• Registered: 2008-02-26
  • Posts: 2

Topic: talking chumby

I'm considering a chumby.  I'd be happy with an alarm clock on steroids, and most of my concerns come from being blind as a bat. 

Is there anyway for chumby to speak to me -- canned mp3 files might be neat (kinda like changing  the sound profiles on a pc so that the start-up is a short james brown tune, and the error sound is a homer simpson clip).

Or better yet, is it  possible for chumby to use tts to read me the NY times headlines?  It'd be really cool to be  able to interact with a something that resembles the old MS agents (but different).  It'd be cool to have a Jessica Rabbit'esque character, or an english butler, or a cartoonish caracter wake me up, tell me what time I have to be to work, and read me headlines.   I  realize that this is a bit like Nabaztag,  but  clearly Chumby has much more going for it.

Am I  still a couple years ahead? 

thanks.

  • Registered: 2008-02-25
  • Posts: 51

Re: talking chumby

Yeah, you'd have to get some of the engineers from inside Terminator2 for that.

By the way, how are you going to read this if you're blind?

  • From: San Diego
  • Registered: 2007-10-25
  • Posts: 205

Re: talking chumby

Dunco wrote:

Yeah, you'd have to get some of the engineers from inside Terminator2 for that.

By the way, how are you going to read this if you're blind?

Start > run > magnify

Chumbymatt's Website

  • Registered: 2008-02-26
  • Posts: 2

Re: talking chumby

I was hoping for something without an austrian accent.  lol.

I not actually blind...  Just have contact lenses.

  • Registered: 2008-02-21
  • Posts: 526

Re: talking chumby

Truth be told I dont think it would be hard for a crude audio time display...
store some mono oggs with the numbers 0 through 9
store the phrase The time is now
and store the phrase AM and PM...
a bit of smart script could make it sound a bit less blah (mebby store clips for 10 11 and 12)
Wouldnt be elegant but it would get the job done...

  • Registered: 2008-02-25
  • Posts: 51

Re: talking chumby

jm2939 wrote:

Something along the lines of: I'm not really blind as a bat, I just have contact lenses.

Well, if you aren't actually blind, then you can get the giant clock widget (or whatever it's called).

  • Registered: 2007-11-14
  • Posts: 56

Re: talking chumby

how about a talking fuzzy logic clock "half past three" "Quarter past four"

that would be 12 number oggs, and three fuzzy ones "Quarter past" "half past" and "Quarter till"

Would prolly sound better too.

  • Registered: 2008-02-25
  • Posts: 51

Re: talking chumby

The Good Doctor Man in the message above this one wrote:

how about a talking fuzzy logic clock "half past three" "Quarter past four"

that would be 12 number oggs, and three fuzzy ones "Quarter past" "half past" and "Quarter till"

Would prolly sound better too.

That's a good one, by the way, what's an ogg?

9 Reply by joltdude (edited by joltdude 2008-02-27 16:52:43)

  • Registered: 2008-02-21
  • Posts: 526

Re: talking chumby

Ogg.. a non-propriatary open source codec to compress audio files.. Unlike Mp3... which requireles licenses....(BLAH)
Think MP3 without having to pay out to Freuhofer....

see www.vorbis.org for more info

To quote Vorbis's website
Ogg Vorbis is a fully open, non-proprietary, patent-and-royalty-free, general-purpose compressed audio format for mid to high quality (8kHz-48.0kHz, 16+ bit, polyphonic) audio and music at fixed and variable bitrates from 16 to 128 kbps/channel. This places Vorbis in the same competitive class as audio representations such as MPEG-4 (AAC), and similar to, but higher performance than MPEG-1/2 audio layer 3, MPEG-4 audio (TwinVQ), WMA and PAC.

  • Registered: 2007-10-31
  • Posts: 24

Re: talking chumby

I don't know about Fuzzy time, but normal time audio clips are available for free from: http://evolution.voxeo.com/library/audi … s/home.jsp

So, all one would have to do is to design a very basic screen (solid color with a big button) that will spit out the time clips properly. Not that difficult, if there was a real demand.

Reading headlines is a bit more of a stretch. You would need to get the headlines in some format (RSS perhaps)? Then, you need to run them through Text-To-Speech on a server-side (probably commercial) and then for Chumby to get it and play it. I don't think Chumby is powerful enough to run Festival TTS, even if its quality was acceptible.

  • Duane
  • Duane
  • Blue Octy
  • Offline
  • From: San Diego, CA
  • Registered: 2006-08-24
  • Posts: 8,199

Re: talking chumby

Actually, it *is* powerful enough to run Festival (at least, flite) smile  Unfortunately, flite is still pretty large.

It's also capable of running espeak, which is much smaller but lower quality.

They're both relatively simple to build for the chumby for someone familiar with cross-compiling.

Duane's Website