Speak

The Speak module uses the MicroSoft Speech 5.0 download to speak written text. This module is useful for indicating certain states within the execution of the program when no screen is available on the robot.

There are two ways to use the speech module. You can either specify a variable that will contain text that will be spoken or you can type in the text directly. Using a variable is useful if you wish to change the spoken text based on a VBScript module or other plugins.

Interface

Instructions

1. Voice - select the voice to use when speaking from the dropdown.

2. Speak Text - type in the words that should be spoken in the specified voice.

3. Voice Variable - Specify the variable that holds the voice to use. This can either be a number indicating the appropriate voice as seen in the dropdown list or can be the name, i.e. "Microsoft Sam". Using the voice variable will disable the voice dropdown to indicate that the voice used to speak is now being specified from a variable.

4. Speak Text Variable - Specify the variable that will contain the text to speak. You can either select a variable from the dropdown or type in a new variable. If this is used the manual textbox is disabled to indicate that text is now coming from the contents of a variable.

Example Audio

Speak: Robo realm is a neat program. It makes my computer speak to me!

Note that when specifying text to speak you can play around with punctuation to change the emphasis. For noun words you may try separating the word to improve enunciation. Try it with the text above but merge "Robo realm" into one word. We found it sounds better separated.

Downloads

The Speak module requires you to download the Microsoft Speech API 5.0 You can find the download at Microsoft Speech

For more information

Microsoft Speech