Classic embedded text-to-speech (formant synthesizers like SAM or eSpeak) is tiny and fast, but it sounds like a robot from the 80s. Neural TTS sounds natural, but it is usually something you run on a PC or in the cloud. I wanted to know: what is the cheapest hardware that Read more
To produce the most natural-sounding speech, modern Text-To-Speach (TTS) systems rely on neural networks. TinyTTS is a proof of concept: It asks whether a VITS-style neural TTS model can run on a microcontroller at all. It is a header-only C++ port of tiny-tts. The model has about 1.6M parameters. It Read more
I started to work on extending the AudioTools library to support different video formats. There are quite a few boards with LDC display that have a built in support for audio output. The cool thing is that they also provide an SD drive, so that you have plenty of room Read more
In one of my last blogs, I gave an overview of the USB Class 2 Audio functionality provided by the AudioTools library Many users were struggeling to get the process of receiving data via USB and writing to I2S stable and working properly. In this blog I am providing a Read more
In my last blog, I described my USB Audio Class 2 implementation. I was wondering if this functionality can also be used for STM32 micocontrollers. Since the solution relies on the Adafruit_TinyUSB_Arduino library, I was running into the issue that there is only a preliminary support for STM32-F4 micocontrollers. I Read more
I’m happy to announce that the Arduino Audio Tools library now includes native USB Audio Class 2.0 (UAC2) support. Your ESP32-S3 or RP2040 board can show up as a standard USB microphone, speaker, or both — no drivers needed on the host side. Linux, macOS, and Windows 10+ recognize it Read more
Quite some time ago, I published a blog about using LibLAME as a library to encode PCM audio data to mp3 using a micro-controller. Yesterday I was asking ChatGPT about this topic and it recommended the Shine MP3 encoder. So I took up the task to provide an Arduino compatible Read more
IEEE 802.15.4 is a technical standard defining the Physical and Media Access Control layers for Low-Rate Wireless Personal Area Networks. It enables low-power, low-data-rate wireless connectivity for IoT, smart home, and industrial sensors, allowing devices to operate on batteries for years. Here in Europe it uses the Primary Sub-GHz Band: 868.0–868.6 Read more
Recently I found the ESP32‐S3 AI Smart Speaker Development Board on Aliexpress for around 15 USD. It has quite some interesting functionality: ES8311 Codec DAC Chip ES7210 Codec ADC Chip with stereo microphones SD Card 6 Neopixel Multicolor LEDs A PCF85063A Real Time Clock 3 User Definable Keys GPIO interface Read more
In my last blogs, I was showing how to create DLNA devices. In my final blog about this topic I will demonstrate how to create a DLNA Control Point (=Client) which uses the functionality of these devices. I will demo a simple Control Point for a Media Renderer which will Read more