Monday 18 June 2012

Warning about purchasing Babblebot Chips

For those of you who have been following the NaV-1 Babblebot - Arduino Synth project, you may be soon looking to purchase a Babblebot chip. I just wanted to pass along a warning about this

If you google "Babblebot", the first result will direct you to the site Babblebot.net. This is the site for JT Technology, the company that is producing the Babblebot chip using the old Soundgin firmware. This page has a store section with a drop-down menu and a familiar "add to cart" button interface. I placed an order from this page and went through the usual checkout procedures and paid with Paypal. The order was processed and a Paypal payment was sent to JT Technology.

No products were shipped and any attempt to contact the seller went unanswered.

After some unsuccessful attempts at contacting JT Technology, I filed a Paypal Dispute. The dispute was resolved by Paypal in my favor and luckily the funds were recovered but it seems like for all intents and purposes, the seller is gone. I just wanted to share this experience to hopefully prevent any problems for my readers but if JT Technology would like to contact me and clarify this issue, I will gladly update this post.

For some good news, i was able to purchase some Babblebots from www.speechchips.com. Thanks to them.

It seems like the Babblebot chips may be in short supply but since the device is in reality software running on a standard PIC microprocessor, it should be easy for other sellers to produce.

If you find any other sources for the chip, please post a comment below.


16 comments:

  1. I too went through this experience :-( The chip seems only to be produced by BabbleBot, though other resellers do have it listed, they do not have stocks. One reseller even went as far to say that the manufacturer is problematic to deal with and suggested using the SpeakJet instead. Problem now is I am so weary of this chip I am hesitating to buy the Arduino BabbleBot based synth shield from GinSing just to harvest the chip.

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  2. Thanks for the info. It is a shame as it's a fun chip to play with. Let me know if you find any.

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  3. It seems that Speechchips.com currently has Soundgin chips in stock. Check it out! http://www.speechchips.com/shop/item.aspx?itemid=2

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  4. http://www.ginsingsound.com/ also currently stock the babblebot chip. I have spoken to them and they explained they can supply the chips now. I also made the mistake of placing an order with the babblebot.net website I have raised a dispute with paypal which should also resolve in my favour. Still waiting on delivery of my new order but the contact with GinSing has been very good so I don't think I'll have a problem. I'll update this post if I do run into any issues.

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    1. Hi Chris. Thanks for the update! I'm glad there is a new supplier around. Please let me know if it all works out.

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    2. Hi. I've now taken delivery of two babblebot chips from www.ginsingsound.com so that supplier worked great for me. I thought I should get two in case I burn one out! Just started the breadboard construction. I now have most of my components, should be fun!

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    3. Thanks for the update Chris! That's good news.

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  5. So is there any plan to rework this to work with another chip, or is the Babble chip the only one?

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  6. Curious, I have been wanting to purchase a GinSing shield for quite awhile now, but it's the dreaded Babblebot IC that has made it unavailable for quite some time. Would GinSing still work using the SoundGin IC instead?

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  7. Hi there, thanks for all the awesome project info. I love it. Wonder if you or anyone here has heard any news of the Babblebot or Soundgin chip availability? They appear to be out of stock indefinitely at speechchips.com. If anyone has any they want to part with, I'll buy them. Thanks.

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  8. I have been searching for the PIC hex code to I can flash it to some PIC18F's I found in my stash when i was tiding up. If anyone can help that would be great.

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  10. Hello. I found these statements very interesting.

    @Daveat: "It seems like the Babblebot chips may be in short supply but since the device is in reality software running on a standard PIC microprocessor, it should be easy for other sellers to produce."

    @Zmeu27: "I have been searching for the PIC hex code to I can flash it to some PIC18F's I found in my stash."

    So now that some time has passed, I wondered if any progress has been made on getting speech firmware? I am totally blind, so speech for me is like a display for the average sighted person. With this in mind, I'm open to alternative TTS hardware or software, if anyone has any ideas? I've been getting into Arduino and the ESP32. Neither seems to have enough resources for software speech, except SAM, which is illegal to use, or so I think I understand.

    Barring a solution, I'll probably throw in the towel and either learn Morse Code or get a Raspberry PI. It just feels like using a sledge hammer to hang a 3X5 picture.

    Thanks for reading.

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  13. I have a limited stock of Soundgin's on ebay.

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