1 Topic by artfakt (edited by artfakt 2007-01-09 08:58:54)

  • Registered: 2007-01-09
  • Posts: 1

Topic: Can i talk to my chumby ?

Is there any microphone embed on the chumby, so i would be able to tell him "weather", "traffic" or "Calendar" ...

Then, can the chumby speak these infos to me (instead of reading the screen) ?

Is there any webcam embed on the chumby ? to be able to speak to and see my friends smile or let them see if i'm back to home , ....


Software will increase the chumby possibilities, but it is important that necessary Hardware things have to be embed in the first chumby available !   ; )    (don't want to "harware hack" it, or have to plug plenty of USB things to it )

  • Duane
  • Duane
  • Blue Octy
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  • From: San Diego, CA
  • Registered: 2006-08-24
  • Posts: 8,197

Re: Can i talk to my chumby ?

The production units will very likely have a microphone, however, we probably won't be able to include a webcam in this model.  The issue is one of cost - we can't price the devices where we want with a webcam, and if we raise the price, then the chumby becomes too expensive for the purposes to which we've targeted it.

Speech synthesis is a matter of software, and something I've been investigating.  The question is whether we have the CPU cycle budget to do reasonable quality speech synthesis along with everything else the chumby must do.

bunnie has been making noises about making a limited run "superchumby" which would be more expensive but have a lot of extra hardware.  I'm not sure where he is with that idea - we're quite busy working on getting the actual product done.

Duane's Website