Add Speech output to Cubetto
Size: (weeks of effort)
Summary:
Modify the Cubetto firmware to speak each command as the program is run.
Details:
The Cubetto robot hardware is based on Arduino and its firmware may be modified using the Arduino IDE.
"Cubetto Tutorial | Update Firmware" video from Primo Toys
Resources
- Repo with Cubetto firmward source code: https://github.com/simonbates/cubetto
- Contains files retrieved from the Google Drive location referenced in the video above: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B0CGyWe9uilVc0Nycms2QnFJOTg/view
Library suggested by Primo: https://github.com/going-digital/Talkie
- An alternative to using a text-to-speech library would be to record and play back samples of the words "forward", "left", "right" – we would store the sample data in the firmware
- AudioZero – https://www.arduino.cc/en/Reference/AudioZero play back .wav files from a storage device
- Making beeps can be done simply by changing tones in frequency – additional resource for musical notes to frequency conversion http://pages.mtu.edu/~suits/notefreqs.html
Hardware
The video above says to install support for Genuino Zero (now "Arduino Zero" that the legal battle is resolved between arduino.cc and arduino.org):
Arduino Zero specs:
- Microcontroller: ATSAMD21G18, 32-Bit ARM Cortex M0+ at 48 MHz
- Flash Memory: 256 KB
- SRAM: 32 KB
Microcontroller on Cubetto board says:
- Atmel
- ATSAMD21
- G18A-U
- 1810 D ARM
- 1810PKY TW
Potential Modern Arduino Zero Equivalent: MKR Zero
- "The MKR ZERO brings you the power of a Zero in the smaller format established by the MKR form factor."
- https://store.arduino.cc/usa/arduino-mkrzero
- https://www.buyapi.ca/product/arduino-mkr-zero-i2s-bus-sd/
Acceptance:
- The Cubetto operates as before but with the addition of speech output
- It is possible that the speaker on the Cubetto board is unable to reproduce speech and an alternative would be to try sounds (beeps) of different patterns and/or pitches
Issues:
- Arduino Zero does not support <avr/io.h>, which is used for Talkie library