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Weird behaviour with QUADRAVOX QV306m4-P — Parallax Forums

Weird behaviour with QUADRAVOX QV306m4-P

ArchiverArchiver Posts: 46,084
edited 2003-12-06 16:46 in General Discussion
I'm using it for a talking alarm clock application, and I've noticed a
really weird behaviour. The documentation I have (actually, the code sample
in the doc) says you initialize the device by pulling the RST low for 100
ms, and then waiting 2000ms for the board to pull itself together.

This doesn't seem to work. Even pulling RST low for 120ms, and waiting
10000ms (with PAUSE, not SLEEP), the first phrases I ask the chip to speak
end up garbled (wrong words or no words, usually a symptom that the board
isn't initialized yet, as I understand it.) I'm not using SLEEP or NAP
anywhere, so there aren't any weirdnesses with RST being put into a funny
state for 18ms anywhere.

The workaround appears to be to pull low for 120ms, pause 5000ms, ask the
board to say a word, which it typically doesn't manage to say (BUSY flickers
low and comes right back HIGH), wait another 3000ms, and thereafter,
everything seems to work. It's as if it needs a sacrificial victim, before
it will cooperate.

While I'm very used to the ideas of sacrificing data to the angry gods of
hardware, this just doesn't seem right. Do I have a bad card? What
experiences have people had?

(In general, this is a quirky card. It doesn't seem right that the device
needs several SECONDS to pull itself together on power up. It talks about
"scanning message memory to find messages"; but why? They couldn't store
indexes to them at message-load time?)

Comments

  • ArchiverArchiver Posts: 46,084
    edited 2003-12-06 16:46
    You may have a bad module -- I've used various flavors of the QV306 with
    little hassle -- yes, it has it's quirks, but generally works well
    (otherwise Parallax wouldn't sell them).

    Double-check you baud setting for SEROUT. I remember being off one time
    (type on my part) and getting some odd [noparse][[/noparse]eratic] behavior from the QV306.

    -- Jon Williams
    -- Applications Engineer, Parallax
    -- Dallas Office


    Original Message
    From: Scott [noparse]/noparse]mailto:[url=http://forums.parallaxinc.com/group/basicstamps/post?postID=2DC_5I18YZPFCbsXBY0LbNg54r4qa2dlbguE8Ms0Oq9yW9Z_7o5NYdotDSLBSh16XlrTpmkrTk_YVg]scott@m...[/url
    Sent: Saturday, December 06, 2003 10:15 AM
    To: basicstamps@yahoogroups.com
    Subject: [noparse][[/noparse]basicstamps] Weird behaviour with QUADRAVOX QV306m4-P


    I'm using it for a talking alarm clock application, and I've noticed a
    really weird behaviour. The documentation I have (actually, the code
    sample in the doc) says you initialize the device by pulling the RST low
    for 100 ms, and then waiting 2000ms for the board to pull itself
    together.

    This doesn't seem to work. Even pulling RST low for 120ms, and waiting
    10000ms (with PAUSE, not SLEEP), the first phrases I ask the chip to
    speak end up garbled (wrong words or no words, usually a symptom that
    the board isn't initialized yet, as I understand it.) I'm not using
    SLEEP or NAP anywhere, so there aren't any weirdnesses with RST being
    put into a funny state for 18ms anywhere.

    The workaround appears to be to pull low for 120ms, pause 5000ms, ask
    the board to say a word, which it typically doesn't manage to say (BUSY
    flickers low and comes right back HIGH), wait another 3000ms, and
    thereafter, everything seems to work. It's as if it needs a sacrificial
    victim, before it will cooperate.

    While I'm very used to the ideas of sacrificing data to the angry gods
    of hardware, this just doesn't seem right. Do I have a bad card? What
    experiences have people had?

    (In general, this is a quirky card. It doesn't seem right that the
    device needs several SECONDS to pull itself together on power up. It
    talks about "scanning message memory to find messages"; but why? They
    couldn't store indexes to them at message-load time?)



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