Inexpensive DIY Voice Orb ideas

[2knight]

I've been pondering for awhile how I could go about making my own voice orb for my KI3T. Don't get me wrong. I think Taoworm's voice orb looks incredible. I hope one day to own one and maybe some of the other projects he offers too. But for the time being, I've got a lot of other expensive projects to complete on the car without spending nearly a grand on a voice orb anytime soon.

My original idea was to cut a circular hole in the panel between my two vents, get a metal shop to cut out an outer trim plate overlay, and fasten in either a three inch security dome or acrylic lens. I was even thinking it might be really cool to use an old school voice box. Jupiter Electronics offers a blue one that I've seen on e-bay. While not authentic to the 2008 series, I bet that would look awesome with the blue voicebox behind the orb, especially if you have blue neon lights in your dash. The advantage to this setup would be that you don't need a carputer, since the voicebox runs off the car's speakers.

However, I do have a carputer so I've been pondering other ways to make my own voice orb on a budget. I've thought about all sorts of things including using an iPad or even an mp3 player with visualizations. One drawback to this is figuring out how to set up a line input for these devices and sync it to the visualizations - if that's even possible without major hacking. Another drawback is that most of these devices either have a touchscreen or control buttons that wouldn't be accessible behind the orb.

After a lot of thought and seeing posts and photos of how other people have installed their own voice orbs, I think I have the solution that I'm going to try on my car. Admittedly, I probably won't start on this until later in the summer or fall since I have some other more pressing projects to take care of first or maybe I’ll work on this in stages.

I've noticed that a lot of people are using what appears to be 7 inch LCD screens and that there is extensive cutting involved which makes the vents inoperable. I'm assuming these are monitors with VGA input from the carputer. I've not seen any monitors smaller than 7 inches that accept VGA input, so perhaps that’s the reason for this. Anyway, a 7 inch screen seems a little large given that the viewable area of the voice orb is a circle only about 3 to 4 inches in diameter. After searching small 12 volt LCD monitors online, I've discovered that 3.5 inch monitors are fairly common as they are used with backup camera systems for cars. Prices range from about $40 to $100 depending on weather you buy it separately or as part of a backup camera system. The advantages to a monitor this size are cheaper cost, less cutting in the dash, and most likely the ability to keep your vents functional. The biggest drawback is that they have RCA video inputs and not a VGA input so you'll need an adapter if you're running this from your carputer. A VGA to TV adapter that converts your VGA signal to RCA video output is only about $20 on Amazon.com. The screen resolution is a bit less too, but I’m not sure that matters a great deal on a small screen. Resolution seems to matter more as you get bigger screens, not smaller.

Now to use this as a display device from my carputer, I'm going to want to set this up as a second monitor on my system. The primary monitor is a touchscreen monitor that I've got where the factory radio was installed. I want to keep this so I can control the computer and display other running programs and so forth. There are a couple of different ways to set up a dual monitor on your system. You can get a second video card and I believe some video cards actually do have TV outputs, but my carputer case is really compact and I really don't want to mess with trying to fit something else inside. Another option, that I'll likely use is to get a USB Multi monitor adapter. I've seen them online for anywhere from $40 to a couple of hundred depending brand and other bells and whistles they may offer. The $40 one should work for my purposes.

So the hardware for this would be a 3.5” LCD display, VGA-to-TV adapter, and USB Multi-monitor adapter; and of course the orb and trim overlay. Conceivably this could all be purchased and installed for under $200.

As for the software end of things Windows Media Player or Winamp player could be used for their sound visualization capabilities. I’ve not tested anything on the software end of things yet (except testing different visualizations), so at this point it’s all theoretical. Now the visualization wouldn’t be the authentic version from the show, but there may be some that are passable. Ideally, I’d be able to overlay the visualization on a quality screen capture of the KITT’s voice orb from the show. If you’re into creative license, I’m sure there are all sorts of visualizations that would look cool but aren’t authentic. I believe that there’s a way to create your own visualizations for these programs, so someone with some time and a little computer savvy, could probably come up with something closer to the show. Whichever media player you used, you’d need to find a “line in” plug-in. I know Winamp has one to download. There may be one for Windows Media Player, but there’s not one available on their site so you’d have to do some searching. The plug-in basically allows the media player to accept sounds coming from the outside computer environment and not just what you’re playing in the media player. Hopefully this would allow the media player visualizations to respond to your computer’s text-to-speech or other sound programs running on the computer.

I’m running a program called e-speaking on my computer that gives me voice control of programs and can respond back in the computer’s text-to-speech voice (unfortunately not Val Kilmer’s or Peter Cullen’s for you KARR owners). I’ve not done a lot with this program yet, but I can use it to open programs and bring up animated gif’s of KITT with my voice. Another program that I have, but have not used much yet is Ultrahal. It’s an artificial intelligence algorithm that also uses Windows voice recognition and text to speech mainly so you can hold conversations with your computer. Since Val Kilmer’s voice isn’t a text-to-speech option, I downloaded one called David from Cepstral Voices. To me, it’s the closest sounding match and sounds more mellow than some of the other voices. There’s another voice called Damien that I think might work for KARR owners. With my system I want to be able to run these programs and have the visualization respond to the text-to-speech. None of these programs is free (beyond a trial version), but none of them cost more than $30 either.

Lastly, I want to set up the system so that when the computer comes on the media player visualization automatically goes to the 3.5” monitor installed in the orb. I’ve not worked with multi-monitor systems before so I don’t know whether you can do this directly from your Window’s control panel, through software that comes with the multi-monitor adapter, or through 3rd party software. I’m sure there’s a way to do this, but I’ll want to wait until I have the other pieces in place before trying this.

Anyway, if you’re looking to make your own voice orb on a budget, you’re not concerned about 100% authenticity, and you’re not afraid of a little work to get it all together, some of the ideas presented here may be options for you.

[blackthorntk]

for an orb this would be ideal http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8KaQmn2VTzs" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; Actuality Systems Perspecta Volumetric 3D Display. this been around since 2006 but it cost like 65,000 well i hope not no more but when it was first released and showing tetris and other games played on it in full 3d angle where you can see in front back or side of your call of duty character lol.

[blackthorntk]

http://www.inition.co.uk/inition/produc ... metric.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; a more closer look at this 3D orb monitor.

[2knight]

KITT's orb in 3d. That's would be pretty awesome.

[blackthorntk]

Well technically that's how it supposed to be but the colors wont be as dark and sharp. with this crystal ball monitor. as it may need some tinting to help it out a bit heh. But yeah that would be ideal but way to exspensive I could buy me a fully customed 2008 mustang gt500 kr with that amount of money

[2knight]

I was playing around with Winamp yesterday and found that there's already a skin that would be perfect for KI3T's orb. It's called Hal's Eye and it can be found at: http://www.winamp.com/skin/hals-eye-v1-2/141836" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I think the skin itself would be a great choice. It does have three visualizations installed. I'm not too thrilled about the first two, but the third one reminds me of the original KITT's original voice box (before they added the three LED bar graphs). You can also go in and change the visualization colors. The default is a gray/black border with red visualizations, but you can also change this to yellow visualizations (for KARR) or some other colors if you want to do something custom.

The ideal would be to use this skin, but to create a custom visualization closer to the one used in the series.

[blackthorntk]

Winamp a program I have yet any use for since well the 90's back in 98 is when I last used it as it's a program not really needed but has many unique skins and options even for games. But hey it's because you need to purchase it to use it properly lol.