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Soundgin and BS2 — Parallax Forums

Soundgin and BS2

WolfbrotherWolfbrother Posts: 129
edited 2011-01-24 09:45 in BASIC Stamp
Hello all,

I'm completely lost and stuck on interfacing a Soundgin to the BS2 board. I found an example of the code on the web for BS2 and I'm not sure if it worked, because I think the DEBUG statements and the serial port would be in contention for the same pin. Has anyone interfaced a Soundgin board to a BS2 and could they share their code? Right now I have a Stamp PDB and I am using the serial port (tx/rx/DTR/GND pg 28 of ref manual) to connect to the soundgin. I have tried 9600 8bit N inverted, true and 7 bit inverted and true. All to no avail. The unit makes tones however. It appears ( by commenting/uncommenting out lines until no noise was made) that the chip reset command, makes it make a noise that sounds like oh ooooooooo which goes forever. So I think something is working. But I am really at a loss for what. I'm guessing this is a simple mistake I am making. Anyone have an idea?

Thanks in advance,

DaveSoundGincleaned.bs2
bs2
bs2
SoundGincleaned.bs2
3K

Comments

  • HumanoidoHumanoido Posts: 5,770
    edited 2011-01-03 09:50
    Google comes up with a lot of links with people who used the BASIC Stamp and Soundgin. At the main web site, there's a connection diagram which can be adapted. The manual is also available. If some of the older links are not available, you can use the wayback machine. I suggest you also try the support group for Soundgin.
  • RobotWorkshopRobotWorkshop Posts: 2,307
    edited 2011-01-03 11:40
    There is a Yahoo group setup to support the SpeakJet and SoundGin chips. You can sign up here:

    http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/speakjet/
  • RobotWorkshopRobotWorkshop Posts: 2,307
    edited 2011-01-03 13:04
    I went to take a look at the SoundGin datasheet (I'm more familiar with the SpeakJet) and it appears that the websites for the SoundGin are offline. There was a reference that others noticed this too:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savage_Innovations

    Any idea what happened to them? This may not be good for the future of the SoundGin. As I recall there are two sources for the SpeakJet chip so hopefully that will continue to be offered for years to come.
  • HumanoidoHumanoido Posts: 5,770
    edited 2011-01-04 09:34
    Why don't you just switch to a Propeller chip? It can serve as a sound source, generate synthesized speech, music and singing! Plus connecting it to a stamp is a breeze!
  • WolfbrotherWolfbrother Posts: 129
    edited 2011-01-16 18:42
    Humanoido,

    I did change to the prop. Good idea. I have been over on that forum and missed this suggestion from you, but it's a great one. I am having some troubles with the prop, but those issues are me, not the chip. The soundgin I got seems to be not working at all, I scoped it and the serial port is toggling, but the chip isn't working. That's too bad, but it's ok since the propeller is working.

    Thanks,

    Dave
  • HumanoidoHumanoido Posts: 5,770
    edited 2011-01-20 00:49
    Wolfbrother wrote: »
    Humanoido, I did change to the prop. Good idea. I have been over on that forum and missed this suggestion from you, but it's a great one. I am having some troubles with the prop, but those issues are me, not the chip. The soundgin I got seems to be not working at all, I scoped it and the serial port is toggling, but the chip isn't working. That's too bad, but it's ok since the propeller is working. Thanks, Dave
    Hi Dave! Glad to hear the Propeller can help your project. I would keep the Soundgin project going too and have the defective chip replaced if possible. For the Propeller challenges, you can post questions on the Propeller Forum. The masters there are especially helpful to people just starting out with the prop.
  • Vern GranerVern Graner Posts: 337
    edited 2011-01-24 09:45
    I've interfaced the BS2 to the Soundgin and even created a "demo" program that walks the Soundgin through just about all facets of its operation including polyphonic sounds, scales with different waveforms (sine, saw tooth etc), all the built-in preset sounds and even synthesized speech. The code is available here:

    http://www.notepad.org/soundgin

    The most recent BS2 source to demo the Soundgin is the "BSII-Soundgin-Demo8(with_speech).txt" though there are some other code examples up there (including one for the Thereping devices). :)

    As Savage Innovations seems to have disappeared, I also mirrored the Soundgin setup program (GUI) and a serial port monitor program to "reverse engineer" the codes that are needed to make the Soundgin "do" things. The way to do this is to hook the Soundgin to the PC (make sure you use a level converter like a MAX-232) and then use the Soundgin GUI to cause the Soundgin to play a sound. the serial monitor will show you what data was sent to the Soundgin to make the sound, then you can use the BS2 to send the same codes to get the sound you like. All the programs I used are located in that link above (including the PDF docs and the serial port monitor program).

    I only recently updated my BS2 demo code to include the speech synthesis which is pseudo text to speech. By "pseudo" I mean that the phonemes are read out from DATA statements at the top of the source code. To generate the phonemes from plain text, I use a web site created by James Delaney of the Unfocused Brain blog. The link for the "plain text to phonemes for the Soundgin" is available here:

    http://www.graner.net/projects/speech

    This page has an area where you type in text, then it looks up the phonemes and then presents you with BS2 data tables to paste in to the top of your code to make the Soundgin say phrases. :)

    Hope this helps. :)

    Vern
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