Fortunately, we both converged on the idea of constructing what we call the Universal Voice-Activated Telephone Dialer. This unit would function as a voice-activated telephone dialer that could be used on any touch-tone phone. It would be a box external from the telephone that would mount on the receiver of the phone. The box would basically consist of a microphone, a voice recognition microchip, a DTMF encoder, and a speaker.
The user would speak the telephone # he/she wishes to dial after mounting it to their telephone’s receiver. The number spoken would be processed within the voice recognition chip. The chip would then output a signal and a frequency tone combination needed to create that number would be audible from the speaker. That audible tone would then be received from the telephone microphone and the telephone network connection would be made.
I feel this product would benefit disabled people such as the blind and those whose fingers could not function properly. Of course, since we are in the very early stages of development, many uncertainties still exist. I am unsure if we intend to use voice recognition or voice activated switching to process the inputted voice and activate the combination frequencies required to generate a tone. I am also unaware of the characteristics and noise behaviors of voice recognition chips. However, after doing a little research I did find that voice recognition microchips and voice-activated switches exist that are feasible and cost effective for this project. I’ve also learned how Dual Tone Multi-Frequency otherwise known as DTMF works and what frequencies combinations are used to create these touch-tones used to dial out.
I’ve also read up on how these tones can be encoded and decoded, but we still must decide how we intend to generate these codes. I also think we are uncertain as to whether or not we intend to add memory to this electronic device so that telephone numbers dialed simply by name as an addition feature to voice dialing. Some of these uncertainties will hopefully be answered in the weeks ahead. We must still also divide the payload of the project and create a schedule for this project. Overall I feel we are off to a strong start and feel motivated to proceed with this project.
