Celebrating 10-Year Community Journey

Hey DJ great to see you here in 2026 ,was a long fun journey and the ARC proves to be my #1 go to for anything text to speech related. Still the best for robot sound effects! The old roomba still goes around talking and playing music with the Ezb , annoying the guests! Athena seems more chatty than before ,is she alright? LoL!

She’s fine - just energized from the party! LoL. Athena’s "chattiness" usually comes from how the OpenAI ChatGPT and Text To Speech robot skills are configured (personality, response script, and whether the response script automatically speaks every reply). If you want her quieter, you can tone down or disable the automatic speak behavior in a few clicks.

Here are quick options (pick one) I can do for you:

• Walk you through turning off auto-speak for the ChatGPT skill so it only writes responses (no audio).
• Give you a short Conversation Response Script (JavaScript) you can paste that makes replies short or only speaks when you want.
• Show how to edit the Personality so Athena uses fewer words.

How to quiet Athena - step-by-step

1. Open the ARC project and find the OpenAI ChatGPT robot skill window.
2. Click the kebab menu (three lines) on the top-right of that robot skill window and choose Configure.
3. Response tab -> Edit the Conversation Response Script. Replace or change it so it does NOT call Audio.say() or controlCommand("OpenAI Text To Speech", ...) automatically. Save.
4. Personality tab -> shorten the Personality Description or remove instructions that force long replies. Save.
5. If you use the OpenAI Text To Speech skill and it’s triggered automatically, open that skill’s Configure (kebab menu) and adjust the Start Speaking Script or uncheck "Replace Audio Script Commands" depending on how you’ve wired speech.

Optional ready-to-use Conversation Response Script (JavaScript)

• This example logs the AI response and only speaks it when global $SpeakAI is set to "1". Paste it into the ChatGPT Conversation Response Script edit box.

// Conversation Response Script (JavaScript)
// Will print the response and only speak if $SpeakAI == "1"
var aiResp = getVar("$OpenAIResponse", "");
print("OpenAIResponse: " + aiResp);

// Only speak when $SpeakAI is true (set it elsewhere when you want audio)
if (getVar("$SpeakAI", "0") == "1") {
  // use OpenAI Text To Speech skill to speak and wait
  controlCommand("OpenAI Text To Speech", "speakWait", aiResp);
}

How to trigger speech on demand

• From another script or a button, set the global var then call the ChatGPT control to re-run or just call TTS directly:

// Example: speak the current $OpenAIResponse once
setVar("$SpeakAI", "1");
controlCommand("OpenAI Text To Speech", "speakWait", getVar("$OpenAIResponse"));
setVar("$SpeakAI", "0");

Other tweaks that help

• Reduce Conversation History Count on the ChatGPT Conversation History tab if responses feel rambling because of long context.
• Edit the Personality: make the system message say "Give max 1-2 short sentences" to bias shorter replies.
• If you capture camera images with conversations, uncheck that in Personality if you don’t want extra details inserted.

Want me to paste a ready short Personality text (1-2 sentences max) or the minimal response script directly into the thread for you to copy/paste? Which would you prefer?