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ROBOTALK Operation Manual (DRAFT)

Z-Control – 1093 La Conversion Suisse

www.z-control.ch

1. Product description : ROBOTALK is a WAV player that is controlled by a microcontroller over a UART (1 line) serial interface. The Product consists on a small tube with a Speaker and a microcontroller based SD card reader with amplifier and a 128MB micro-SD card with a USB-Micro-SD card adapter.

Front view, speaker side view, Micro-SD card, connector, LED Robotalk can be connected to any kind of microcontroller based product that provides a 38400baud UART interface (main microcontroller). The main microcontroller will send 1 character per sound file to be played. Sound files can be added or replaced on the SD card by the user. For this, the user needs to recoded and loaded files in wav format on a PC. Please read chapter 7 for file naming convention and details on the wav file format.

2. Connecting your ROBTALK to your main processor (microcontroller) ROBOTALK requires 5v DC power supply. An internal regulator will supply the SD card and the microcontroller with the required voltage. To give the maximum sound level, the amplifier is powered directly from the main power supply. Interface: 3 lines similar to RC Servo cables. Pin1: GND, Pin2: VCC(5V) Pin3: UART I/O, read point 4-5 for more details. The UART interface is using standard TTL level (5V) at a speed of 38400 baud.

3. Power up:

Once you power-up the module, the file “ready.wav” will be played. This is the only file that is recognized by the player not being 1character long. The User can replace this file on the SD card with a different power-up sound or message is required. During play time, a LED will show SD card access. This feature can also be used to test that the module received a correct message. The quality of the sound mainly depends on the sound recorded on the SD card.

4. Playing files:

In order to play a file, the user will have to send one character without extension to the ROBOTAL. Sending “1” will play the file “1.wav”, sending “x” will play the file “x.wav”. All ASCII characters that are allowed in the FAT file format can be used to play files. Some sounds with file-name 0-9.wav and A-Z.wav are prerecorded on the SD card.

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5. Timing, synchronization:

As ROBOTALK is playing the audio file that has been requested by the main processor, ROBOTALK will not be listening to new commands until the file has been completely played. In other words, you have to make sure the main processor waits until the file playing is finished before a new character is sent. Rem: characters sent to ROBOTALK during play time are ignored. During play time, ROBOTALK will keep the IO line low-level. This allows the processor that is sending the characters to check if the ROBOTALK is still busy playing a sound. From the program point of view, this means that the main processor will turn the TX IO line as input and wait for high level before sending the next character.

6. SD card in and out. To extract the SD card from ROBOTALK, 1st press slightly on the card to unlock it. The card is still fixed with a small spring to avoid it to fall out, You can

7. Technical details:

Power supply: 5V +/- 10%, + on central pin, GND marked with black dot. Interface: UART, TTL level, 38400baud (max 232 would be required to connect to PC serial port). SD Card format: FAT Audio Format: (wav file format), 44.100khz, 16bits, stereo File names: ready.wav, “A-Z, 0-9”.wav “ some special characters like “+-/\£$_!&%”.wav Check the FAT File format for allowed characters for complete list (Wikipedia)

Rem: MP3 not supported.

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8. Examples: CCS C: Assuming a soft UART is set to Pin A2 of a PIC processor #use RS232(BAUD=38400, XMIT=PIN_A2,STREAM=ROBOTALK)

output_float(PIN_A2); // set the line as input while(!input(PIN_A2); // waits until the line goes high fputc('A',ROBOTALK) // sends the character “A”, means “A.wav will be played.

MCC18: #define RTTRIS TRISAbits.TRISA2 #define RTPORT PORTAbits.RA2 #define wait RTTRIS=1;while(!RTPORT); #define SAY_FORWARD wait;putcUSART("A") // A.wav …. // in code SAY_FORWARD; // will wait until ROBOTALK is free and send the character “A” ….

BASIC (PBP): to follow Arduino: to follow R.Ziegler July 2010