Emic Text to speech not working

Richard Balogh

Before I sent it back to the producer, maybe somebody can
help:

I just received new Emic TTS. First I test the board with
BasicStamp2 on Board of Education. All connections corresponds to
the picture on the page 17 in manual. First I try the EasyEmic.bs2 program from
downloaded from the parallax product page. Everything works perfect.
Than I downloaded the EmicTTS.bs2 from the same place and also everything
goes perfectly.

Than I changed the sentence in EasyEmic.bs2 and removed the neverending
loop, I wnat to listen the sentence only once. And there starts the problems.
I heared the sentence ones and from this moment never more. And no other
program works. I tried again the EasyEmic and
EmicTTS. The responses are OK, except the module does not speak.
And after the 'say' command it never stops and the BUSY line remains
high (also the red LED diode).

Last experiment I did was to add a simple RS232 converter (MAX232)
and I moved both swithces to the ON position and I tested the module
with terminal program on my laptop. As You can see from the attached
log file, everything works, except...
Except the 'say' command.

When I send the 'say' command, I can hear a quiet noise from the speaker
(yes, it is the small 8 Ohm spk) and after the command stops (possible
only with hard reset), the noise stops. But no audible signal.

I also try to check the powersupply and I added filter capacitors
(1x 10uF + 1 x 100n) between the Vcc and Gnd close to the module.


Here is a Terminal log file:

Date: 27. 6. 2008 - 22:33:45

---

22:34:34.557< OK
22:34:34.557> reset;
22:34:43.620< OK
22:34:43.620> version;
22:34:47.807< Emic HWREV = 1A
22:34:47.870< Emic SWREV = 12
22:34:47.932< WTS701 HWVER = 02
22:34:48.057< WTS701 SWVER = 68
22:34:48.120< OK
22:35:02.870> listabbr;
22:35:07.182< Abbreviation List =
22:35:07.307<
22:35:16.120< OK
22:35:28.745> volume=5;
22:35:33.370< OK
22:35:33.370> speed=3;
22:35:38.620< OK
22:35:47.682> pitch=3;
22:35:51.932< OK
22:36:07.495> say=hello;

... no response and BUSY line remains active for more
than 5 minutes. Then I finished and reset the module.

---

End log file


Any ideas, please?

Richard Balogh

Zoot

It looks like you are not sending the "end-of-message" -- see the Emic documenation. After sending a text string to "speak", you must send the EOM (end of message) as the final character(s) in the byte stream -- otherwise the Emic doesn't know when to actually take the bytes you've sent, convert them, and output the audio. This would possibly explain why the busy signal goes high but the Emic never does anything.

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When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro. -- HST

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Tracy Allen

That should work. In ascii mode, EOM is either a semicolon or CR.

Can you try the audio input command?

audio;

Then feed an audio signal into the Ain pin, and see if you can hear it on the speaker. That would test the audio amplifier chain apart from the TTS function.

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Tracy Allen
www.emesystems.com

Richard Balogh

Zoot: thanks for advice, but I am sure, that EOM was OK, as also Tracy explained.

Tracy: That was a good idea, I did build the recommended filter and test the audio input. It works perfectly,
without problems. During the audio command the LED lits red, then returning to green.

It seems, that the chip loses some speech information, because it evidently tries to do something. It recognises
the command, it also switches the sound channal, but instead of speech, there is only very quiet noise...

Is there a possibility e.g. to flash new firmware to the board?

David H

That sounds almost exactly like the same symptoms my first Emic TTS module had. Parallax support had me send it back to my supplier and I got a replacement that worked fine.
The first one would be silent for most works but there was the occasional word that it would make a sound for example, if I instructed it to say "Twenty" I would hear "Tw", and it could say the complete word, "Stamp".

David H