Topic: Microphone and/or Voice Recognition?

Just had the thought, that it'd be awesome if Chumby had a microphone on it, and could run a widget (or have built-in software) to take voice dictations, or to at least record voice memos. Voice dictations that could be transcribed to ascii text, especially, would be awesome.

Had the thought when asked if my friend in the hospital could send emails with it. He doesn't have much dexterity right now, which is one reason I thought Chumby would be perfect for him. For kids, older folks, and peeps on the go, dictation and transcription capabilities would be awesome.

Re: Microphone and/or Voice Recognition?

The chumby *does* have a microphone.

We don't currently have any software for it -that's for the future.

Re: Microphone and/or Voice Recognition?

Duane wrote:

The chumby *does* have a microphone.

We don't currently have any software for it -that's for the future.

It's probably an obvious concern you guys have already thought of, but I hope there will be a way to disable the microphone in the control panel so that widgets cannot eavesdrop on nearby conversations. smile

Re: Microphone and/or Voice Recognition?

A good quick hack to work on : clap your hands to stick to the current widget, clap again to start the "widget slideshow" again

Re: Microphone and/or Voice Recognition?

Agreed!

Vineus wrote:

A good quick hack to work on : clap your hands to stick to the current widget, clap again to start the "widget slideshow" again

Re: Microphone and/or Voice Recognition?

we messed with the microphone this afternoon...  mainly just trying to record sounds

to record:   cat /dev/audio > /mnt/usb/audio.txt
to playback: cat /mnt/usb/audio.txt > /dev/audio

Re: Microphone and/or Voice Recognition?

i was thinking it'd be nice if you rub over the mic hole and it goes to the next widget. might be an easy fix to the widget changing issue plus i dont have to clap so much...

8 (edited by rdarlington 2007-11-17 22:33:14)

Re: Microphone and/or Voice Recognition?

vivid007 wrote:

we messed with the microphone this afternoon...  mainly just trying to record sounds

to record:   cat /dev/audio > /mnt/usb/audio.txt
to playback: cat /mnt/usb/audio.txt > /dev/audio

I just ran this test and my audio quality is HORRIBLE.  There is this continuous rumbling static but I can make out voice buried in there when I talk or whistle.  What's the deal with this?  Is this a defective unit?  One of the ones with the mic soldered in backwards that Bunnie mentions on his site?

I'm working on porting some code over for "clapper" functionality so I don't have to physically touch the unit when putting it into night mode.  I can't do this unless the microphone is working right.  The microphone not working is a definite deal breaker.  At this point I might as well just plug my 7" touch screen into my Shuttle PC case, and stuff this asseembly into a pillowcase and call it Chumby's Dad.

Bob

Re: Microphone and/or Voice Recognition?

the method i described isn't really the 'best' way to think about recording audio... just a proof of concept
the method described above doesn't use any encoding... so it's recording in raw format.

i think once you use flash to record microphone input, it will encode it using lame or on3 -- which will sound much better than the raw recording

Re: Microphone and/or Voice Recognition?

Would you mind posting a recording file you made so I can compare?  I don't think I'm driving my point home about how bad mine sounds.  It's like somebody got a bull horn and played static through it and put it right against the microphone.  I can just barely make out any sounds I make in that loud static sound.  No matter how loud I am, it's quite hard to hear buried beneath all that noise in the recording.

-Bob

Re: Microphone and/or Voice Recognition?

My audio quality is also really horrible and would be unusable for voice recognition.  Is this a defective hardware design issue?