Voice activation

[rebelscum]

Hey guys,I was curious as to what it would take to have my light in my bedroom turn on via voice activation.What sort of electronics would I need to buy?how complicated is it?has any of you guys done it before?Just to let u no I'am a complete beginner at robotics an electronics so this may be extremely simple I don't know.All i'm asking for is your patience lol everyone was a beginner once right?
Cheers guys

[airman00]

Do you want to use a computer or a microcontroller?

[frodo]

Hey guys,I was curious as to what it would take to have my light in my bedroom turn on via voice activation.What sort of electronics would I need to buy?how complicated is it?has any of you guys done it before?

what you would need is some sort of microphone, voice recognition software of programming and a circuit. there are many voice-activation circuits on the web. just google search  . airman00 has made a robot with voice-recognition software. send him a personal message and ask how he did that part.

EDIT: oh, and do you want to use a comupter or a microcontroller?

[frodo]

darn, eric, you beat me to the reply.  we must have been typing at the same time for it. lol
Dan

[rebelscum]

blimey u guys are quick at replying lol,thanks for ur advice guys I will deffo contact airman cheers

[airman00]

blimey u guys are quick at replying lol,thanks for ur advice guys I will deffo contact airman cheers

still didnt answer - microcontroller or computer?

[householdutensils]

There's a big difference between speech recognition and voice activation.

If you're looking at speech recognition using a Linux PC, your options are limited to development technologies like CMUSphinx or Simon. If your using Windows XP or Vista, you can use SAPI (Microsoft Speech API) which can interface with most major programming languages, via Libs, COM, or packages. This is probably the easiest way to go, since SAPI 5.1 is documented extremely well all over the internet and the entire range of MS Dev tools is way easy to prototype stuff on. Oh...did I mentioned SAPI is free

If you want to go the MCU route, you can either use a PC that runs speech recognition software that then sends a signal to your MCU, or you can use dedicated Speech Recognition circuts, which tend to be expensive and difficult to implement. The other option is to find an engine that will run on your microcontroller, but I don't really know how you'd go about that. I would think you'd at least need external memory to hold the grammar and dictionaries.

If, however, you are looking for simple voice activation, you can get a kit like this:
http://www.jaycar.co.nz/productView.asp?ID=KC5172&CATID=&keywords=Voice&SPECIAL=&form=KEYWORD&ProdCodeOnly=&Keyword1=&Keyword2=&pageNumber=&priceMin=&priceMax=&SUBCATID=

This one is from JayCar NZ, but you'll be able to find them all over the place. These kits don't actually recognize grammar and speech, they just act as a switch that activates when it hears any voice. This is easily the most simple way to go, and is probably entirely appropriate if you just want to turn on a light. Alternatively as said above, you can find diy versions of these little badboys on the internet/

[RoBoTicS]

still didnt answer - microcontroller or computer?

lets say he uses a microcontroller.  How would it be done?

[Canabots]

Well, if you were to use a microcontroller, you would first have to buy/build some sort of speech recognition system, such as this: http://www.robotshop.ca/rb-ima-07-speech-recognition-circuit.html

The only issue with that board is that it requires a separate board to create proper logic outputs, like this one:
http://www.robotshop.ca/rb-ima-06-speech-recognition-interface.html

Afterwards, all you would have to do is create an interface to the microcontroller using those logic outputs, and to create the electronics assembly to control the power to the lights on the room. Then you write the program.

Actually, using that speech recognition system, you might not need a microcontroller.

This is just one of many possibilities.

If the recognition of actual words is not required, then you could possibly just connect a microphone to the microcontroller, and when a noise is created, the lights would turn on/off, depending on the program and electrical circuit you create.

These are just some general ideas, I haven't tried anything the likes of this before 

Good luck!

[pomprocker]

I do this now, I even have the computer tell me the weather.

You need a mac with built in speaker and mic

you need indigo 4.0

you need a smarthome powerlinc usb

you need an x10 lamp module

and you need apple scripts

[frodo]

i put voice recognition in case the person who is making the circuit only wants the light to work with a certain word of voice.

[rebelscum]

cheers for all your replies guys,I will be using a computer to do this an probably go along the same route as pomprocker.I will keep you guys notified this is my first project lol an will be doing it in between college,work an seeing my mates so I can't promise a quick reply lol Watch this space lol