voice controlled rc car

[deleted-93346]

Well, I've had a quick scan of all the documents (at last!!). It seems that what you want to do is pretty much what the gatech students proposed: take some pre-existing, off the shelf modules and build a voice-activated RC car. All that needs to be designed is the interface from the TTL outputs of the PIC chip in the "SRI-04 X10 Speech Recognition Interface" (a PIC chip plus $5 worth of components) to the inputs, specified only as compatible with the RC car's own manual controls. Since I don't know anything about the RC car, it's impossible for me to say much about that interface. I feel that the discussion in the gatech students' proposal was naive to say the least -- just putting the symbol for a logic gate on a line representing a control path is meaningless. Looking at this proposal makes me worry that these students may be out of their depth performing even a trivial design.

Had they worked out the necessary details of the interface to the RC car control module, you could copy them. However, if this effort is supposed to be a science fair entry, I don't see where there would have been any intellectual work on your part. Luckily for you they failed to do this; thus conquering this problem could be the core of your science fair project. You will need to do four basic tasks:

1. Obtain full electrical and mechanical specs for the manual interface of the the RC car you are using.

2. Learn the basics of digital engineering necessary to connect the TTL outputs of the SRI-04 X10, or even better the TTL outputs on the header of the speech card you already have following the design given as part C of Figure 5 in the "SR-06/SR-07 Speech Recognition Kit Construction Manual & User Guide", to the input circuitry of the RC-car controller. I would recommend studying "The Art of Electronics" by Paul Horowitz (full disclosure -- he's a friend of mine). You might also find "The Art of Electronics Student Manual" to be useful. These are expensive to buy (but not so much compared to the kits, etc, you've already purchased) so either go used or find them in a library.

3. Design the interface. It's simple enough that you probably won't need software design tools.

4. Assemble the circuit on a breadboard and debug it. You will need a 30 MHz (100 MHz preferably) oscilloscope, a regulated 5V power supply, a bunch of test leads, and a few small tools that you probably have already from assembling the kits. A multimeter (DMM) might also be handy although not essential. The oscilloscope will be expensive -- $500 to $1500 -- see if you can borrow one.

Good luck with this challenging project!!

[Gijoe1442]

well,there are a few videos on youtube that show the connections i need but they're not clear enough.do you think you might find much better videos?if you can, i'd like you to explain to me what's going on.thanks a lot!
would an Ultrasonic Module HC-SR04 Distance Sensor For Arduino work instead?

[deleted-71882]

Gijoe1442,

"This is done by connecting the appropriate speech
recognition interface connection and the connection from the manual controls together to a logic
OR gate which connects to the RF transmitter in figure 4.1."

The manual controls mentioned are controls other than the voice activated ones. They might be a steering wheel, joystick, switches, etc. You could just disconnect those controls and substitute the signals from your voice circuit or use an "or" gate to cause an action if either the voice or manual control produces a signal. Of course, your transmitter will have to have an external control input or you will need to tear into it to find the place to insert your signals.

The details of this connection depends on the details of your voice circuit and the transmitter. It is quite common to have to use some sort of converter to change the polarity or voltage of the signals to make the circuits cooperate. If this still doesn't make sense, I think you may need to learn a bit of digital logic.

WW