I have bought a "Start here V 2.0" robot kit, with a Picaxe-28x1 IC, and Picaxe-28 Project board. I want to get the robot to take voice commands, and be able to talk back, and have been looking at the EasyVR Module.
But reading the manual for the EasyVR I can't figure out how to program the module trough the Picaxe microcontroller. Is this at all posible?
The manual mentions ROBONOVA, Arduino and Parallax Basic Stamp and says that they have a "bridge" program, but doesn't mention Picaxe.
Does anybody have experiance with using the EasyVR module on Picaxe? Is there any other module I can use, or do I have to get an Arduino microcontroller?
I saw that they mentioned the BASIC Stamp. The BASIC Stamp is basically an expensive PICAXE. I scanned through the example code/psuedo code they showed in the manual. If the module did not come with example BASIC code, you will need to convert their C code to BASIC.
Although it is possible to program the EasyVR module through a Bridge program, I do not recommend it. It is a hack and most of the time it does not work. The bridge listens to the hardware serial port and sends out all it receives to a software serial port. This depends greatly on the speed the process is done and sometimes you get out of time errors and the connection does not happen. And if it does work, when you try to actually program the module from the computer, because of speed issues the programming may get corrupted and you definitely don’t want that.
So, get a cheap USB-serial cable that provides 5V and plug the EasyVR module directly to it. Make sure you reverse the Tx and Rx pins. After programming the module, place it back into your robot and work on the code. Observation. Make sure that the microphone is placed on the robot when you do the programming of the module and you have the motors running when needed. For example, you want to give the robot the Stop command. If you train the module in silence, when you actually use the command when the motors are on, the command will not be recognized because of the extra noise made by the motors. I have used this module on my MiniEric robot and it works great at home, but when I take it to other places, the voice recognition fails because the sound reflects differently. Oh, and you can train the module in any language you want, it just records sound wave samples that later compares to the control commands. I love this module, even with it’s limitations.
Ok, thanks to both birdmun and Ro-Bot-X for the replys. There are still a few things that are pretty unclear, but at least I know that the EasyVR is working with my microcontroller, so I can go ahead and buy one.
I’m sure ther will be more questions once I try and conect it all togeather.
