Batboard

Tell me a little bit about this option. I've seen (and heard) this option in use on an XTS5K and of course, thought it was one of the coolest
and most useful features ever put into a radio.

But...which radios is it an option for? XTS5K only? Or is it available for any other Astros, too?

And, how is the voice naming of the channel or talkgroup achieved? Do you record your own messages? (I'd guess if so, it would be done with a mic hooked to your PC?)


I'm probably going to have an XTS5K soon. I want that option if it's not already in the radio.


Elroy

It's also avail on the 2500's.. In a nutshell, you can use a text to speach program or website to create you desired voice file. You then have to convert it to a Moto voice file using the CPS and the radio to compress them. Then you just assign the voice file of your choice to the channel of your choice under the zone personality field.

-Marc

The website with text to voice, as well as some more info on it can be found here:

http://batboard.batlabs.com/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=55404

So what are the minimum versions of CPS and radio firmware necessary to use this feature?


Elroy

My understanding is that Q446 used to be a flash option (and still is) but for some strange reason it made the jump from flash option to permanently available firmware feature a while back. I don't know which firmware revision this occured at, but I believe it was fairly recent.

Regardless, the process is (fairly) straightforward. You record yourself a wave file (or generate using a text to speech gateway, the first ones I did had the AT&T TTS engine's female british voice saying "Astro Sexy" which just sounded funny anyway). The input wave file has to be in a certian format, the exact specifics of which escape me at the moment but it is documented in the CPS (some specific KHz and bitrate). You can either create your input directly at those settings or use a WAV converter to reformat that once you're ready.

Now the slick bit - you take your input WAV files, open up CPS, hook up your radio, and use the radio's DSP via the CPS to convert your input WAV files to the internal format used by the radio. This creates the "voice files" themselves. Only have to do this once for each file. After you've created the voice file, you can store it in a central directory under the CPS file tree and thereafter it will be available for use in the radio.

According to the CPS, Q446 is technically available across the board on the Astro25 portable platform, though I don't know if the firmware loads for the lower end radios like the PR1500, MT1500, and XTS1500 actually include the code.

IIRC it has to be 8K 16 bit wav, and one thing I found about ATT TV is sometimes you will get "thank you for using at&t" at the end of the wav file, so use a program like Audacity or Sound Forge to "tighten up" the files before sending them to the radio. It was time consuming (took me close to 2 hours) on the XTS 5K I had, but ended up swapping it for a 3K with a display. I like the fireground announce but really missed the display (my old radio was a model I).

I'd sure like to take a look at a codeplug that supports this option. Anyone care to indulge me?


Elroy