robot speech - mp3 player?

[Admin]

I've been looking for a good robot speech module for several years now with no luck. Well, I mean I've found a few, but none have been good enough for what I want.

Ideally I'd want my robot to speak an asian tonal language.

These are the modules I've found so far:
http://www.hvwtech.com/products_view.asp?ProductID=352
http://www.textspeak.com/oemtts.htm
http://www.robotshop.ca/home/suppliers/devantech-en/devantech-speech-synthetizer-module-sp03.html

The problem with all of them is that they are really hard to understand even in English!

So then I got the idea of an mp3 player module instead. I can just prerecord a ton of short phrases and command the player by serial. I've found two of such devices:
http://www.roguerobotics.com/products/electronics/ump3
http://www.compuphase.com/mp3player_en.htm



I'll have to buy a seperate SD card + speaker, but that shouldn't be a problem. What makes the uMP3 one really nice is that it can also record what you say to the robot!

Anyone have experience with those, or know of any others? Anyone know the time lag from command to playback on these?

[ed1380]

never used one of those. but what about the daisy? seems alot cheaper than one of the ones you found

[Admin]

The daisy is even more expensive:
http://www.engadget.com/2006/11/16/daisy-mp3-player-kit-a-diy-dap-for-120/
http://www.teuthis.com/html/daisy_mp3.html
(and I have the extra work of making it myself)

[Tsukubadaisei]

This topic is great!! I have been looking for this kind of information lately.
I usually put voices in my robots that use my UMPC for debugging. For the voices I use a voice synthesizer called Vocaliod2. But I have never found a way to use Miku's voice in a micro-controller robot, I will definitely try those approaches during the summer this year.

[Asellith]

Can you buy the H0420 from compuphase in america? The company is in the netherlands. and the prices are not in $ so not sure what the US dollar price will be.
https://mmm1935.dulles19-verio.com/com783/mp3player_en.htm

[Asellith]

http://www.jerryselectronics.com/mp3player/mp3player.htm

found another mp3 module looks nice not sure how well it works but it's under $200

[ed1380]

jerry's mp3 player-$185
daisy-$120

admins suggested mp3 players<daisy=admins mp3 player<$120

you know. just pointing that out

[Asellith]

Well I thought I would just add it to the list because it does thing the other modules will not do. It has switch contacts that will allow you to play a specific clip without having a microcontroller in the system. Thats what I needed for a project at work and finally found one so I decided to share 

[roi_tau]

What about this:

http://www.mikroe.com/en/tools/smartmp3/

I bought it and it's great.


All the best

Roi

[googlygrp]

I am waking up this thread to update it a bit... MP3 solutions are the least expensive, but if you need ASCII to Speech I have seen (& heard) what may be the best Text to Speech module board available. Its the TextSpeak TTS-EM-HD2. It has 20 languages pre-programmed and besides English has TTS in:

 Arabic, Chinese, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English (UK)  English (US)  Finnish, French, French (B), French (Canadian) German Greek Japanese, Korean, Italian  Norwegian  Polish, Turkish,  Portuguese, Russian, Spanish (North America & Castilian) Swedish..

http://www.textspeak.com/tts_em.htm


The sample sounds exactly like a person, so for Embedded Text to Speech this is the best (IMHO). I asked for a student discount, waiting to see the price . I needed UK English

[Soeren]

Hi,

[...] the TextSpeak TTS-EM-HD2.

Good find, maybe 

The sample sounds exactly like a person, so for Embedded Text to Speech this is the best (IMHO). I asked for a student discount, waiting to see the price . I needed UK English

Danish is not too common to find and hard to do correctly, so I'd like to hear some samples, but oh, how I hate dealing with companies that haven't got the decency to at least put up an approximate price and such.

To get the least shred of documentation on their product, you have to give them your first born. Ridiculously! Like their documents is a big secret - nah, to get it you need to allow them to email you and then they can just go on. Companies usually either go this way, either because they're hideously expensive, or they want to spam you (or both).

I'm semi-interested and if they did business in a proper way, I'd be red hot, so please tell us when you get it and your experience with it (as well as with the company)

[googlygrp]

Pricing is available for online ordering.. you just have to ask for the link. This company mostly provides to OEM's ... for so they do not promote "1 unit" sales and publish price. I got the user guide and prices by simply asking

That said, they certainly don't have $99 hobby solutions. What they do have is the  best sounding TTS out there... notwithstanding the 20+ languages available from stock.



anyway these are a far cry from speakjet

[Soeren]

Hi,

Pricing is available for online ordering.. you just have to ask for the link. This company mostly provides to OEM's ... for so they do not promote "1 unit" sales and publish price. I got the user guide and prices by simply asking

And that's the general problem I see - I should be able to see the price without having to spill my details. Otherwise, I take my business elsewhere.
Either they get my interest with a thorough product demonstration with pricing immediately, or I get bored and find somewhere else

That said, they certainly don't have $99 hobby solutions. What they do have is the  best sounding TTS out there... notwithstanding the 20+ languages available from stock.

As I concluded from the missing price... It's way too high as usual when a business won't tell you until they get your details.

One thing's for sure, they won't get into any of my contract designs - I demand very cheap or free, when I develop solutions that the contractor are going to produce in large numbers.

anyway these are a far cry from speakjet

And for how long have you been working for that company?

If they change their policy on the above mentioned subjects, do let us know.

[Ryltar]

I use http://www.sparkfun.com/products/9715 and haven't had problems with it. The serial communication makes it pretty simple to work with. There is an arduino library written for serial comm. Currently I have it wired up to a demux and use 5 digital outs to control 16 channels on it.

[Webbot]

This is quite easy to use: http://www.sparkfun.com/products/9534
You can store audio onto an SD card and then playback. So you could even record and playback sound snippets.
And it has WebbotLib support: http://webbot.org.uk/WebbotLibDocs2/45328.html