Servo - September 2016

blocks the sides and reduces it effectiveness severely.

Another thing that I noticed is that voice recognition seems to react better to deep voices than higher ones. It wouldn’t always trigger for children or some women with high voices, but usually with some practice it worked well for most folks. Of course, this often led to some startled humans when the software finally triggered and Pete’s booming voice began speaking. Actually, that effect became quite entertaining (for some of us, anyway).

I told the little kids to speak in deeper voices which was often hysterical, and that got groups of the kids and their parents laughing. Another thing that became apparent is the command sentences work better if they are very different than other sentences. For example, “Turn light on” is almost the same as “Turn light off.” Voice recognition may have trouble discerning the difference. Longer sentences actually work better than shorter ones or single words. A control word like “JARVIS” before the command sentence helps a lot. Well, voice recognition is tricky. It can work pretty well in a quiet environment. It has difficulty working with a noisy environment and higher pitched voices. It is possible to get a computer to talk to itself with some hardware in between, probably with a microcontroller and just a serial to TTL converter cable connected in between. I haven’t tried that yet, but it should work.

Another thing that I found that is really fun is to remove the control word “JARVIS” and just let the system run while the TV or radio is on. Periodically, it will trigger off of the audio, say its text to speech sentence, trigger Eliza, and then continue on talking to itself.

I guess for now, folks may have to learn to speak robot. Well, just a little. Talk about needing a psychotherapist ... SV

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Weblinks

Speech Recognition BitVoicer by Bitsophia www.bitsophia.com/en-US/BitVoicer/ Overview.aspx Stereo 20W Class D Audio Amplifier — MAX9744 Adafruit www.adafruit.com/products/1752

LED Color Organ (now a kit from Jameco) www.jameco.com/Jameco/worksh op/video/ ledcolororgan.html www.jameco.com/webapp/wcs/st ores/servlet/Product_10001_10001 _2155541_-1

Shotgun Microphone www.walmart.com/ip/AudioTechn ica-ATR-6550-Video-Camera- Shotgun-Mic/13059772

Some video of Cal Averas using the BitVoicer speech recognition www.youtube.com/watch?v=TrtIIJ 1zONI

Motor Control Motor Control

• 15 Amps Per Channel • Dual Channel • Quadrature Encoders • DC Brushed Motors • USB / RC / Serial • 45 Amps Per Channel • Dual Channel • Quadrature Encoders • DC Brushed Motors • USB / RC / Serial