I'm new to Arduino and electronics hacking generally - always been more of a software guy, but I was drawn by the prospect of creating physical things. I've done a bit of messing about with my Arduino and assembled my first shield (my soldering sucks, but I'm getting better).
Since I learn best by doing, I came up with a project: I read that newborns are aided in development of language skills and socialization by hearing the sounds they make repeated back to them. Since I have recently acquired a newborn, I thought it would be cool to mod one of his stuffed monkeys to repeat his "talking" back to him.
Basically I want to create a voice-activated circuit that will record about 5 seconds of sound and then play it back on a 3-5 second delay. It sounds simple, but I have no knowledge of how to approach this and - judging from the little bit of info I've been able to find online - it seems as though analog sound input isn't the arduino's strong point.
Is this even possible with the Arduino? Any help would be greatly appreciated.
I agree that this type of audio processing would be a bit of a stretch for an Arduino but there are alternatives. Here's a link for a little voice recorder module you can get for about $11 (sometimes Radio Shack carries this same module).
You could use an Arduino to sense sounds ( see the "Knock" tutorial in the main tute area) then turn on the recorder for a set period of time. After a set wait period, you'd turn on the re-play. So the project would involve learning to sense sounds and how to interface the recorder to the Arduino, both do-able for a beginner.
Perfect! This looks like exactly what I'm looking for. Thanks very much.
I actually prefer having the Arduino control everything, as it gives me more flexibility - I can add some pots to control the length of the recording and a toggle to change form real-time recording to playing back a pre-recorded message (eg: "Clean your room!" when a child arrives home and makes noise in their room).