Ron Hackett wrote:
I am looking for a simple (one chip) solution to add basic speech
capabilities to a PIC project.  All I need is the digits 0-9 and a few other
words (seconds, minutes, hours, go, stop, time, etc.)  Years ago I remember
seeing a chip that had this and many other basic control words built in.  Is
anything like that still available??
----------------------------------------------------------
Hi Ron and all other PICcers,

I know three companies, who offer single-chip-solutions for speech/sound repro-
duction:
OKI, NEC and UMC (if somebody knows more, please let me know!)).

Also there exist preprogrammed sound ICs with the IC-code HTnnnn (nnnn is a
number), maybe somebody can tell me the name of the manufacturer???
(Conrad electronic offers them in Germany).

back to OKI, NEC and UMC:
normally all ICs of these manufacturers are thought to be used in high
quantity production.
UMC-ICs are the simplest and cheapest one, offering 4..15 samples at 3..20
seconds sampling time (at about 6 kHz). Only in ROM-version available,
min. order 20.000 pieces :-). They seem to be the right choice for cheap
toy applications. There exist preprogrammed ICs with farm sound (horse, cow,...)
car sound (starting, braking, horn), or animals (seal, lion, ...).

NEC offer better quality ICs, an OTP-version also exists. You will need a
development system, so uninteresting for hobby interests.

OKI offers best quality chips with various features: Speech reproduction only
and Speech recording&reproduction. One family of their chips offers a
certain voice memory (4,8,16,32 seconds @ 8 kHz) but this memory can be freely
partitioned into max. 111 phrases, so you can save max. 111 samples.
You need an expensive development system (of course) but OKI also offers
preprogrammed chips for clock applications. So if you want to say only the
time and date, or numbers from 0..59 this seems to be the adequate chip for
you.
If you need further info, please let me know.
If somebody has any experiece with OKI chips, please let me know - especially
if you know a method/programm to convert WAV-files into OKI's PCM/ADPCM-file-
format!!!

If this OKI-chip will not fit your requirements, the simply user programmable
ISD-chips may be the right solution.


Siggi


Siegfried Grob,                                   |
student of electrical engineering,                |
university of ulm, germany                        |
e-mail:  siegfried.grob@student.uni-ulm.de        |
tel&fax: +49 731 25148                            |
--------------------------------------------------'