The main objective of a “Talking Box with Message Display” is to provide an effective method of communication through voice messages to the speech challenged and also to display the message on an LCD screen. This device employs a Voice coder to store and play back the voice messages, a PIC microcontroller that facilitates for displaying the messages on screen
The motivation for this device came up after interacting with speech challenged kids who are under the age of eight years. These kids cannot speak, read or write. But, they have the full zeal to communicate with the people around them at least for meeting their basic needs.
So, we have designed a talking box, which has eight push button switches. Initially, the Voice coder is placed in the record mode and voice messages are stored in different memory locations. The messages which are most essential to him in his daily life like “I need food”, “Please Help me”, “Give me Company” etc are stored in the chip. Then the Voice coder is placed in the play back mode and is given to the user.
The kid can identify the message stored in a particular location by seeing the picture pasted on each push to on switch. He simply pushes a switch that communicates his message through a loud speaker and an LCD screen as well. The main advantage of adding the LCD screen is that if the attendant to the kid also cannot hear, he can understand the message by looking at the LCD screen.
The main advantage of talking box is that, the messages can be stored in any language. Thus, it is not only helpful for over twenty million speech challenged people across India.