VoiceBox Shield Quickstart Guide

"Hello World" never sounded so good

Voice Box Shield is a unique element to your Arduino- compatible system allows a robotic voice. It's a SpeakJet speech-synthesizer chip and an audio amplifier that can directly drive consists of a small speaker. In addition to forming the speech commands sent to it, SpeakJet tones and other chips, such as "robot" noises There are many other features such as the ability to coordinate. It is pre-stored phrases that can be set up when the input pin is triggered. Detailed technical information, see the User Guide SpeakJet.

VoiceBox Shield Quickstart Guide

Requirements:

In this manual you will need the following:

• Soldering iron
• Solder
• Or stranded wire jumper wires
• arduino
• Speaker

How it works:

Arbitrary text-to-speech generation is a difficult problem. * When you (maybe with a ball & Spell) Think back to speak and spell. As you have learned, the correct pronunciation of many arcane rules are exceptions to the rule (actually hundreds) is governed by. VoiceBox SpeakJet chips on a slope in a speech to arbitrary text can not turn, but if you're willing to go up to the sound of the words rather than characters, SpeakJet chip is quite capable of synthesizing them.

A special audio chip SpeakJet the individual speech sounds, the synthesizer is capable of generating allophones. "A" parrot "There will be a different letter of the word" part "in comparison - it is different than the character. Unlike the characters, there are two words for different allophones. Allophones spelling out the words:

parrot= \PE \EYRR \UX \TT

part= \PO \AWRR \TT

Each allophone a text representation (as shown above), and a numeric code, which is stored in the following example code is. allophones In addition, there \ slow and \ rapid cadence that, as a result of stress and other effects that make the speech more natural way to add inline command.

So this means that I have to learn a whole new language?

Sort. But it really is not difficult, and you can use it quickly. How they're using the best available SpeakJet User Guide list of all allophones, along with tips, and hundreds of SpeakJet words into a text file already in their allophones. You have a limited number of words that need to be spoken, they are easy to copy your code out of the dictionary. You do not need to build new words in the dictionary, you see how it is built, and until it sounds just right allophones a similar sounding words in the dictionary starting to play around with.

How to use it:

Rally

An Arduino shield plug in your voice box, you will need to solder the board include paretabe header. If you've never welded before, do not worry, it's easy (although you have to practice on something else this is your first time, you may want to soldering). Six and eight-pin header on the edge of the board into groups of six and eight-hole matches. Header socket component side of the board (top) goes on, and the pins stick out at the bottom. The easiest way to solder the header board, board assembly and then flip upside down and insert it into the hole all four titles, and it is placed on a flat surface. Then you (the face) can solder joints on the bottom side of the board.

VoiceBox Shield Quickstart Guide

It is important for the header straight welded on so that they will easily plug into an Arduino (and other board can plug in). This is a good way to make sure that each header is only one pin first, then the alignment of the test solder. If something is not right, in front of the solder joint remelt cool straight title. Once the header is straight, all solder joints. In this example, the plug sockets on your Arduino must be clean, pin-up is sticking too long Try not to get too.

Also at your disposal (such as our 0.5W model, the COM-09151) need to be connected to a speaker or amplifier speaker header, SPK + and SPK- (such as our kit -09612). The easiest way to do this on your speaker or amplifier speaker terminal solder short lengths of wire from the header. Speaker, it usually does not matter which side you which terminal (but if you're using more than one speaker, you'll want them all the same way wired) connection. If you use an external amplifier If the amplifier's input ground or minus minus side to side (SPK-) connection.

Use

Once you have connected to a speaker, and upload your Arduino code examples below to give it a try. The Board will "prepare" the Reset, and then say, "All your base are belong to us", followed by some robotic beeps and chirps. Volume is not to your liking, then you can adjust the potentiometer on the board smaller. You will need to turn in an equally small Phillips screwdriver, and remember to be gentle as the small pots are fragile.

/*

Voice Box Demo Sketch

Written by Ryan Owens

SparkFun Electronics



Uses the Voice Box Shield from SparkFun to send the message "All your base are belong to us" and a series

of robot sounds to the SpeakJet chip on the shield. 



A speaker can be plugged directly into the SPK+ and - pins on the shield.

*/



//Soft serial library used to send serial commands on pin 2 instead of regular serial pin.

#include <SoftwareSerial.h>



//Define the Pin Numbers for the sketch.

#define E0  5
#define E1  6

#define E3  8
#define E2  7
#define E4  9

#define E6  11
#define E5  10
#define E7  12


#define SPK  4
#define RDY  13
#define RES  3


//Create a SoftSerial Objet
#define txPin  2



SoftwareSerial speakjet = SoftwareSerial(0, txPin);

//The message array contains the command for sounds to be sent in order to inunciate the words "All your base belong to us." Check the SpeakJet Manual for more information

//on producing words

                                                  //All              Your         Base                 Are     Belong                       to          us

char message[] = {20, 96, 21, 114, 22, 88, 23, 5, 8, 135, 8, 146, 5, 128, 153, 5, 170, 154, 8, 188, 5, 152, 5, 170, 8,128,146,8,135,8,144,5,8,191,162,5,8,134,187};



//The sounds array contains the commands to send robot sounds to the SpeakJet chip.

char sounds[] = {200, 201, 202, 203, 220, 221, 222};



void setup()  

  //Configure the pins for the SpeakJet module
{


  pinMode(txPin, OUTPUT);

  pinMode(SPK, INPUT);
  

  //Set up a serial port to talk from Arduino to the SpeakJet module on pin 3.

  speakjet.begin(9600);    
  

  //Configure the Ready pin as an input

  pinMode(RDY, INPUT);
  

  //Configure Reset line as an output

  pinMode(RES, OUTPUT);

       

  //Configure all of the Event pins as outputs from Arduino, and set them Low.

  for(int i=E0; i<=E7; i++)
  {

    pinMode(i, OUTPUT);

    digitalWrite(i, LOW);

  }
  

  //All I/O pins are configured. Reset the SpeakJet module

  digitalWrite(RES, LOW);

  delay(100);

  digitalWrite(RES, HIGH);
  

void loop()
}



{  

  //Send "All Your Base are Belong to Us" to the SpeakJet module

  speakjet.print(message);

  //Wait before sending the next string.

  delay(3000);    

  //Send the robotic sounds to the module.

  speakjet.print(sounds);

  while(1);
}

By default, a three-pad solder jumper Pin Arduino D2 SpeakJet serial input that connects to the customer. Arduino is the value of D2 pin, Texas, are you of D2 (the advantage of this system is a software serial library SpeakJet to talk with chips that can be used for standard serial pins D0 and D1 and other cereals from the free use). If you want to use the standard pin in Texas, then you can change it to solder jumper JP2 (but if you do this, SpeakJet chips, unless you unplug Voice Box gibberish noises can shield the first, when you're uploading code Notes ). The first fully jumper solder wick (toll -09327) from the existing solder used to remove solder jumper to change its position, then the other side of the bridge connecting the solder jumper add.

Other resources:

WiFly wireless SpeakJet Server: A more advanced projects, a WiFly shield shield a voice box Check out our tutorial on clothes.

Rejoice! 

If you need help, please contact us at Tech support@sparkfun.com, or our forums do not hesitate to get advice from other users. We love hearing about your project, so let us know what you are doing!

Your friends at SparkFun.

TTS256 (COM-09811) - * Are you really arbitrary text-to-speech generation is required, then SparkFun sells a chip that can do it. Rule 600 of the chip that are allophones (and usually you have a problem with it, check your spelling words by "phonetically" can fix a problem), free text translation is a pretty good (but not always perfect) job to do. It is this chip to add Voice Box Shield, how to do this for our tutorial (tutorial Voice Box Board for the previous version, but the same process) that's even possible.