- Micro: bit (1 pcs)
- USB cable (1 pcs)
- Battery AAA 1.5V (2 pcs)
- Battery Box (1 pcs)
- Speaker
- Crocodile connectors or normal wire
Connection
Before getting started, first we need to know how to connect our micro:bit to speaker.
For Speech Synthesis in Micro: bit, we need to connect the micro: bit
PIN0 and
PIN1 to our speaker because for Speech synthesis, it always produces output from
PIN0 and
PIN1 only. From PIN 0 and
PIN 1, you can connect any end to your speaker jack either positive or negative that really doesn't matter.
And, this is how your connection will look like. Do not forget to connect to your computer via USB cable.
I had no crocodile connectors and I was very excited to see my micro:bit talking, so I used normal wires to make the connections. Anyway, this is the connection.
Now, let us see the coding part. For coding, we have two options - Online and Offline.
Online
If you want to use online IDE for MicroPython, then you can visit this
link of BBC Micro:bit
official site. Click on "Create code" and then choose "MicroPython".
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Offline
For offline, we are going to use
MU editor for Micro:bit. Why I am using this because it is very light-weight and easy to use. The best part is that we can directly flash from editor IDE to our Micro:bit. We need not to copy and paste Hex file again and again whenever we update the code. You can download
here. For Windows, you need to install one
driver also to flash directly to your micro:bit whenever you update the code.
download here. So go to https://codewith.mu/#download, and download and install.
Let us write the code.
I am going to add a micro:bit and
Speech library by writing the following code.
- from microbit import *
- import speech
The above code actually means that we want to use all the objects and functions/methods that are available within the micro: bit library, like controlling the led display, displaying our name, displaying symbols, Speech Synthesis, music and much more. Speech is a class there and now we are going to call say() method to make our micro: bit talk by writing the following code.
- speech.say("Hello,CSHARP")
In the above code,
Speech is a class and we are calling
say method and passing
Hello CSHARP as String.It takes String as a parameter
. Now, if we will run this code, our micro: bit will speak
Hello CSHARP.
We can add a few more things to this code like,
Pitch - how high or low the voice sounds (0 = high, 255 = Barry White).
Speed - how quickly the device talks (0 = impossible, 255 = bedtime story)
Mouth - how tight-lipped or overly enunciating the voice sounds (0 = ventriloquist’s dummy, 255 = Foghorn Leghorn)
Throat - how relaxed or tense is the tone of voice (0 = falling apart, 255 = totally chilled)
These parameters control the quality of sound - a.k.a. the timbre. To be honest, the best way to get the tone of voice you want is to experiment, use your judgment, and adjust. To learn more visit
here.
After adding these parameters, our code looks like the following.
- speech.say("Hello,CSHARP",speed=120, pitch=100, throat=100, mouth=200)
And yes, if we want our micro: bit say multiple things, then we can add delay also.
- speech.say("Hello,FACEBOOK")
- sleep(2000)
- speech.say("Hello,I AM MICROBIT AND I CAN TALK")
- sleep(2000)
Get full code
Here.
Now, after writing the code, let us see how can we flash it and run our code on micro:bit. For this, after writing the code, just click on "Flash" button there.
The demo can be seen
here.