Friday, February 15, 2008

Needed: good wireless mic and headphones

As some of you know, one of my side projects is designing a way to get my mother on the Internet in some capacity. Since her stroke in 2003, she is totally blind. Her speech is good, but she sometimes has trouble remembering complex instructions (like dialing the phone for example).

Thus was born Project Victor. Victor was named after the first voice pack I choose for the system and it stuck (plus I just love to name things). I've talked to Mom a lot about what she might want, and the list of features is not simple:

  • Online radio (particularly WMIT streaming from Black Mountain, NC)
  • A Telephony interface that she could use to call people
  • Podcasting streams (set up in advance and downloaded automatically)
  • Some simple audio games, like guess a number
Additionally, there are other features that she needs to make it work:

  • She has limited space and mobility, so I would like to place the "server" in a different room
  • The voice interface has to be a simple, command and control voice interface
  • Automatic sleep and wake modes. This means that after x minutes of inactivity it goes to "sleep" until it is awakened by calling the programs name ("Hello Victor").
My current problem is the remote server. I need some way to give Mom a headset with a microphone in the next room over (about 15 feet) and have it work. Rechargeable is preferable. I have been unable to find any reasonably priced wireless or bluetooth headsets with microphone that could handle command and control voice recognition. Anyone have suggestions?

1 comment:

Unknown said...

As you now, we are expecting soon and when I was thinking about the baby monitor I thought of this post. It might work to allow the voice to be picked up and put back into the server.