Talking Head speech/servo control project

[sigane]

Can anyone help. I'm trying to design a program and PIC board to get a model head that I've made to have speech and synchronised eyebrow and lip movements. The chip I'm using is a PIC16f872 and I am completely new at this. Has anyone tried this before????????? :?

 

[Nigel Goodwin]

Can anyone help. I'm trying to design a program and PIC board to get a model head that I've made to have speech and synchronised eyebrow and lip movements. The chip I'm using is a PIC16f872 and I am completely new at this. Has anyone tried this before????????? :?

As I see it there are two distinct sections here, one is actually moving the parts, the other is generating the signals telling the parts when and where to move.

But as you give no idea as to how anything is supposed to work, I can't really offer any advice.

For a start:

How are the parts moved?.

What are you trying to syncronise them to?.

Where is the syncronising signal coming from?.

 

[sigane]

Hi Nigel,
I am in charge of the programming the chip and designing the pic cct board. It is going to work on a door sensor. The idea is that the head will react every 5th time that the door opens and will say one of four prerecorded messages.
Basically I mainly need some commands. I am planning on using pulse width modulation to control the servo. The speech chip is an ISD 2560.
I am attempting just to get the moving parts to go up and down when the speech is activated. Its not supposed to be a rocket science project, but I am up to my nuts!!
Any further help (If I haven't confused you further) would be gratefully received!!!!

 

[Nigel Goodwin]

Hi Nigel,
I am in charge of the programming the chip and designing the pic cct board. It is going to work on a door sensor. The idea is that the head will react every 5th time that the door opens and will say one of four prerecorded messages.
Basically I mainly need some commands. I am planning on using pulse width modulation to control the servo. The speech chip is an ISD 2560.
I am attempting just to get the moving parts to go up and down when the speech is activated. Its not supposed to be a rocket science project, but I am up to my nuts!!

In order to make it move in response to the sound you need to generate control signals for the moving parts - which I would suggest is going to be very difficult.

Far easier to have the required movements preloaded in the PIC, and start the movements as you trigger the speech chip. But you still have to work out what movements you need, and when to make them.

You don't really use PWM to feed a servo, just a variable width pulse which tells the servos where to move to.

 

[sigane]

Talking Head

Tks Nigel. I reckon that I will be able to do what you've suggested when my lecturer finally gets back to the lab. I am still in the hunt for some programming tips but will contact you again when I decide how to design my board. Cheers for taking the time out to give me yr advice!
Si

 

[sigane]

Me again

:? Nigel,
I must appear really thick here but I looked on yr web pages and cant seem to find any programming. I have downloaded the drivers and it keeps saying that DLPortIO.DLL was not found?
Si

 

[Nigel Goodwin]

Re: Me again

:? Nigel,
I must appear really thick here but I looked on yr web pages and cant seem to find any programming. I have downloaded the drivers and it keeps saying that DLPortIO.DLL was not found?
Si

There are two links to the driver, one on my site, and one on the original site where I downloaded it from - the original site no longer appears to work, but mine is fine.

 

[0mega]

sigane,

As nigel said, store a list of commands in the pic. These might read like this:


[device id] [position] [duration (ms)]

the pic would continually go through the list. At the end of duration, it would pass on to the next argument, and set the device id to the position.
This is probably the easiest way to do it.

If you are using a C compiler i could give you a pointer (get it :wink: ) in the right direction, but i'm not THAT proficient in .asm. You could try and convert it if you like.

--JB