SonicIP Howto

This Howto describes how to change the SonicIP voice in a Barix device. This can be useful for instance if you want to translate the sonic IP to your language or create a different voice.

You will need a microphone, a PC and the original rescuekit of the device firmware.

Record the files

First of all, record on a PC or any other digital recorder the following words: "zero", "one", "two", "three", "four", "five", "six", "seven", "eight", "nine" and "dot". Do not lower or raise your voice at the beginning or at the end of the words, speak as if you were reading a continuous text.

When recording, make sure that there is no noise in the background which would disturb the voice. Make sure there is no plop or click at the beginning or at the end. Use a quality microphone.

It is recommended to record one file with pauses between the words and then cut it into separate files with an audio editor. You can use a free audio editor Audacity. You can also use the audio editor for post-processing like noise removal.

Store each word into a separate file and encode it as MP3. Select the lowest bitrate to make small files. All files must fit into 64kB.

Create a COB file

If you have the ABCL or the Streaming Client firmware skip to Create a COB file on ABCL or Streaming Client

Put the recorded files into a new directory:

mkdir my_sonicip
copy *.mp3 my_sonicip

Take the tool web2cob.exe from the webuidevkit directory of the rescuekit and create the COB file:

web2cob.exe /o sonicip.cob /d my_sonicip

Copy the newly created sonicip.cob into the update_rescue directory of the rescuekit:

copy sonicip.cob ..\update_rescue\

Enter the update_rescue directory and run the gen.bat to create the compound firmware file compound.bin:

cd ..
cd update_rescue
gen.bat

As the last step load the newly created compound.bin into your device. The SonicIP will have your voice.

Create a COB file on ABCL or Streaming Client

The procedure on ABCL or Streaming Client is slightly different as the SonicIP is a part of the WEB UI. This is for space reasons.

Put the recorded files into the directory webuidevkit/abclapp respective webuidevkit/streamapp of the rescuekit:

copy *.mp3 webuidevkit/streamapp

Run the streamapp.bat respective abclapp.bat in the webuidevkit directory to create the COB file:

streamapp.bat

Copy the newly created streamapp.cob (abclapp.cob) into the update_rescue directory of the rescuekit:

copy streamapp.cob ..\update_rescue\

Enter the update_rescue directory and run the gen.bat to create the compound firmware file compound.bin:

cd ..
cd update_rescue
gen.bat

As the last step load the newly created compound.bin into your device. The SonicIP will have your voice.