Arduino Talking Scale Software Update Version 4.0

I’ve got several projects in the pipeline including a guitar or two, my first ukulele, an electronic spirit level and an electronic guitar tuner. For now, however, I’m releasing version 4.0 of my Arduino talking scale software. If you’re unfamiliar with this project, you can find it Here.

Version 4 brings with it a number of improvements. The code has been cleaned up, grouping some variables, removing some redundant code from the last couple of releases and correcting a couple of comments.

The most significant change is a new user interface. The single-button operation is retained but is now less clunky than before. Holding the button opens a menu. Repeated presses of the button toggle between tare and calibrate functions. Double-clicking the button activates either function. Holding the button will exit the menu and return to reading mode. This is made possible by use of the Arduino OneButton library.

The calibration and measurement routines have been greatly simplified, with the latter having moved to the main program loop. Speech is improved with a couple of additional words added to the vocabulary, and commenting out the serial printing has brought an improvement in speed, along with reducing or removing unnecessary delays and conditional statements. Serial printing is easily re-enabled if desired by removing the comments from the respective lines.

I’d like to implement selectable units of measurement and configurable calibration weights in the next version. The limiting factor currently is Talkie’s limited vocabulary. I’ve had very limited success producing words for the library, primarily using BlueWizard which converts 16-bit, 8kHz WAV files to a talkie-compatible bitstream.

I’ve had no success getting something that sounds remotely like speech, let alone something intelligible. Any project using Talkie is therefore limited to the words contained within the example files, of which admittedly there are many, but there are still limitations. I may look for another TTS library or research writing my own, or may be forced to resort to a TTS module though I’d like to perform speech synthesis in software if possible.

The software is available for download below, including the necessary libraries. Comments, questions and suggestions are always welcomed and appreciated.