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Speech library for Arduino
Download the .zip file from the link at the top of the page or click here. Install the "talkie" directory in your Arduino / libraries directory. Restart the Arduino software, and pick one of the examples from the Talkie section. Program it onto a 168 or 328 based Arduino (Uno, Duemilanove or Diecimila - not a Mega or Leonardo). Connect headphones or an audio amplifier to digital pin 3.
Note that currently, Talkie only on 168 or 328 based Arduinos at 16MHz only. A reduced-CPU version for 8MHz devices with reduced speech quality is included in the Solder Time 2 talkie project.
It is a software implementation of the Texas Instruments speech synthesis architecture (Linear Predictive Coding) from the late 1970s / early 1980s, as used on several popular applications:
- Texas Instruments Speak & Spell family of educational products
- Texas Instruments TI-99/4A Speech System expansion
- Acorn BBC Micro Speech Synthesiser expansion
- Atari arcade games (eg. Star Wars series, Indiana Jones, Gauntlet)
- Apple ][ Echo 2
- IBM PS/2 Speech Adapter
Talkie comes with over 1000 words of speech data that can be included in your projects. Most words only take a fraction of a KB, so you can add plenty.
See the examples. Any commented data lines in the examples can be un-commented and used. Note that some speech libraries come with word endings such as '-S', '-Z', '-TEEN' that can be used to increase vocabulary.
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Vocab_UK_Acorn - a male UK english voice. 165 words related to home computing. 16K bytes in total. Data originally part of Acorn Computers Speech Synthesiser, and famously voiced by BBC's Kenneth Kendall.
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Vocab_US_Clock - a female US english voice. 35 words related to time of day. 4K bytes in total. Data of unknown origin from ROM serial number VM71003A.
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Vocab_US_TI99 - a deep male US english voice. 360 words related to home computing. 32K bytes in total. Data originally part of Texas Instruments TI-99/4A Speech System.
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Vocab_US_Male - a male US english voice. 206 words related to aeronautics. 16K bytes in total. Data of unknown origin. ROM serial number VM61002.
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Vocab_US_Male_Large - a male US english voice. 402 words related to aeronautics. 48K bytes speech data. Data of unknown origin. ROM serial number VM61003/4/5.
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Demo_Toms_Diner - demo of the work-in-progress Talkie compressor. 24K bytes music data. Tom's Diner was written/recorded by Suzanne Vega (Amazon UK) (Amazon US) or look for 'Solitude Standing' on your preferred music store. (Only this album contains the original a capella version)
Talkie sets up a special very high speed PWM, so audio can be taken directly from pin 3 with no other filtering.
Note that Talkie uses Timers 1 and 2 for this purpose, which may conflict with PWM outputs or other libraries.
- I'm working on an encoder for generating your own recordings (See demo). Its not producing results of the quality I would like, but things are improving. For now Qboxpro, an unsupported old Windows application, can produce Talkie compatible data streams.
- Improve compatibility with other Arduinos and AVR devices
- Implement rule based infinite vocabulary synthesis from Computer Concepts Speech ROM and Texas Instruments Terminal Emulator 2.
- LPC currently outputs speech sounds on digital pin 3 only. This is currently hard-wired within the library.
- Tivoice uses Timer 1 and Timer 2, which can break analogWrite(), and some other libraries.
- For motivation and encouragement: Linx Electronics Club, esp. Rob, Shaw, Steve
- Thanks to the original Texas Instruments speech group: Larry Brantingham, Paul Breedlove, Richard Wiggins and Gene Frantz
- Thanks to the emulator-heads for their extensive documentation and coefficient tables: Lord Nightmare, Kevtris and all MAME and MESS contributors
- Thanks to the authors of low bandwidth open source speech codecs for their inspirational source code: Asterisk, Codec2, Hawkvoice, Speex
- Scene greets: LFT, Mahoney