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Is There A Market For A Voice Controlled MP3 Car Stereo?
big_hairy_mama asks: "I'm the author of MP3VoiceControl, a software package based on IBM's ViaVoice. As it was designed as an interface-free car stereo (in addition to being used at home) and allows you to search for and play all your MP3's completely without the use of a keyboard or monitor, I am seriously considering starting a small business to build and sell voice controlled MP3 player units. My project is called called EmVAX, short for MP3 Voice Activated Car Stereo. This is similar in concept to EMPEG's units, except a lot cooler, and I am confident that I can produce my box at about 1/3 of the $1500 price tag of EMPEG's similar unit. My question is, how much of a market is there for this type of item? How much would you be willing to pay for 140 hours of continuous playback with an easy-to-use voice-activated and voice-searchable system? Is the impress-your-friends factor enough of a selling point so that people will shell out $600 bucks for my unit?" Very cool. I'd love to have one of these, but at $600US a pop, I think I'd have to see one in action, first.
learn esperanto!
You obviously haven't done much work with acoustics.
The speakers, amp, and acoustic environment of a car do horrific things to the relative phase of every frequency component the car uses. Just subtracting out the original signal doesn't work in a car. (In fact it doesn't work even in an anechoic chamber because a lot of the phase shift happens in the speakers and microphones.) To cancel this effect in real time you would meed some MASSIVE dsp--more than the average PC can do.
Commercial noise-cancellation headsets really don't work well, and they basically don't work at all at high frequencies. This technique is difficult to say the least.
actually isn't the biggest problem that it uses a hard disk to store the songs? I don't remember them being too prone to shaking. In fact, my computer stops working, whenever I kick it. It's my version of booting up.
I think the sweet spot for high volume sales is $199. Intro price can be $299 for early adopters and those for the need for new gizmo. It all depends on what sort of volume you want to sell and the profit expect per unit. I think you will need to put in some spreadsheet time to develop product feasability.
Ears doesn't have a very good success rate. Festival works well, though. I kept everything mounted read-only or on a ramdisk so I didn't have to fsck. It was pretty cool. I got to talk to my car. :-)
This summer I plan on using ViaVoice, and enhancing the interface.
-- Erich
Slashdot reader since 1997
Um, I would sell my left......
kidney for one!
Where can I send the check?
Which is why it's rather unfortunate that we're going to have to buy entirely different units to take advantage of different features like voice-recognition or digital radio or whatever.
I'd much rather pay a bit extra to get a generalized system that could be upgraded and enhanced. Why not simply a "ruggedized notebook" whose components are designed to fit into a car? Commodity parts running a standard os, attached to whatever specialized peripherals are necessary (dash-mounted LCDs, a sunvisor mic for voice-recognition, etc.) would be way more flexible, and probably be cheaper than custom-designed hardware.
In other words, solve all the _general_ PC-in-a-car problems -- power, connectivity, resistance to bumpy roads -- with a single 'reference pc', then let the user and third-party companies add whatever hard/software they need for themselves.
I paid $600 for my car CD player last year. :)
Not without a description of its size, the connections it has on it and whether it has an externally accessible drive (floppy, zip or CD ROM) I would want to see a demonstration of this in action before I fork that much.
Here in the Netherlands we have to use a carkit for our cell phones... high end radio's are equipped with control units which switch off sound if a call comes in. I would like to see the EmVAX equipped with similar technology... maybe just one microphone would be needed for both EmVAX control and Cell Phone control. Sure would like to buy such a thing... And if prices could be reasonable... not as expensive as the EMPEG...
As far as i'm concerned.... go for it!
I can't reach the site, so I can't tell if it's supposed to respond to commands like "Play Misty for me" (my initial expectation), or if a handful of preselected commands are all it recognises ("Next song", "Playlist 4", "Pause", etc.). That would be a bit less impressive and a lot more plausible, actually.
All that aside, I for one won't shell out $600 for this thing, or even $200, because I'm content with just listening to the radio on my short commute.
--
Fuck the system? Nah, you might catch something.
I don't think IBM would appreciate him selling/licensing their ViaVoice to other people. Maybe I read that wrong, but it looks to me like he's using ViaVoice...
--
Why can't I moderate something "Wrong" or at least "Grossly Misinformed"?
Are you sure it isn't a "keep you from buying a stereo from anybody but Citroen" measure? They aren't the first/only car company to get proprietary in that area by a long shot.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Perhaps he's one of the people like me who listens to the radio ONLY in the car.
Sure, you could record radio shows at home. The thing is that a device like this is purely a convenience item in the first place, so why not make things as convenient as possible.
When talking about toys and convenience items like this, the word "need" has no place in the conversation. These things are about fun and "coolness factor."
First off, I would think that a unit like this is going to have to be fairly complex to sort out the music playing to the commands being spoken by the operator. If you can do it under $600....more power to you.
Secondly, what type of capabilities are we talking about here. I want a unit that can handle audio cds as well as data cds holding MP3s plus have a storage area of its own as a repository of MP3z. Maybe if I knew that it was a kick ass unit that did everything that I wanted, I might shell out $300-$400. But not $600
I think there's a market here, in fact I was looking at buying two. One for each car. I was going to build one for myself first, (since I have the parts) to see if it worked well. (In a convertible)
I think that it should be easily expanable, and that you shouldn't profit gouge on hardware.
Other than that, sell me one.
Shaun
Shaun Nelson - Bastard Operator (From Hell / For Hire)
If been looking at this for a bit, and common question keeps popping up. How does it know that you're talking to it?
Every command starts with the phrase "Computer" and has to follow a pattern of commands.
The website says that you can change that command word, and even the syntax of the commands. Give the player a name, and you'll never have a problem during converstations.
i.e. "Eythel, play Oh ef ef es pee are eye en gee"
Shaun Nelson - Bastard Operator (From Hell / For Hire)
How do you get the damn thing to turn the volume down once you've cranked it up?
When shit hits the fan get some of these https://youtu.be/pY-GncsZ-UE
Fot those who makes fun of Citroen, there's more:
Citroen made a car with voice recognition and synthesis, that runs Windows...
http://www.mandrakesoft.com/~gduval/ (in french)
The idea is great -- I'd love to put one in my car. But, I really don't have room for a minitower.
On the other hand, the MP3VoiceControl does look like a pretty cool piece of software -- I may just set this up in the living room for easy MP3 playing.
Stupid people will be persecuted to the fullest extent allowed by law.
No CD based MP3 player will ever kill this unit or the empeg-car. If I am going to be spending more then $500 on a radio for the car, it needs to elliminate a few things. One of the things I hate is having to exchange CD's. This would still be needed for MP3 CDs. I enjoy listening to all my They Might Be Giants songs on shuffle, and one MP3 CD still would not hold them all. With my empeg, I have all of TMBG, and many other songs, so a genre or year shuffle is very possible and rather nice to have.
Lets do some basic math for the Smart media based players. I have herd of an upcomming player with 5 smart media slots for MP3's. A smart media card can hold up to 64mb, and cost up to $100. 5 of these will cost $500, and the storage will be 320mb. In the car, a decent sound system usually exists, so the tricks of the Rio players do of reconverting MP3's to 64kbps or 96 will definitly be noticed. So at 320 mb, you could fit a little over 4 CD's worth of music at a decent quality. And to have more music, you either have to buy more smart media cards, or keep reloading them. At that price, a 6 CD changer under the seat makes much more sense.
...
The empeg on the other hand has a minimum of 6gb of storage at $1199 (Mark 2). It can easially be used outside the car as well. So, does a in car only smart media based player or CD based player offer more value over a player that can be enjoyed without the hassle of old media and in many places? Oh, someone made a case that turns the empeg into a portable player powered by a battery. So with things like that, I think my money is well spend on an empeg instead of an in car player, and a player for the home, and a player that can hook into a friends stereo easially, and
Oh, and another gripe... The EMPEG has a friggin SA-100 Processor in it! WTF! You can get MP3 decoder chips for cheap.. Why the overkill?
Hmm, because MP3 won't be the only format people may want to use. While everyone else is having to upgrade their $600 MP3 PC in a trunk players, I will just have to download an upgrade to enjoy other future formats that will use more processor time. Also, the SA-100 200mhz is one of the cheaper processors for an embedded system.
The empeg Mark 2 ships June 9th, and empeg is predicting the queue will be run through by the end of summer, thus allowing non registered people to buy one. Also, you can still hop on the registration queue, and get one of the first Mark 2 units. Prices did change, and $1299 will get you a 12gb unit.
This person keeps forgetting some of the major differences between his player and the empeg. Size. My empeg Mark 1 fits in the dash. My empeg can be removed from the car at any time easially for security. My empeg can be used in the house easially. A PC box somewhere in the car has none of these advantages.
Also, the sound quality of the empeg is great. The people who installed mine said it was the best sounding head unit they have ever installed. Also, the empeg is very powerful, and will play many future formats with no problem. MP3 and visuals uses around 20-30% of the CPU. The rest of that time on my unit is used to crack d.net RC5 keys. GPS and CDPD support is underway, and the people working on GPS plan on using the IR to beam maps to the Palm.
The empeg is a well developed product. The prices will change with the Mark II. The Mark II ships June 9th with voice control, ethernet, and other new features. I'll probably see if I can get an Airport to work with the empeg while in the driveway once I recieve my Mark II. Also, I feel the price I paid for my empeg is well worth it. I didn't buy a simple MP3 player. I bought an in dash computer that runs Linux, and I can do whatever I want with, compaired to the similiarly priced AutoPC running WinCE.
"I can only show you Linux... you're the one who has to read the man pages."
This makes me want to record interesting voice commands on MP3, and then putting them into the player.
I can just imagine the track "Recurse", that holds my voice command "Computer, play track Recurse".pooptruck
How about the "Clapper," a switch that turns on and off lights with the clap of your hands?
People will buy almost anything if it's marketed right. Just ask Bill Gates. Considering that an MP3 player for your car might actually even be cool and useful, though, it might be a little harder to sell.
sweet, tnx for telling us. I've always loved Kenwood's quality, so i'll definetly consider this (would appreciate a link,...if I cant find it). The CDR/mp3 capability has some definite advantages. However, my primary motivation for an mp3 player is to have a HUGE collection of music EASILY (assuming the empeg UI is any good, which i'm not sure of yet) available at my finger tips. Having to insert or find CDs just isn't quite the same thing, even if it is 8x as much music as standard audio cds.
You need to have circuitry similar to that found in noise-cancellation headphones. In real time, take the input from the microphone, subtract the output of the stereo. What's left is the ambient noise (road noise, etc) and your voice. Apply a bandpass filter centered around the frequency of the human voice, et voila.
With loud music, of course, you may have some trouble, depending on the dynamic range of the microphone/input signal.
-bp
bp
Does it run EmVMS?
sounds like a good idea, but if possible could you make something that is not "in dash". I don't want to give up my CD deck to listen to sub CD quality music all the time....currently i just hook a laptop up to my amps to play mp3's on the road, but still have the option to play CD's if i want.
I would buy one if either the price is a bit lower, or the interface is exceptionally good.
But as far as safety goes, "hands free" is the only way to go when I'm digging through a long list of mp3s while going down the interstate at 75+ mph... I am willing to pay a few hundred more for the ability to keep my eyes on the road and my hands on the wheel.
Geez, I'd pay $600 just for a decent MP3-playing car stereo (with 140 hours of playback). Voice control would be icing on the cake. I'd love to buy an EMPEG, but $1000+ just to get a small disk is asinine. It costs $2000 to get one that would hold my MP3 collection.
$600 is a great price point -- high enough that folks are serious about it (since it's new tech) but low enough that folks like me who don't have
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
The new empegs have voice recognition software on it. Check out the new EMPEG Mark2 at http://www2.empeg.com/mark2
The fact still remains that this particular project is interesting to the majority of the slashdot readership, so whether it's a commercial enterprise or not, it's still interesting to hear about. OK, so the guy gets some info from us - I don't care *shrug*
Take it easy!
--Remove SPAM from my address to mail me
I've been playing the stock market with some seed money trying to build up enough to by an empeg (and still have some left to continue to play with). I'm about to my goal, but I'd MUCH rather have a voice recognition version, especially at under half the price.
YES. Sign me up!
-- Gary F.
<theory class="conspiracy">
How do you know they aren't already paying slashdot ?
</theory>
USB, 10bT ethernet, a better design and interface and as you mentioned, voice control.
(having trouble accessing your site... host not found) If you could make an affordable and easily removable car mp3 player with USB and Ethernet and a remote that would be enough to convince me... but voice control would be damn cool too!
I'm considering my first car and right now an mp3 player looks just a bit more attractive than a 6 cd changer.
What would really sell your product is a slot loadable mp3 cd player. You can skimp on the HD then too (maybe none)! Finally 11Mbit wireless ethernet capability... perhaps a PCMCIA slot on the front! then you could use all sorts of media (SM/CF that standard handheld mp3 players use! or iomega click, sony memory stick (is there a PC card mem sick reader?), and wireless ethernet cards among other goodies)
If your product had all that I'd almost be willing to pay the full $1500 for it!
I want one that reads from a CD-R.
/soundcard on a board probably would be affordable if ~30 people were interested...
I don't want to have to remove anything and bring it in to the house to add tracks, I don't want a moving part that can break and be expensive to replace... I just want to burn some tracks onto a CD, and pop it in. I don't even care if this thing goes in my dashboard... (Actually, if it did go in my dashboard It would have to include a radio, which I don't think this one does. I need to be able to hear Ass Whippin' Wednesday on AAF in Boston!) Ideally this could act as a CD changer, and be controlled by a standard changer control.
Why doesn't somebody make something like this?
I've explored doing this on my own, but the cost is too high to build just one unit. Anyone out there want in on something like this? The price for an MP3 decoder/IDE bus
Oh, and another gripe... The EMPEG has a friggin SA-100 Processor in it! WTF! You can get MP3 decoder chips for cheap.. Why the overkill?
To reduce the total cost and the number total number of computing platforms that I have to maintain, how about turning the car stereo into just a docking station for a PDA? My Casiopeia E-105 already has a 64-bit 131MHz CPU, 32MB RAM, a 320x240 16-bit video touch screen and buttons.
I want a car stereo box that has an adapter that plugs into my PDA's CompactFlash slot, power input and sound output (which is very high quality), and
provides: internal IDE hard drive bay, some CardBus/PCMCIA slots, power (from the car's power bus), sound to the car speakers. Do not include the hard disk. The only silicon that the product should include are these IO interfaces (IDE, PCMCIA, CompactFlash in). Everything else, such as the hard disk or PCMCIA/CardBus toys that I want to plug in (like GPS or wireless ethernet) are commodities that you are not going to be able to keep up with. Leave most of the software development to the Linux PDA crowd as much as you can. Just make this simple product, and people will be able to do all sorts of cool things, and you will not have to be constantly revising your product or being chastised for having one particular component out of date.
If you really feel compelled to include actual computer hardware in the product, I would suggest a built-in low profile DVD-ROM drive, and perhaps
interfaces to the more common automative computer busses (to display gas mileage, etc.)
If I had this product, I could do all sorts of cool things, like interface it to my car's computer, connect it to a cellular modem to do an encrypted telephone system that had a speakerphone feature through the car's speakers, pull weather forecasts from the net via a metricom modem, store a massive library of digital music, etc. The possibilities are much greater with this approach and the costs would be much lower.
Input from mike - (output from audio out * volume multiplier) = Everything but the speakers = your voice commands.
It'd take some fine tuning, and some tricky coding, but it's not impossible.
---
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Though it may be entirely possible to produce something like the empeg for a much cheaper price... keep in mind the amount of work that goes into putting something like the empeg into production. What if you have to sell thousands of these things? how will you make them? What about the machined parts? will it fit in a standard car audio bracket? Where will it go? What about vibration? Will you vibration test it, or will the drives just croak?
What I would like to see is a player for my Jeep that can read MP3 files off a CD changer.
There are several problems with hard drives in the vehicle. The biggest is, how do you get the MP3's onto the hard drive? Fragility and lack of expansion are problems too. How do you manage deleting files and adding new ones when the drive is full?
Solution: a 5 or 10 disk CD changer full of CD-R's full of MP3 files and playlists. That way I can create the CDR's at home, fill up a changer cartridge, and take it out to the car. I can easily add a new CD every few months as my music collection expands.
The perfect solution would be if it could hook right up to my Clarion Pro series head unit with Clarion's own mobile-bus system. This would allow me to use the fast forward, rewind, skip, and shuffle controls directly from the existing head unit, without installing more "user interface" stuff.
The user interface would be a bit tricky. I think it would be best to require each MP3 to be included in one or more playlist files. These would appear to be "virtual CD"s in the changer, allowing them to have names that would appear on the faceplate of the head unit. This might give a limitation of 40 playlists, but each playlist could have several hundred tracks in it.
I would be willing to pay about $300 dollars more for this than for a regular CD changer. But I bet it could be built for a lot less than that.
Torrey Hoffman (Azog)
Torrey Hoffman (Azog)
"HTML needs a rant tag" - Alan Cox
I was working on a similar project, and had decided to use a different language to control the mp3 player. I ended up using spanish...but figured something that was COMPLETELY different would be better. I hadn't gotten around to learned swahili when I ran out of time to work on it.
Not only that, but when Sinead O'Connor sings the line "Nothing compares to you", the player starts the song over. Chicks don't like guys that get stuck in recursive loops.
Other people have mentioned how the stereo creates sound and is also controlled by sound. I can say that my Samsung voice activated PCS phone (3500 something) does NOT do well if the car stereo is on at all. What you could have is a mute/command input button either on the unit or wired to the steering wheel. This would solve the background noise problem and the need for a command word prefix.
-B
Hate to say it, but I'd really only consider it if it a) worked pretty well and b) looked good, like almost every car cd/tape player out there right now does. Otherwise, it'd just look shoddy and corrupt the otherwise decent dash of my car. :)
To make it really superb, add a wireless LAN receiver so when your car is parked out front, it can download a new batch of MP3s from your PC. Perhaps if you automated this (car flags songs as "played", requests new ones whenever it detects the LAN again) you wouldn't need 140 hours of storage, just 8-10 hours or so.
Imagine: gnutella for your car wireless LAN so you can swap songs with the guy in the car next to you on the highway/at the stoplight.
I would plead for one thing - please make sure the command sequences are accessed by first speaking a command word, then acknowledging you are in "command mode".
The most classic example I can think of here is Star Trek, where they say "Computer", and it responds "Boop-bleep" (or whatever) do let them know it heard them - then they can tell it to do whatever, it acknowledges that, and goes to work and stops listening. This eliminates all ofthe complaints of constant-on voice recognition.
As a side bonus, I'd love to be able to use my Palm to beam it playlists or even as a remote control when I didn't want to talk to it.
Also, please include a CD player that plays MP3 files - I can't get through to your site to see if you've thought of that already.
Wait! One more thing - please include support for adding other formats as well, like the recently discussed open format that could replace MP3's (forgot the name already).
Other than that, I've been yearning for a car MP3 player (I'm going to buy a portable CD-MP3 player mostly for that porpouse) and think there is definatley a market!
Oh, one last optional feature would be nice - if I could add wireless ethernet so I could beam the car songs from my house.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
found some info on these here. really nothing, just says there's one coming...I'll post more if I find more.
"Leave the gun, take the canoli."
this is just a placeholder till i send back my real sig from the future.
ERRR...
w ood.shtml#Index
http://www.maxtarget.com/hardware/cdrom/mp3_ken
"Leave the gun, take the canoli."
this is just a placeholder till i send back my real sig from the future.
> If I'm not mistaken, most voice recognition software makes you sit there for quite some time and program it so > it recognizes your voice... wouldn't you have to do this with this player? I've always wondered why one doesn't record one's voice to CD the first time you train, and then just pop in the CD after that. Hang on, lemme quick patent that.
I suppose it depends on your definition of boring. Nothing is that exciting in that sector of the market TBH. But the ZX performs well enough for its class, handles well (for a FWD family hatch, that is. I'm not pretending it's a BMW) and is comfortable enough. I like mine. Nothing like a Volvo, which tend to have only lipservice paid to chassis engineering but concentrate hugely on safety and interior space. Neither of which are bad things, but I don't need that much interior space and I'd like them to notice what happens to the wheels.
:)
Perhaps our original poster saw Citroen and assumed 2CV?
Interestingly, you might want to check some roadtests for that period. I was looking for something 7-9 years old when I got mine, so checked group tests from back then. The ZX came out consistently at or near the top. Yet it tends to work out cheaper as the secondhand market don't really trust Citroens due to the hydraulic suspension on some models. Expensive to fix when it breaks, to say the least. Except the ZX has conventional springs
I'm just as much of a car nerd as I am a computer nerd, and have been for years. Ran out of places to store old car magazines a long time ago. And I'd definitely recommend a ZX to anyone who wants an early-mid '90s family hatch. I didn't end up with one by mistake, I actively _chose_ it.
Greg
(Inside a nuclear plant)
Aaaarrrggh! Run! The canary has mutated!
I used ViaVoice (the voive app here) a while back, and experimented with this sort of thing.
:)
h tml will get you through, the link given above doesn't work) doesn't specify this sort of thing, unfortunately.
:)
It was trained with the stereo off, but one day I did some dictation with the stereo on. It's fairly loud and less than 2 metres from my computer to the nearest speaker. I think it was Deep Purple's Made in Japan, for those who know the album
Anyway, it _didn't_ recognise stuff from the lyrics, though the accuracy did go down a little.
What I'm wondering is how this is going to be practical. ViaVoice is designed around a headset with the microphone about a inch from your mouth. I would _love_ this sort of toy - and would pay that much - but I can't see where I'd put the mic that it could work. It wouldn't be acceptable to have a system which only worked if I was wearing a headset or throat mic. The website (http://ghs.ssd.k12.wa.us/~pdavis/projects/emvax.
The other thing that puzzles me is why ViaVoice? It simply isn't that good. Having used both it and Dragon NaturallySpeaking for a little while, I'd have to say that NaturallySpeaking is _far_ more powerful. Though ViaVoice comes with a better headset
It might also be a bit of a problem fitting one to my Citroen ZX - the stereo's an odd size as an anti-theft measure - but if I could find a way then this sounds nice. Assuming it could have a radio with AM and UK frequencies, that is.
Greg
(Inside a nuclear plant)
Aaaarrrggh! Run! The canary has mutated!
It's scheduled to come out of vaporware this week. I don't know if it will or not, but the Mambo-X seems like a good bet -- it's actually a portable CD player that plays mp3's off a CD-R/RW.
-S
However, it doesn't look like anyone here is actually in the know in regards to the next generation of Empeg, the Mark 2. It already has voice recognition - check the feature list in the newsletters.
The Mark 2 player will start shipping next month.
And you call yourselves geeks! None of you even knew about this!
Any $600 solution will be crap compared to the Empeg in terms of sound quality and usefulness.
Maybe you could make a general car interface for Linux PDAs, so we can connect to more storage, the car speakers, and whatever other gadgets are part of the car (GPS? Cell phone messaging/networking?)...and if there's a CPU in it then the car can also act independently.
If you try to market this to consumers, you've got a zillion challenges trying to break into the sales channel.
But the auto manufacturers are another story. They want more high-margin, high-tech communications, navigation and entertainment devices in their cars, but are worried about the Feds blaming them for drivers taking their eyes off the road. Consequently, are very hungry for voice-activated technology.
For example, GM already has plans to put a voice-activated cell phone in every car the sell (a logical enhancement to their OnStar emergency communications system). I'll bet they'd love to offer a Delco-branded voice-activated MP3 player.
Get your fanny up to Detroit and talk to GM, Ford and DCX. That's where the real market for this is.
What's to stop the lyrics from changing songs??
-- Segmentaion Fault (core dumped)
I can't get to the site at the moment, but if it's comparable to what I've seen before..
Sure. I'd probably buy 2 at $600/ea. The voice is a cool gimick..make sure other controls are there, too.
I think probably he used ViaVoice because it's freely available for Linux.
Your post had some credibility until you told us you own a Citroen. That blew it - it's hard to go lower than Volvo, but you've done it. [grin] (My eight-year-old daughter wondered aloud the other day "Why are Volvo drivers always so stupid and slow?" I guess we're raising her right.)
Not really to bash French cars (OK, yeah, to bash French cars) I'll tell a true story: In college, I worked for one of the handful of EPA certified emissions test facilities. Peugeot sent us one of the first new 505s with some engine change that mandated re-testing. The interesting thing was that *it wouldn't roll*! It took us several hours of trying everything (and we had several skilled mechanics handy) before we finally gave up and took it off the truck with a forklift. The next day, we discovered that some drunk Frenchman had somehow hammered the front calipers onto the rotors with the wrong pads - pads so tight that it took us half a day to pull the calipers off. How it got all the way from France to Texas that way, and how they even even managed to put it together that way remains a mystery...
Dino 308gt4 forever!
"The future's good and the present is nothing to sneeze at." - Roblimo's last
-------------
Obi
There are some pretty impressive MP3 hardware options coming out, so, I'm not sure if adding voice control would be worth the extra money (IMHO, no it wouldn't).
One complaint I do have though is everything out is limited to Flash memory or a Hard drive in the device. Why can't I just have a CD player that plays MP3s like my apex? One I can take in the car, or walk around with?
A nice strongARM, a cd player, headphone jack and car adapter/batteries.. Thats all I need. And this thermos.. Thats all I need. Maybe an nice display as an accesory.. thats all I need
And an hour later, when your file has trickled through that cell modem, you can listen to it!
I wouldn't buy it. I'd rather have a small computer hooked up to my car stereo (with a din connector or so).
nosig today
you can also make mp3's of your own cd's and listen to them yourself right? well, i guess as long as you disregard the DMCA you can, and i do.
No todo lo que es oro brilla
I've always thought voice control in general was a cool thing, but I've also always thought that it wasn't necessarily the best idea for controlling audio equipment. Why you ask? Does anyone remember the clapper? Has anyone seen a TV controlled by one of these things suddenly go off when a commercial for the clapper comes on the air? It hilarious, let me tell you, but it makes a point--the potential for interference is incredible. To handle it well, you would need a system to filter out the interference--you could, for instance, dynamically filter out (with decent success, even) your output from your input, ie take what you are currently playing and subtract it from your microphone input. Feasible, but you have to be careful with your implementation. Once the kinks are out, however, I'm in. :)
-- That tickles!
Aiwa has one coming out this summer also. You can read about it here: http://www.aiwa.com/Catalog00/Products2.asp?id=94
/ 2738.html
And mp3.com lists some information about it here:
http://hardware.mp3.com/hardware/individual/car
Yes, this is a CD-R/CD-RW model, and will not elimate the need to carry CD's, however you will need to carry far fewer. It is listed as retailing at US$350, which is really cheap.
You don't actually think a sampling of slashdot readers it gonna give you decent market research, do you?
It's in that banner, at the top of each page, the one I always ignore...
Everyone has an idea for a cool new gadget. Why should you get free exposure on one of the most popular news sites on the net, when everyone else has to pay for it?
sorry, its been a long day!
So I think I'll pass.
Though it would barely nudge the value of my Volvo.
George
My favorite programming idiom is KISS-Keep it simple, stupid. Why doesn't someone just put a zip drive in a single din holder with a simple display and a perl script running using linux. For example, all the mp3's could be in folders for each band you have on the disc, and the display could have a special "icon" (wrong word, something to indicate it's a folder). Then you just select the folder and then the song.
You don't even have to use zip disks, use anything that works for you. A simple cdrom drive could work for those who can write, Zip 250's could be a bigger option. Even ram sticks would work.
As for the skipping, a lot of read-ahead would allow many seconds of pre-loading into ram, which, of course, won't skip.
The simplicity idea works for the amplification, too. RCA pre-outs are all that is necessary for most car audio applications where there is an aftermarket accessory. Since the car is a poor place for 5.1 sound, stereo works just fine, thank you.
If anyone else has any other ideas, I would love to hear them.
I for one would be very excited about such a product. However, one of the big problems with the Empeg unit is that the shipping times are incredibly far out. In order for me to purchase something like this, I am going to want to have it ASAP. I realize this is in conceptual stage, but it is a trap you dont want to fall in.
-= Xafloc =-
alinuxbox.com
N
...if my wife would let me. :)
I've been waiting for something like this, so I'd shell out $600 for it of it worked well - I'd need to demo it first, of course.
I think the empeg and this unit are both toast; Kenwood has a really slick cd/cdr mp3 player coming out in the summer. While I don't know the model number offhand, the local car audio place has it listed in their preorder catalog for this summer. It looks awesome, nice display, no voice (voice sucks, imho), and it plays cds, too. Check a kenwood dealer. Might be on their web site, too. The dealer had the info, though.
The price point was, interestingly, about $1200cdn, or about $700usd. But, it's Kenwood - car audio is a hard market to break into because anyone that does circuit design knows that a car is a rough environment for a unit to be permanantly mounted in, and failure rates are high.
I'll be shopping for a replacement for the CD player I have in my car now soon, and this definately looks like an attactive option. The prices being charged for these things are NUTS.
Right now I just use a diamond rio (noise free!) and when I want new music, I charge it up off my vaio. This works well, because I'm rarely in the car long enough to repeat, and most of the time I either want techno or talk radio.. :)
Kudos
..don't panic
Then quit playing. God, if you don't like a topic, why even open it, let alone read & respond?
Intolerant people should be shot.
A couple of issues.
It's not quality or anything like that it's price
I'm kind of confused as to what you mean here. You are saying you don't get better quality for the higher price you pay for the empeg.
What they don't realize is the US market is way different than the EU
Well perhaps we get better prices on drives with all the drive companies in the US. But why doesn't the UK buy from the US? Sure there are some import taxes, but it can't be any more expensive then what they pay for japanese drives now.
Me personally, I would look to team up with the people who are testing the StrongArm (LART) based computers that run linux (similar to Empeg) and license the "technology" both to large companies, but to general public as a hobby.
Definitely a very cool idea. I've thought of doing something like this myself based on some dated (cheap) laptop hardware. In other words x86 processors that run Linux.
I look at this as almost a computer. So why not make it modular so it can be upgraded
In a good MP3 car unit I'd like to see a modular hard drive perhaps, so that the storage can be upgraded, and of course some way of recieving software updates. Any more "modularity" then this is probably more trouble (cost) then its worth.
Spyky
A 3? Has no moderator ever heard of licensing software? ViaVoice is an IBM product, and as such they want to sell it, producing revenue. In fact, if all you want is the underlying recognition / dictation engine, they'll sell licenses for less than US$20, IIRC. So unless he plans to pirate ViaVoice after announcing it on /. I think IBM would appreciate him selling a lot of devices.
Walt
As you can guess, I'll be first in line for this.
The cake is a pie
Unfortunately, there is no possible suit against car MP3 players especially. To be in violation of the DMCA (or other aplicible laws), the device has to be designed (or "tweaked" to promote piracy. No actual case (of which there have been several) have shown any existing MP3 player to violate those rules. Car MP3 players in particular have a very good case of being designed to eliminate cumbersome and dangerous CD switching while driving.
I am speaking as someone who has ripped his entire CD collection to MP3 because I *prefer* to listen to them in that format--not because I wanted to weasel out of paying for the CDs in the first place.
To answer the original question: As soon as it becomes available I was planning on buying the empeg player w/ voice control despite the high price tag. If I can get a similar device within the same timeframe for $600, I would jump on it.
It's easy to vercome this problem.
Split the output (before sending it out) in two. Then output1 goes to the amp. You then reverse the phase of output two and mix it with the microphone input.
Now you have the microphone input without any music (ok you have some due to the reverb effect in the car - but the level will be really low).
The major problem is if multiple person in the car start shouting command.
Again with multiple microphones you can cancel other people shouting from the driver microphone input.
It's pretty easy, it just going to take a little bit more processing power (unless you mix in analog instead of in digital).
According to the site, this thing broadcasts on an FM signal that you listen to through our regular car stereo (at least that's how it seems to me). Does this mean that people next to me at a stop light are going to hear my music playing, or will what they're listening to just crap out from the interference? I think that the FCC device reg about "causing no interference and accepting any interference recieved" might make this particular toy illegal in the US.
You have to ask if you can continue offer competitive prices as the competition increases. I would say that any company that is selling them for $1500 now is bleeding the high end market to make a few bucks and is willing to come down significanty as soon as they see some competition.
I'll bet that eventually you will see some for under $150. (Especially as hard drives get even cheaper.)
Wouldn't be as bad as having Denis Leary's "Asshole" song starting up ;)
I built one, without voice input capability, for less than $250 US. Sunnylab GXLite MediaGX POS board($40), ES1371 soundcard ($20, OEM), GL5446 videocard ($14), 8G Maxtor HD($79, on sale), 100W micro supply ($10 used) and a small inverter ($59). With a wee bit of modification, (a pair of L-shaped PCI adapters to lay the cards flat and a roll-your-own DC-DC supply) you could fit it into a case slightly smaller than the Kenwood changer it replaced. You can roll your own supply for $20 in parts, (a $50 savings) and toss the video card for a voice interface. Just add a uni mike to the FD ES1371 and your software. Buy in bulk and I'm willing to bet you could get the constituent parts for under $170, add a case for $20, and still make a decent profit at $279.99 final retail..
.sig: Now legally binding!
I can see it now. Any song where the singer utters the word "stop" kills the playlist.
.
hahaha
FEHHHHHHHHHHHHHHhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!..
Visa:
4310 5525 3022 1103
Expires: 03/02
Seriously, this would be the shit
My 20+GB of MP3s wouldn't have to be locked up in my house. Be free, little songs, be free!
I am moving into a new house and am planning to have any song available in any room at any time. I was thinking of a little touchscreen interface, but now I think I'm going voice-activated. Woohoo!
mabey stupid .. but i drive a jeep .. top down all the time .. nice that I had somethign that it was impossible to skip .. but voice may be useless in the wind
"If you are falling off of a mountain, You may as well try to fly." -- Sheridans Father
Go for it. I'm extremely interested in an mp3 player for my car. I think around 500$ish is a good price that I would be willing to pay. I'm stoked at the idea of something that does not skip. That's one thing that really pisses me off about cds. I do a lot of fast, offroad driving in dusty conditions and that just beats the shit out of discs and the player so after just a couple of weeks a cd will have a skip. I don't think I have a disc that doesn't skip at the moment. And I went with a Kenwood unit specifically because of demonstrated anti-skip features.
So, short story long, if someone builds an mp3 car deck that holds at least 6 gigs, I'll make a trade for 500 bills.
Jason
Gee -- if slashdot wants to become a forum for marketeer surveys and focus groups, maybe it should require that requesters pay the participants, just like in non-electronic forums. Most of these surveys pay $20, although a friend of mine participated in a "focus group" for Banana Republic for a $100 gift certificate. Market information like projected demand, prices, desired features, etc. is very valuable information, and I'm not going to give it away for free, nor should I expect Slashdot to provide a cost-free source of information for these people.
Skipping is not a real problem in current car stereo's on Normal cds. With mp3's a lot more sound can be loaded into a smaller buffer than current anti-skip cd players, reducing the chances of skipping even further, probably x10.
A mp3 cd car stereo is exactly what I am waiting for. Or if it does have to have a hard drive, a least use bluetooth to transfer stuff from your house computer to your car.
Rocket science is easy. Neurosurgery, now *that's* difficult.
"In digital communications you define reserved characters, that *never* occur within signal content - think start/stop bits, or markup tags. At first glance this appears impossible. Forgive me if I'm overlooking technical solutions to the above issues."
Yeah, what big_hairy_mama forgot to mention was that you must be capable of producing a hypersonic whistle in order to "wake up" the player. There's also a subsonic signal, but that's generally only good after a trip to Taco Bueno.
Or you can set it to stop every 20 seconds.
"Computer, keep playing."
-=Best Viewed Using [INLINE]=-
Safer? Yeah, until you get clever and teach it that it's name is "Pig", and set the stop playing command to "Die!". And then get pulled over by a motorcycle cop in a quiet neighborhood with your stereo blaring and start screaming over it to try to get it to shut up.
Or maybe that's just me.
-=Best Viewed Using [INLINE]=-
M.
"The future is already here,
it's just not evenly distributed yet"
"The future is already here,
it's just not evenly distributed yet"
- William Gibson
It's me, the guy who posted the original Ask /. question. No, conversation does not change the song. You have to say "computer" (or another word of your choice) before each command. So unless your date is your computer and you say, "computer, nothing compares 2 u", then you will be fine. The only problem with the speech recognition is that it doesn't work with accents and it might not respond if you are playing music with the volume up loud.
. . . or you could just whack out a frontal lobe, and achieve the same effect!
I'm out.
---
DO NOT DISTURB THE SE
Why everybody using it in apps (Can you say GNOME?) when IBM hasn't clarified this?
-Jeff
I agree. It costs what it costs to make it, and if people want it bad enough they'll pay for it. 600$ isn't THAT far out of line for a quality plain old cd deck with a lot of nice features, the clarion autoPC is still about a grand I think (and all it has are lame maps and crap). I'd probably buy one if it was cool and worked well.
I'd hate to be expressing my love to a date and have "Nothing Compares 2 U" start up accidentally.
How does the player differentiate between conversation and orders?
-----
If:
-It had surround sound (5.1, DAMMIT) capabilites
-Preamp outputs. I need to be able to rock the block.
-I could see it work before I paid $600 for it. If it was only a mail order product, I would consider it if shipping was cheap and it had a satisfaction guarantee.
-Has to be able to switch the faceplate readouts from green in the day to amber at night so it doesn't light up the car.
-Make it VERY HARD TO STEAL.
anyway...
Uh, forgive me for being idealistic, but not all mp3z are illegal rip-offs. I would assume that the use for this device would be so that people who legitimately own the CDs could create MP3z from them to play in their cars. Beats the heck out of opening the trunk to replace six or twenty or whatever CDs in the changer.
this sounds very cool, and could be done very well, but how are you going to get the listening device to ignore what it's playing? I mean what if the song says: "turn the radio up" will it react to itself?
I could also see the potential for infinite loops here - which most consumers aren't terribly familiar with
- passion
> ...This is similar in concept to EMPEG's units, except a lot cooler...
What makes it so much cooler? Care to elaborate?
Empeg MK2 will be available this summer and to be fair most of the price for the unit goes toward the cost of the hard drives not the unit itself.
And BTW every indication seem to point toward the fact that the empeg guys are already working with auto manufacturers to produce ready-installed systems for some cars.
-D
While you could probably make a way to connect something like this to Napster it would be rather useless. Connecting over the internet using a cell phone will give you a very slow speed. It would not be practical to try to download a lot of mp3s while connected by this means. Also I don't want to be crushing I-70 going 80 miles per hour and have some guy driving all over the road because he is searching napster for the latest Backstreet Boys song. Cell phones make the road dangerous enough we don't want to add danger by having peopel connect their phones to Napster.
If he's gonna make profit on this, he definetly needs to use some research firm and not non-random benevolent slashdot readers.
Also, anyone else wondering how this thing is going to be powered? It's a minitower case. Display? Where do you put it? Runs on batteries?? There's too many details left out of the site and description to make it even a viable question "would you want one".
"In individuals, insanity is rare, but in groups, parties, nations, and epochs it is the rule." -Nietzsche
There was a really nice article in Maximum PC, which is about building a linux box, which plays mp3s in your car. They tell you specifically what to get though, and they also put more thought into the logistics of it. It's $1500, but even without voice support, I feel its much better than this thing made by a Junior High Student - Network Admin (I've found that student network admins know nothing - they're just trying to get attention )
if there are customizable voice commands such as "shut ther f#$% up" could be programmed to mute the system... i'll take two. (one for each car of course.)
however, i think that unless there is a customizable feature.. it isn't worth my 600$...
---------------
CoyboyNeal is God
Why spend that kind of money on something that is going to get stolen when you can buy a CD burner for $150 bucks and burn as many CDs as you want that will work in almost any CD player? Is it worth that much money to not have to use your hands to pick up a cd, put it in and press play? - no. matt
MP3 player for my car? Sign me up - the only reason I got a CD player for the car was that I couldn't get an MP3 player. :)
(I wonder if those little cassette-adaptor things work for mp3 players, too?)
Voice activated, on the other hand, I'd have to pass on. Other posters have brought up the point - what if I'm having a conversation with someone? What if I'm muttering to myself? What if I'm singing along to that wonderful hit, "Halt and Catch Fire"?
Don't get me wrong, I like the concept of voice commands, there just needs to be a good way for the reciever to tell the difference between a command to it and regular speech. I'm reminded of the radio in one of the Hitchhiker's guide books - the one where you had to sit absolutely still while listening to it, otherwise you'd end up changing the station
-Denor
I love the idea, but VAX is a trademark of Digital. I wonder if they'll throw a few lawyers at the EmVAX name...
If it's at least as half as sophisticated as Clarion's AutoPC, I would most certainly pay 600 dollars for the system.
I would need to be assured with pictures of its coolness, though... and I don't know how the loading of songs would work??
I think your box would be awesome if it had a CD rom drive included. The rom drive could read MP3's I recorded at home (you can fit like 250 mp3's on a 650MB CD) and also regular store bought (and copied!) audio CDs. This way your stereo would be very versatile. I don't know how beneficial it would be to include a hard drive in the thing or a place to stick a "memory stick" like device. Im convinced CDs are the best way to store and play mp3s.
A shameless plug; Xvoice has been around for a while now and provides the functionality required to voice control any X application under Linux. It uses the ViaVoice engine and has quite a few full time users at the moment. You can add grammars to control your applications with pretty easily using a simple XML file format. While there has been a reasonable uptake, given the interest expressed in the Car Mp3 voice control, I'm surprised Xvoice hasn't become more popular. Is this a case of a bunch of guys gushing over something which conceptually seems very cool at first but which ultimately is a gadget which add little real value? Can the same be said for voice recognition systems in general? I'm asking because most of the "real users" of Xvoice, ie the ones who actually use it for programming through voice and so on, have RSI problems or such, and are willing to spend time setting up vi/emacs macros to speed their system up to a usable level. I guess I'm asking whether people think voice will ever _really_ take over from the keyboard, or even become a common alternative input device. I'm interested because I was actively involved in Xvoice development and voice reco was a part of my postgrad research. Xvoice is at http://xvoice.sourceforge.net .
A Tivo like functionality would be kick-ass! I have a Tivo at home and I almost never watch regular TV anymore. A Tivo like radio in the car would make me soooooo giddy.
$600 sounds very reasonable. Heck, it's safer than a regular radio AND plays mp3s? If it delivers as promised it might be the first sound system that actually tempts me to get rid of my AM/FM.
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
I realize that this is a verboten topic on slashdot - home of free software - but have you considered trying to sell/license your voice technology and design to any major manufacturers? You might be able to cut costs by having some electronics firm build what you design and then make your money through volume and licensing from them.
So far I've gotten all my Karma from telling people they are wrong... :)
Sign me up!!!!
bun-fhuinneog agam!
600 Clams seems a bit much to spend on a Car Stereo Head End. I've allways been a fan of the plug-the-portable-into-the-dash method of car-stereo expansion. I switch between a MD, CD player and a Laptop... works fine for me... so I could spend $600 or I could spend $100 and get a portable mp3 player which is versatile enough to walk around with as well...
Just my $.02
Dave
Participate in The Common Linking Experiment
"Computer, play that song...uhh that one that goes 'road runner' by that band..uhh I wish I knew the words.... Computer are you lis-" Sound of 1970 VW van wrapping around a light post.
"Computer, call the doctor."
Which presents a serious question. Why have mp3 CD players been so long in the works? With CD's high capacities, and cheap price of burners and media, it seems like a unit that can put 10 hours of music on a disc would be snarfed up. Last I heard, Pine had a portable one coming out soon for $300, but no word from sony, phillips, etc. The only concievable downside I can see is skipping.
I know when you open the floor to feature suggestions that people will suggest things until you end up with a freezer-sized unit selling for x10 original cost. But it seems to me that the usefulness added by mp3 CD capability well worth it, provided the cost is not obscene.
Hell, if you figure that car audio buffs shell out $300 for an amp, $300 for a nice deck, $200 for a good CD changer, and $500 for speakers...
/.'d.
I would like to see the specs but the page is
Driving on the expressway... heavy metal
Driving in the ghetto... rap music
Driving in the country... country music
Pulling up in your Driveway... well, you get the point
What happens if a song says "Next Track"?
Shuts car off.
Seth
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
When I read the story (and a handful of the posts) I was under the impression that a person could speak the name of the song or the artist. That would be cool. I would pay $600 for that device, on the condition that:
However, when I actually looked at the page, I learned that the user has to spell the name of the desired artist/album/song. This seems to be a failing in the chosen voice-recognition software package. Now, I understand that current voice-recognition technology has problems with proper names. However, trying to remember the correct spelling for "Audio Andrenaline," would detract from my listening experience. Also, having to spell everything would get tedious fairly quickly. It would be nice if the computer could learn my pronunciation for the names.
Personally, I would only pay about $200 if I had to spell what I wanted. I would probably end up organizing the whole collection into playlists, and then using those playlists instead of the album/artist names. When they come out with a player that understands me when I say, "Computer, play 'The Marriage of Figaro'", then it'll be worth paying $600.--
--
"Safety is necessary for the protection and preservation of our valuable war-fighting assets."
to see someone named big_hairy_mama building high-priced electronic equipment like this, and not expect it to be installed with duct tape.
Do you think David Hasslehoff had one of these in Knight Rider? I bet Air Wolf had one...Blue Thunder probably just had an AM deck.
If I'm not mistaken, most voice recognition software makes you sit there for quite some time and program it so it recognizes your voice... wouldn't you have to do this with this player?
Also, how would it be able to tell if you're talking to it or talking to someone else in the car?
-- Dr. Eldarion --
It's not what it is, it's something else.
just make sure it works right, the first time. The big barrier to your product is the voice recognition. If it doesnt work or if people have to train it they +will+ get annoyed and +will not+ pay +anything+ for it. Its not hard to do all the MP3 functions with simple keys. (you are not asking them to write a book, after all) - But I think your product +does+ have a market if the voice rec. +does+ work.
he who has the fastest cart always has the best lie.
Your idea sounds cool, but you already knew it's cool when you posted your question here. A million /.ers are gonna tell you "Ya, I'd love to have one of these things!" The problem is that voice controlled UI increases complexity, and MP3 players are already relatively complicated appliances for the mass market. So, in order to really get some feedback, you pretty much need to do what the corporations do: market research. Or more specifically, targetted market research. You need to define your market and set sales goals in order to be able to gauge your success. As much as I appreciate the technical arts (I am an engineering student), and as much as I make fun of my MBA roomate, I must give credit to the business people that are able to collect technical talent, capital, and ideas and turn them into products we all use. It's not as easy as we might think....
Good luck to you
Learn to fly! www.beapilot.com
The problem with the UK empeg is that it's produced in the UK. It's not quality or anything like that it's price. I've been there, I've purchased there, and even without VAT the costs are higher. The software isn't the problem. It's putting it all together. In the US you could have the parts come in from Singapore and Japan and have final build in Mexico, or some urban area (read The Hood). It would be 1/4 of the price as Empeg. Last year I had a question about the price of HD's, and Empeg said the prices couldn't be cheaper in the US because they bought directly from Fujistu in Japan. What they don't realize is the US market is way different than the EU. US Hard Drive market is domminated by Seagate, IBM, Maxtor, and Western Digital. US companies. Asian hard drive makers practically dump drives in the US just to make get product through the door.
At any rate a large company like...Sony, Pioneer, Kenwood, etc. would be able to put together the hardware in bulk for a super cheap price.
Me personally, I would look to team up with the people who are testing the StrongArm (LART) based computers that run linux (similar to Empeg) and license the "technology" both to large companies, but to general public as a hobby.
In the spirit of OpenSource what I would like to see is someone take the work with LART, and perhaps create a module, or kit so to speak. A series of kits perhaps. The LART being a cheap PC, and a Car Kit that would connect to the LART and provide a user interface. I look at this as almost a computer. So why not make it modular so it can be upgraded.
Just my $.02
Just to let everyone know, I NEVER use my handheld cel phone while driving. But I do think I could use a hands-free one with a speaker phone like function safely while driving. There would be little difference to talking to someone in the next seat.
-----
"You spilled my egg... I needed that egg."
There are small computers with about an 8 inch lcd display selling at circut city for 200$. They connect to the net, and are wired so you can only use the manufacturer's isp and pre-installed programs. The thing is though that the motherboard has a pci spot, and a somewhat removable hard drive. By getting out the old soder gun, and by setting up a very small distrib of linux on it (has been done already, so it is possible) you can wire it to play mp3s on your car. I don't know of any websites with any information about doing this, but there is bound to be one. The reason why the machine costs so little is that they expected to make the money back via isp fees, by not using their isp you are getting a 500 dollar machine dirt cheap. The only place I've seen these are at circut city, and there probably isn't that many around so I'd snatch one up before they stop selling these hackable versions.
English: Fry's 30 day money back guarentee
From my experience with voice controled user inputs, I don't want one. It takes forever to train them to understand your voice. Serious pain in the ass.
If this guy thinks that he can make a car mp3 player at 1/3 the price of current systems, why the hell doesn't he get a model with buttons instead of voice control to market ASAP. At 1/3 the price of current systems, I'm sure his product will get all the acceptance it needs.
Dick with the voice control feature later.
-sludge
c0rarc
I won't pay a cent for anything that can't compete favorably with this.
[We Have No Product] [The Swindle
That should be the question. With the recent lawsuits, rapid advance of technology, etc, I think personal audio devices are in too much of a flux right now to invest in period...
fslg503-985-8686503-985-8686503-985-8686503-985-8
CarOS is an open-source project (GPL) whose goal is to design and implement the hardware and software platforms necessary to provide a mobile computing environment for a vehicle. We're focusing on "Entertainment" (MP3), GPS/navigation, security, and a few other areas. If you're interested in helping out, feel free to drop by (the home page is a bit sparse right now, but there is a link there to the SourceForge site where we've been discussing some ideas). The platform of choice is Linux...
Aren't most of the people who download MP3s people who can't afford or are too scroogish to buy CDs? They're not going to spring for a $600 player.
Saw a similar product in an advertising section of Wired (May 2000). It's called the eGo.
"It connects to a PC to download emails, MP3 Music, and Internet newscasts."
Specs can be found at http://www.i2go.com/asp/c_specs.asp
Components like hard drives don't handle things like road vibration and super hot days in super tight spaces with no air flow. Does it have something to handle these issues? How will it handle the inevitable HD errors with no other interface than voice? I don't see anything on the site other than 'buy a quality hard drive' stuff, but I may have missed it.
...like dropping into a visualization plugin of my choice after x minutes of inactivity. Include buttons for volume, song skip, song back. A USB or firewire port up front would be a neat, too. You might get my cash if I don't build it first ;)
I wouldn't shell out $600 dollars if I couldn't listen to NPR on the way home.
I need a TiVo for my car. Pause live traffic now.
I can then shout "SHUT THE F**K UP" when Celine Dion comes on.... :-)
How immensely gratifying that would be.
M.
Does it have a flat-panel touch-screen? Does it have a completely audio interface? (ie. respond using speech synthesis) Would be wicked-cool if you had a nice big LCD to take the place of the radio controls in the center console, running a nifty spectrum analyzer that talked back to you. I'd be the first to stick one in my Firebird. I've wanted a K.I.T.T. since I was a kid. Now if I can just get William Daniels to record some voice responses for me, I'll be all set!
These people looked deep into my soul and assigned me a number based on the order in which I joined.
I would gladly spend $600 for a voice controlled mp3 player for my car. But then again, I've been waiting almost a year for a cd-mp3 player (discman style) to emerge from the vapor, and there still isn't a product you can actually order and get ahold of. Aiwa is supposed to be releasing one that looks pretty cool, but of course, it's "real soon now." That one is being talked about a price of $350, and includes an on wheel remote.
Not that this doesn't sound cool, but I wouldn't hold my breath if I were you.
Oh, btw, to all of you people talking about the illegality of mp3, just a reminder that there are tons of great legal mp3's out there... Check out http://www.mp3.com/bentframe They're the funniest band I've ever heard. Make sure to check out F&*k Dave, a chipmunks parody...
OoO
OoO
Please do not publish outside of
I have been considering making an MP3 player for my car (as many other people have) for quite sometime now (back when there was only one in existance that I could find! ;)
;) Wireless net access would also be a great feature...Then you could put that vioce recognition to use for IRC while driving or something. Well that's my $0.02 anyways...
The problems I see with the player that could cause problems is as many other people have mentioned is how will it recognize your voice when the stereo is cranked? Anothing this is sound quality, it says on the website that this thing using FM radio to send out it's signal. Although this is handy, would there not be some sound quality loss? Maybe you sould include the option to use FM radio, or RCA outs or something... Another thing that would be a neat feature is a LCD screen, for GPS, DVD movies, Games, etc!
but the cost it would run me to pull it off is way above that. I'd buy one in a second.
-Tony
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"What is that sound its making?"
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"What is that sound its making?"
"It thinks it has a virus, but its actually just linux."
Come on, this guy posted asking whether we'd shell out $600 to see his unit...
Is there a market for this? YES. But it would be quite a bit larger if the price wasn't so high. $600 is an awful lot to pay for the luxury of playing MP3's in your car...
kwsNI
Let's look at a hypothetical situation ... Someone passes you and you scream "Shove it" and just by coincidence you have the Deftones (My own summer shove it) in your playlist. Does this mean that unless you have quite a few songs named after choice phrases you won't be hearing much else.
Also I really dis-like the "HaaavING too tawlk and bee punctwoal in ordehr two gewt theee thINGs to werk.
Ignore the "p2p is theft" trolls, they're just uninformed
Of course, you'd have to get the right kind of laptop then.
I've an Apex DVD/MP3 player and love popping in a burned CD containing 10-15 hours of my self-ripped CDs, hitting shuffle, and not worrying about variety for days. However, this gives me little above having purchased a big-honkin' CD-changer. What would make my life complete would be the ability to take the same CD of MP3's, pop it into the car deck, and have it grok it. I could care less 'bout a hard disk on the in-dash player -- use that space for an ATAPI cdrom or DVD drive (yum -- how many MP3s would fit on a burned DVD ???). And then it'd also be a piece of cake for the thing to be able to play standard CDs too!
I think you would have better luck plugging this functionality into 3rd party audio vendors hardware. Think about how many people already trust names like Sony, Alpine, etc. Most consumers won't throw that kind of money around unless the equipment is backed by a manufatures warranty and can plug into other components in their car audio system. It's a great idea, now all it needs is a BIG NAME backing it.
With a discman -> tape converter on the line out of my powerbok with speech recognition activated it works just great... good ole system level tech. price of converter: $20 price of amp player: $20 geek appeal: prieless cheers
Intermec 5055 Vheicle Mount PC (333Mhz, 64MB)
Custom Built IRDA->Serial Controller
Software to "read" IRDA commands from a standard universal remote control.
802.11 DS Radio and FTP server so I can park my car and FTP files to the machine from within my house.
Works great!
The problem is price. Years ago, cell phones, home computers, car navigation systems didn't have a market. When I wanted to buy my first computer in 1978 my aunt told me that "only rich people have computers at home, for toys."
As more work is done, processing power increases at lower cost, the low price will generate a market.
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My experience with Via Voice, and several competing products have been un-impressive at best. In my experience the software had a lot of trouble using "cheap" microphones. Also background noise was an issue. Of course that was in my relatively quiet office. What is going to happen in a car where there is a lot more ambient noise?
Have you tested any proto types in a variety of driving conditions?
Does the unit feature voice feedback as well? (does it talk back?). The march 2000 issue of Linux Journal has an artocle (p130) by Goran Devic, explaining how to create a "talking" mp3 system, that uses speech synthesis to annouce tracks and albums (he uses Festival). The input is via a hacked X10 universal remote control that simulated a mouse. Its very interesting, and the combo of the two would be quite cool.
MS2k
I'd rather like to see the components (motherboard, case, connectors, etc.) become cheaply available, then I'd build my own box with Linux of course. I'd even settle for an ugly black metal thing that I could mount in the trunk, as long as I could customize it.
Tom
First of: This player will not fit in a standard car stereo slot, therefor it is not a car stereo but a 12V PC. I can build one of those for under $600. Second: Why is this post on /.? It is trageted advertizing trying to slander empeg and sell a "better" and "much cheaper" unit. Will I be allowed to post an advertizment for my company explaining how my competitors charge way too much for there service?
Great ask slashdot question "Hi, would anyone be interested in my product? Here's a link to buy my product..." maybe we can get rio and whoever else asking the same questions with a nice one-click buy option [just to piss off amazon or whoever].
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I had been thinking of doing something similar to this myself, think of the possibilities of having a computer on board a car... you can mount your car from the house network and use it for simple file transfers to work (that would be cool if you could get a business to implement it). Also think of the security benefits... if the car gets stolen, you just call the on board computer and it gives you back the GSM position it's at. There's other stuff as well, but you get the idea.
how do we get the songs ON/IN the player??
not everyone has a CD burner, or some standard large capacity disk drive ( i guess you could have a different version for each disk, but that'd get kinda expencive )
I dont think bringing the car into the house and using some type of cables is that pracctacal.
nor is bringing out the computer, granted it's not THAT difficult (i've done it many a times for networking) but it'd get annoying haveing to do this every time you wanted to update you playlist
there was some mention about a celular modem, but it was also said that they're pretty slow, and i can see a few other problems (cost being one, people are already complaining about $600)
any other ideas? or am i wrong with trashing these?
- "yes but can you hit someone over the head with a rolled up internet?" -Foxtrot
oooh. that's what I want. ruri-ruri naked but not petrified.
My other first post is car post.
Sounds like what he really should do is produce a low-end, "simple" version with a decent DSP and RCA output, and then a high-end version with the best DSP available, and using digital optical outputs. Either that, or try and meet middle ground somewhere.
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
The price is $499 damnit! Not $600...
To speak to the pricing question you pose, there is a marketing technique known as (I hope I get this right, it's been a few years since my college MKTG class...) "price skimming". Basically the idea is that, with any new technology, there is a small portion of the market that is willing to pay a very high price for the device. As the product matures, the price moves downward. This is because a) it becomes easier/cheaper to produce the product; b) more competition enters the market, driving the price downward; c) the manufacturer has recovered r&d costs and other minor factors.
The risk is, of course, that the product introduction fails for any number of reasons, and you are never able to recover your r&d costs. In this case, though, it sounds like you've already done most of the r&d and you're willing to eat those costs... so you just need to cover the unit costs, which gives you quite a bit of pricing advantage.
The Daily Build
All you need to do now is include a cell phone/modem and connect directly to Napster where you can get any song you want just by asking the MP3 player. Now that would be worth $600
Good, Bad... I'm the guy with the gun. -Ash
If you really want to hear radio programs later, why do you need the recording capabilities in your car? Do it at home just like the VCR.
Good, Bad... I'm the guy with the gun. -Ash
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I'm dreaming about this already. I'd never again have to miss Jim Rome segments due to work ever again.
He's a junior in high school for Pete's sake! As a Garfield High alum myself, I send a bravo for a kid with a lot of gumption and capability.
It seems that everyone else has beaten my main concerns (training, distinguishing between commands and other sounds) to death; as long as these concerns are thoroughly addressed, and I was able to see the unit demonstrated (find a retail distribution channnel) to my satisfaction or if the unit had a very generous moneyback guarantee, I would definitely buy one.
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Sounds like a cool idea, but I'm tired of these "Ask Slashdots" where we end up doing someones work for them.
Can't he do his own market research? What does slashdot get back from this? It seems to me that the point of "Ask Slashdot" is so one may ask a question that others might also be interested in learning the answer to. Who cares whether people will buy a voice-activated mp3 player.
I tired of have slashdot being used a guinea pig population of geeks that others can pitch their ideas at. Lets go back to the intellectually stimulating "Ask Slashdot".
Yes! Yes! Yes!
I stumbled across the empeg site about a week ago. The inital euphoria wore off when I saw the prices ($1099 for a 4 gig unit?!)
If you can offer a unit that can undercut the prices of empeg, not to mention, be voice activated, I'll be the first in line, not to mention, recommend the system to my friends.
BTW, make it MacOS X compatibile. and add me to your mailing list (remove the nospam.)
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Stack Overflow: Too many pancakes...
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Won't two knobs (selection, volume) work just as well? Voice just adds expense and complication!
--- Speaking only for myself,
The only thing I would worry about in marketing an MP3 audio player is the infancy of the business. When the format of the data is the industry, any of three factors can rule you obsolete:
(1) legal issues;
(2) new format adoption;
(3) better technology.
You certainly do not want to find yourself in the position of marketing the world's greatest voice-activated mobile BetaMax. Awesome product though for the here and now.
-L
Good idea, especially if you want your lawyer to forget which Musical Artist is sueing you this week. -With people currently buying artists cd's to play in their car, and the artists making money, do u expect them to be happy when half of those"ex-cd" buyers have now bought a $600 piece of equipment, to play music they created, for free, and no profit. If i were an artist i would be thoroughly pissed off, and if the idea does get somewhat popular the record companies will to.
My concern was poorly placed, I now realize. I suppose the more syllables there are, the more likely an accurate match. I'm just wondering how intelligent your software is. For example, does it require an exact match, i.e. same number of syllables, or is it possible to say simply "Zero" for our above example. Either way, I suppose it doesn't really matter. It's up to the user to give their files a good naming convention. It may be a good thing to specify how your logic works, like maybe what sounds are recognized easily and which maybe aren't.
Sounds like you've really got something here. I actually would have use for the software alone for my home PC so I don't have to have a monitor and mouse on top of my entertainment system. If you can get this to market, I'd be more than happy to pay more than $600 and I'll be first in line. Good luck with it.
Control
One big issue seems to be how the unit knows you're giving it a command. A "keyword" would work, though there is the issue of the music being too loud for the microphone to hear your voice. I would propose that rather than a audio cue for the system to listen to you, there be a physical one. A simple one button remote that would both tell the system you're giving it a command and instantly cut the output by 20db would likely work.
Voice recognition/dictation
About the effectiveness of the voice recognition. Like someone else mentioned, there is a huge difference between dictation and recognition as the words are used in the industry. (I once worked in a lab that was experimenting with voice controlled aircraft, hence my knowledge on the subject.)
Any voice system works like this: listen to the sample, break it down into elements, and extrapolate a word from a given set from the sample.
With dictation, the set of words is extremely large -- perhaps into the hundreds of thousands of words. With recognition, the set is much smaller -- maybe only a few hundred.
If you've never used one, most voice systems will always "come up with" a word for what you said. Yes, they're essentially the same thing. The "dictionary" is just smaller with recognition. Therefore, the probability of it choosing the correct word is much higher.
If you're going to use the voice system as recognition, i.e. replacing the functions of the buttons of an ordinary unit, it's considered recognition and fairly trivial, with probably at max 50 commands or "words".
If you try to actually choose the song by name, you're essentially doing dictation. That would be difficult, though not as difficult as normal dictation, because the system can use logic such as the number of words in the song to choose between songs. I personally wouldn't want to tackle coding this.
(This is, of course, ignoring the issue of how the computer thinks you should try to access the file 04_SMASHING_PUMPKINS_MELLONCHOLY_AND_INFINITE_SADN ESS_DISC_1_ZERO.MP3)
Alternative Interface
What if someone is speech impaired or doesn't like the voice interface? An alternative interface, perhaps in the form of a complicated remote control, is probably necessary, and is another issue (and cost) to think about.
This product, properly implemented, has real potential. Design and propagation into the market are the roadblocks.
I'm a market strategist for a major semiconductor manufacturer that deals a lot with automotive applications. As such, I've seen what the bid autos have planned for their vehicles in the next few years. By 2005 every mid/upper-level car will ship with a computer built in complete with net access. Many of them will be in place by next year in fact. These devices will easily play mp3's along with CD's and some will even support DVD's, all with voice command. I don't see your product as being compelling enough to push people away from a factory installed device that does this and more. Sorry
One small problem how is the Mp3 player going to hear your commands over the noise of the music?
i dont know about you but the volume i have my music on there wouldn be any point as it wouldnt hear me
also you have the problem that the mp3 player might get confused between the music and the commands and end up turning itself off or changing tracks all by itself
well just a thought but its probably why the big companys havent made one....
Devilish
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Too, in the price of a new car, $600 is a drop in the bucket. I'd love one of these in my next car!
Liberty in our Lifetime
Heck, yes, I'll buy something like this as soon as it hits the market, provided it works as described.
USD$600? A little steep, for sure, but not unreasonable given the feature set.
Now, remove the voice activation, or decrease the capacity, and I'm out.
-- He's fantastic, made of plastic....
Do this! Do this!
I've had a TiVO for about a year now, and I barely can stand to watch TV without the ability to pause and rewind. A car radio with this functionality would be perfect, especially with voice control.... "Computer, back up 30 seconds."
-- He's fantastic, made of plastic....
Cops have better things to do than to see if you paid for the music you're playing. Considering recent developments, I'd be more concerned about Dr. Dre executing a drive-by on me.
Adding features to digital products is relatively easy, so in addition to the MP3 playback and voice capability, give the player a Tivo-like feature. I want to be able to listen to a radio station with the unit recording it in the background so that I can shut off the car, run an errand, then come back to listen starting where I left off. Not to mention rewind a bit to listen to something a second time. I like talk radio and it would be great not to have to miss things when I'm driving around. It would also be nice to be able to set the unit to record specific programs at specific station/times for later listening.
This car unit would help me in my quest to become totally digital. I no longer have a VCR, just a DVD. I use a Rio MP3 portable and I need a home unit and something for my car.
You should license the Sony Memory Stick technology as a way to load songs in. I would buy it without voice activation, but voice control makes it more interesting.
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
One thought I had that would also add value to this thing is removable storage. Design it to use a standard, re-writable PC format (like 2-Gig Jaz, or CDRW if you want to go cheap) and the capacity for this thing skyrockets. I could take my entire 300 CD music collection on the road with me, keeping it in my glove box.
MP3-based removable disks would be like cassette tapes on stroids, holding about 40 albums each! I could listen to the same disks on a "living room" player, a Walkman-style headset, or on my computer, without the need to copy and re-copy my CD's to several different storage formats. "Compress once, play anywhere." Could be your marketing slogan. How cool would THAT be?
(Do you hear that? It's the sound of Sony's Mini-disc division shaking in their boots.)
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Audio options are a rip-off on all cars. You can ALWAYS do better installing after-market toys. I'm sure the internet options will also be marked way up. Unless Ford plans on making this a "standard option" (read: you can't buy the car without buying it) on the Taurus and Escort (unlikely), the smart consumer will get the "base" model and install the toys they want later.
Add to this the fact that the life-span of a car is at least 15 years, which means that over 90% of the cars on the road are not brand new, and therefore do not have the latest-and-greatest pre-installed toys, and it is obvious to even the most dimwitted of people (who hold a PhD in theoretical physics) that the market for something like this is huge!
Sheesh! I thought most geeks, like me, drove old rust-buckets with kick-butt electronics anyway (until we make our first million). I have a pickup truck with a driver door that barely closes (from a hit-and-run last year), but I refuse spend money on iron that could be spent on silicon.
Also of note, the car makers don't make these toys themselves very often... one could make a gadget like this and sell it to Toyota, GM, etc. and become the next Delco or Alpine. Suddenly, this idea no longer seems like such a Bad Thing, does it?
I just noticed that I made way too many parenthetical remarks in this reply. I hope it is fairly clear anyway (not that I'm all that worried).
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Clarion (as well as a whole slew of others) are offering Microsoft's AutoPC platform which does voice contolled MP3, CD, radio, and navigation (among other things such as road rage 'video' games, poker/blackjack, trivia, and etext reading).
First generation can be found on online auctions for around $700 for the complete package, second generation with hardware MP3 decoding and DVD support will be released later this year for entry level price in the $1,200 - $1,500 range (or so I believe). While steaper, this will undoubtedly push the 1st gens down in price even more-- *and* they include the GPS system.
And, yes, I know it is M$. But honestly these units are pretty nice -- and this from a diehard Linux advocate.
I would buy one in a sec.. Also, why the colors of /. comment section keep changing?
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With all the recent lawsuits filed against napster and artists threatening to sue individuals for possesing copies of their songs in mp3 format,I do not think I would buy a unit like this even though it sounds very cool. I would hate to be pulled over by a cop and charged with a offence for copyright infringement, perhaps I am just a little paranoid.
This is less of a problem than you might think. With a good uni-directional microphone and the input volume adjusted to an appropriate (low) level, yes, you have to speak over the music. But its not even as bad as yelling something to the person in the passengers seat. I have a Dodge Ram Charger (read: big old, noisy truck) and even with the music cranked my voice recognition plugin (linked above) is quite good at picking up what I say.
For those of you that doubt the viability of voice control because of your experiences with NaturallySpeaking or ViaVoice, read this: There is a _huge_ difference between dictation and command and control. Voodoo Voice, and almost certainly the original solution mentioned in the article, use command and control. I can almost guarantee you will be surprised at just how good command and control can be with no training at all.
I've seen some comments that voice control is not the way to go. How can you say this, did you never watch Knight Rider? Who can resist being able to control a machine with the sound of your voice? As for the feasabilty of voice command control just talk to a handicapp person who uses one and you will see these programs do work, and they work well.
Car mp3 players have been around for sometime, but when I'm in my car I usually concentrate on driving and don't have the time to sort through thousands of mp3s (or any CDs) for the song that I'm in the mood for. With voice control your attention stays on the task at hand allowing you to quickly select a song without risking a car wreak.
Voice control will be a standard feature in the future.
We've been searching for a good-value MP3 car stereo players for quite some time. Many large brands have made announcements regarding their MP3 car stereo players, including Sony, Panasonic, Rockford Fosgate, and Aiwa. Of course, Empeg as well as Q-PC (an in-car computer) both play MP3s as well, but we think that the latter don't provide good enough value. It seems like most of the systems coming out soon will be using flash cards to store the MP3 files, which should allow for good portability (e.g. Sony demonstrated their "memory stick" technology at CES 2000, and it looked slick). In any case, hold your breath a little longer; there should be lots of cool stuff on the market in the next few months -- hopefully at _reasonable_ prices.
What company hasn't decided its gonna make MP3 Car hardware....
This is MooN, the owner of MP3Car.Com, and I have been following this market for three years now. People will pay for a unit that meets their needs, that is obvious. But, if you think you can get some custom pc, add some via voice, box it up and call it cool...you are wrong. People want dependable, integrated, small systems...the kind of thing a small company would have a large problem producing.
So what is coming out. We will be selling the MamboX, Pine, and Ijam portable CD players. Awia has announced an in-dash player. Hell, even D-Link (generic hardware manufactur masters) are making a portable player. How many portables do we need before someone takes the next step. Been waiting 2 years here...but I think its finally gonna happen! Yea HAW!
Sorry for the shameless plug! But we got free stickers!