Released by Hoover Anderson Research and Design (H.A.R.D.). Designed by Craig Anderson.
This is a "Speech Recognition System for the Computer Hobbyist." This kit consisted of a microphone,
sensitivity controller and cassette with several demo programs. Connects to your Astrocade via
control port number four.
On April 25, 2002, Craig Anderson (the designer) says, "I built and sold approximately 80 of them
over a period of two years. It was rather primitive compared to today's speech-recognition technology
but then again, the problems of speech recognition are still with us [goes on to list some examples].
The concept of the "Ear" was simple: A transistor pre-amp drove an LED in a homemade optoisolator
whose output was a cadmium sulfide cell. That connected to the rheostat pins on a Bally game port
and gave an amplitude-modulated waveform that varied for different spoken words. The program then
compared that waveform against others in its memory (2000 bytes!) and picked the best match."
Important: If you have the documentation and/or software that is supposed to be used with
the Computer Ear, then please contact me, as it has not been archived. Without this, the hardware
can not be used.
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Computer Ear. Complete view. |
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Computer Ear. Front view. |
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Computer Ear. Back view. |
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Computer Ear. Side view. |
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Computer Ear. Inside view (1). |
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Computer Ear. Inside view (2). |
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Computer Ear. Inside view (3). |
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