lego EV3 support play sound files, and the Lego programmer software comes with many built-in sound files. If you want to add new sound files,  you can use the "Sound Editor" that came with the software. Or you can convert an existing sound file to it.

The found file ends with .rsf extension (probably standing for Robotic Sound File). It has the following format:

[ 8 bytes of header]
[ raw sound data ]

The first 8 bytes of the file are meta data with the following meaning:

byte 0, byte 1: 0x01 0x00
byte 2, byte 3:  length, in big-endian, of raw sound data.
byte 4, byte 5: 0x1f, 0x40 (demical 8000, the sampling rate)
byte 6, byte 7: 0x00, 0x00.

raw sound data
The raw sound data is 8-bit of PCM data, with sampling rate of 8000 samples per second.

Example Script

On a Mac OS computer, one can use the following command to generate a audio file:

say "hello world" -o hello.aiff

Then you can use "ffmpeg" (you need to use brew to install it) to convert it to raw audio

ffmpeg -i hello.aiff -acodec pcm_u8 -f u8 -ar 8000 hello.raw

Then you can use the above mentioned tool "raw2rsf" to conver the raw file to .rsf file

raw2rsf hello.raw > hello.rsf

Then you can copy the hello.rsf file to your Lego Programmer sound file directory and then use it from the programmer software!

raw2rsf.c: a simple C program to convert a .raw file to .rsf file.

	/* See more details at https://tiebing.blogspot.com/2019/09/lego-ev3-sound-file-rsf-format.html */
	#include <stdio.h>
	#include <stdlib.h>
	#include <sys/types.h>
	#include <unistd.h>
	#include <sys/stat.h>
	#include <fcntl.h>
	int main(int argc, char **argv){
	int i;
	int count;
	char buf[1024];
	if (argc!=2){
	printf("\n Usage: %s <input-raw-audio-file>\n", argv[0]);
	return -1;
	}
	char *infile=argv[1];
	int fd=open(infile,O_RDONLY);
	if (fd<0){
	perror("open error\n");
	return -1;
	}
	off_t fsize=lseek(fd,0,SEEK_END);
	if (fsize<0){
	perror("lseek error\n");
	return -1;
	}
	if (fsize>65535){
	fprintf(stderr,"Error: input file large than 65535 bytes\n");
	return -1;
	}
	lseek(fd,0,SEEK_SET);
	buf[0]=0x01;
	buf[1]=0x00;
	buf[2]=fsize/256;
	buf[3]=fsize%256;
	buf[4]=0x1f;
	buf[5]=0x40;
	buf[6]=0x00;
	buf[7]=0x00;
	write(1,buf,8);
	while((count=read(fd,buf,sizeof(buf)))>0){
	write(1,buf,count);
	}
	close(fd);
	return 0;
	}

view raw raw2rsf.c hosted with ❤ by GitHub