Anyone ever use a SpeakJet speech chip?

[madsci1016]

As much as I loath Sparkfun I haven't been able to avoid them completely, and they seem to be having shipping issues (they are now on the third attempt to ship me AVRs at work, all I keep getting are a handful of PICs) and instead of sending me the $0.95 chips i ordered, they sent me a bunch of these $25 SpeakJet speech chips instead.

The videos on youtube of talking robots look cool. Has anyone used them before? I don't want to spend $20 on  the ASCII converter chip to drive them. Are there any open source ASCII to allophones libraries i can implement myself?

Tried google but i get overloaded with people using them and not much actual code for them.

[Ro-Bot-X]

I did not use a SpeakJet, but I know of a software that transforms text to allophones, PhraseALator.
http://www.tigerbotics.com/support/speakjet.htm

If you have too many of them, send one to me

[madsci1016]

I found PhraseALator by google, but it seems to just be a program that has a lookup table, and is limited to the words in that table. I looked through the table and couldn't find words like 'battery'.

[Razor Concepts]

You coud try "bat - tree"   

[amando96]

I've used the SoundGin, which is close, I was offered a small test board with the chip and a 232 port and amplifier, and a program to install on the computer and do the text to speech, google "soundgin" there's a yahoo groups page with helpful people.

[blackbeard]

you'll be my hero if you make it sing daisybell

[Soeren]

Hi,

[...] it seems to just be a program that has a lookup table, and is limited to the words in that table. I looked through the table and couldn't find words like 'battery'.

Since it's an allophone generator, you should be able to add the words you need.
To get the right sound (i.e. not like a chimp speaking Inuit), you start with the 72 allophones and then shape the word with pitch, rate bend and volume - might take some time, especially if you are not accustomed to dealing with all  these elements of speech, but it's worth getting it all under control, as it will be much easier to understand in noise, or to someone with a mild (or worse) hearing loss.

[madsci1016]

Soeren, do you have any links to tutorials or how-to's on how to do that? I have zero experience. 

[Webbot]

Got mine from these guys http://www.speechchips.com/shop/ and they were very helpful.
If you look at the datasheets on their site, Madscii, then you should glean more.

Other technique is to use a SOMO14D to play back words/phrases of your own voice that you've recorded onto a sdCard.

[Soeren]

Hi,

Soeren, do you have any links to tutorials or how-to's on how to do that? I have zero experience. 

Sorry, but no links. I'd suggest playing with it a bit for starters, to see if it's something you'd have fun with, or if you find it a boring task. I assume the datasheet gives the needed info on controlling the beast and when you need something about allophones etc. look up pages from speech therapists, linguists and audiology papers (PubMed is an excellent source here, but Google will find a lot too).
It's either something that you'll find exciting or the exact opposite - there's usually no intermediate here.

I personally find it fun and very educating playing around with the "components of speech", but I have worked the field and did a fair bit of research in my spare time, just because I found it exciting (even simple things like eg. the difference of the sounds "Aaa" and "Mmm" is just a single narrow band apart, which really makes it difficult to discern different words if you just have a few narrow bands of damaged hair cells).

But... I know some people find it more way exciting to watch paint dry, so you be the judge.


If I remember and get the time tomorrow, I'll take a glance at the datasheet and see if I can give you some starting pointers - If I forget, just give me a nudge.

[madsci1016]

Thanks.

I'm interested, the videos of it working are pretty neat.

The datasheet is straight forward, it maps allophones to bytes. The trouble i have is how do i know which allophones to pick out for 'battery' and other words. I'll have to sit down one day and just google for a while to see if i can find a newb cheat-sheet.

[Soeren]

Hi,

For the word "Battery", I would try this as my first go:
\BE
\AY
\TT
\EH
\AXRR
\IY

Change what doesn't sound quite right with similar allophones (Table C, p. 14 of the datasheet)
Then play with timing, pitch etc.

Do you have a circuit up and running to test it on?

If you record a .wav of it, post it and perhaps I can guide you further - it's a bit abstract until you actually hear how the chip handles it.

[madsci1016]

No circuit up yet but i will cook one up soon. I'll report back when I do.

Thanks for the help.

M first use might be to add to my robot to announce error messages.

[ben23f]

Hey all just wondering if anyone has used the SpeakJet since this topic came up?? I did a search for it on here as i just bought one to play around with and havent found much on using it. I can make simple sayings with it although they need tweaking to make them more understandable.