Physical talking clock

larrious

I'm looking for a suitable microcontroller for the below specs. Considering the propeller 1 or some arduino board (which i'll probably need someone to help make sense of). Any advice welcome!

The use case is for visually impaired - they'll press a button and it'll announce the time (in mandarin).
I'll be likely re-writing the audio file, as well as the programming, so no hard soldering of the sd card, or the use of ROM I presume. It doesn't need a UI or dashboard or any other alarm features.

Specs

• speaker
• sd card - for storing .wav files (audacity, 1 file and chop up for consistent volume)
• sd card slot - solder on or buy a board with it.
• buton
• microcontroller to listen to button input
• clock - [DS3231 RTC]
• battery box
• 3v battery
  *EEPROM

evanh

One nice thing with using the Propeller is it will be relatively easy to set it up to load next individual spoken word while the previous word is being output to the speaker. That way less time is required to piece it together. Or able to use higher quality samples in limited RAM.

larrious

Thanks @evanh . Can you elaborate how that works? I'm totally new to this actually so any help is welcome.

And would you recommend the propeller 1 based on my requirements/specs?

evanh

Hehe, always recommended.

Basic idea is setup the speaker module (object) to run independently in its own core (cog). It simply waits for an audio buffer to be played filled and plays it, then waits for the next.

The main object can handle the sequence of waiting for a button press, then loading the first word into a buffer signalling the audio player to start from that buffer. The main object then immediately moves on to loading the second word into a second buffer and signalling it is ready to play as well. It'll then have to wait for the first buffer to come free before loading the third word into that ... rinse and repeat until sentence is complete. Then go back to waiting for the button press.

EDIT: Fixed the typo.

Christof Eb.

Hi,
If the device shall run only from batteries, then I would recommend to have a very close look at power consumption. And if you want to use a module, then often its voltage regulator alone will draw too much current, so you have to switch off the entire module.
For AA cells with 2500mAh and 1.5 years 2500/365/1.5/24=0.19mA.
Using mains power supply with battery backup would open up much more possibilities.

Beau Schwabe

If it were me I would lean towards a Phone app. Either something that already exists, or create my own. Even a Web based app that could run on a Phone or a PC.

iseries

@"Beau Schwabe" , If the person is blind how is he going to see a button on a phone or even be able to call up the app to push the button.

There are very few buttons on a phone and a lot of buttons on a PC.

This project calls for the:

Now how to replace the guts with a clock.

Mike

softcon

My guess is the OP wants a stand-alone device, not something dependent on computers/phone, since those devices already have methods of getting the time. Screen readers for every operating system exist, so no problem getting the time out of an android or apple device. Even the apple watch has a screen reader built in.
Just a couple days ago, I was looking for a replacement for the emic2 (I only have three of them), and I ran across several speech modules, multiple ones that already speak in chinese, so just using one of those, and interfacing it to the basic stamp, propeller, or arduino would do the job nicely. Failing that, there's already companies that produce talking clocks for the visually impaired, Maxi aids being the first one that comes to mind.
Lots of ways to handle this one. In fact, I just came to this forum hunting for the code Chip posted several years ago of the propeller 1 speaking (he had it generating the speech "Can you do it?" If anyone has the link to that post, I'd sure appreciate it.