Besides having a wicked cool company name (“Spikenzielabs” – it can mean so many things…), they really now what they’re doing with this Arduino shield – the Voice Shield™ Kit (VS). Add the power of speech/sound synthesis to your Arduino projects!

The Voice Shield kit features the Winbond/Nuvoton ISD4003 chipcorder, a well-proven speech-synthesis module often used in answering machines and other machine-speaking devices. This particular chip holds 4 minutes of 8hHz mono audio that can be pre-recorded with any sound and indexed up to 1200 places.

Having 1200 index points means you can load many sound snippets, and have them played back in any order to generate custom sound patterns. These 0.2 second snippets can be merged into longer more convenient snips, so you can index various words & sounds to your liking. For example, the Voice Shield can build phrases “on the fly” that sound a little like an automated telephone operator, for example; “you” “entered” “one” “two” “three” “press” “pound” “if” “that” “is” “correct”.

Features:

• Full-sized Arduino Shield
• Full Arduino pin pass-through (digital pins 2,3,4, & 5 used bye the Voice Shield)
• Onboard 3V / 5V level-shifting circuitry & 3V regulator
• Amplified speaker and line-level mono output available (3.5mm jack)
• Audio input via 3.5mm jack
• Playback sounds via simple sound-byte index calls
• Record up to 4 minutes of 8kHz mono audio indexed to 0.2 second increments (or longer)
• Works with audio formats MP3, AIF, WAV or SND

Note: This comes as a kit, and requires assembly. Build instructions, and necessary Arduino libraries & programming software are available here. Also note, you require a 1/8″ (3.5mm) male audio jack to transfer audio into the Voice Shield.