http://www.mxlmics.com/microphones/web-conferencing/AC-404/

This is what I use and have great success with them. I take them apart and expose the 3 microphone elements. I normally unsolder the elements and run a wire between them to give me a bit more separation.

If you shop around a bit, you can find them for ~$50 USD. I forget who told me about these, but they work well, even across the room.

The AC-404 is used with the PR2 Robot (ROS)

point 6: http://wiki.ros.org/Robots/PR2/HardwareMods

I could not open the links but wondered if anyone knew how to get the mic output and how to connect it to the ezb. I have had a lot of problems getting my audio commands to my robot. I think if I can get it hardwired some how it might fix the problem.

EZB does support audio input, neither the AC-404 or the ReSpeaker Mic Array will work.

AC-404 has a USB interface you connect directly to a PC (Windows & Linux)

ReSpeaker Mic Array - Far-field can be connected to a PC, or you can integrate with a Linux board to build a Dot clone. If you go to their development page you will find a few issues (support tickets) regarding noise cancellation, sound localization or even driver issues, is a development product not a polished/consumer product.

If you don't have ARC running on your robot (small PC) you need a wireless microphone BT or WIFI.

btw

I remember of another thread where you tried a BT headset, and you couldn't set the BT microphone as primary/default input device. I've adapted an ARC skill plugin to help with the task, did it worked or you gave up ?

link: EZR forum changes the original link (HTTP) to a secure version (HTTPS), unfortunately not all sites are available via HTTPS. solution: Change https to http.

I got the Bluetooth headset to connect to Windows. I disabled all other audio to get Bluetooth to show up and work correctly so my Bluetooth headset and Bluetooth speaker. The only problem I keep having is the headset microphone does not show up on speech synthesizer or microphone in ezb. Microphone does not work or show up as connected device on ezb. Windows mic graph shows the headset. I do not know why it does not work with ezb.

My last resort will be to install a Windows computer on my robot and connect directly by wire to the computer.

Thanks for your continuing help. If I can't get this to work all my work was wasted. Depressing.

Ellis,

Did you tried the plugin ? Did you see the BT microphone defined as default ?

Yes the BT microphone now can be and has been selected as default microphone.

One of the tutorials shows the ability to adjust the microphone sensitivity but mine only shows one adjustment not 2.

When I look at the Windows microphone bar graph I see audio bar rise when I speak. When I look at speech synthesizer graph i see no audio line showing it is hearing anything.

I am almost feel like I need to make a film showing my problem. Do you think that would help?

@Ellis,

run the following command:

%windir%\SysWOW64\Speech\SpeechUX\sapi.cpl

Try the speech recognition, adjust the audio input levels etc, then try again with ARC.

Please let me know the results.

I will. What does it do?

Thanks for the help.

@Ellis,

Allows you to configure the Windows SAPI (Speech Api) settings, API used by ARC software.

Did you tried ? Any progress ?

Actually I added a second WiFi dongle as recommended and everything started work correctly :). I will have to keep testing to see if it continues to work.

Yes I did what you recommended. It turned out to be the same Windows configuration window that I have tried in the past. I did it again and it didn't work. Later after getting the second WiFi to work it began working. I think their was some conflict that was causing it not to work. I know it doesn't make sense but that is what happened. At least now I know it can work right.

Thank you so much for being patient and working with me on this. I really do appreciate your ideas.