a talking car? with laptop?

[DaS_PiMp]

Does anyone know any software I can use to make my car talk with my laptop hooked up to it? or a way I can make it talk?

[mhmread]

Ok, here you we go. Your laptop, hopefully capable of audio output, gets hooked up to your stereo system, or however you want to be able to hear it. That is the easy part. This document will help you get started with parallel port programming. <a href="http://www.aaroncake.net/electronics/qblpt.htm" target="_blank">HERE</a> Write a program. (qbasic is easy, and free). This program takes inputs from the parallel(printer) port on your laptop. The input to the laptop is via 8 input lines to various pins on the port. You can signal these inputs with SPST switches, or by any other means which you can supply a signal of 5+ for on and gnd for off. I.E. if you tap into a wire off your headlights, and drop the v down to 5+ (via a diode), you can use that as an input to your laptop. Your program would see this input, and execute "sndrec32.exe headlights.wav" where sndrec32.exe is the built in wave player for windows, and headlights.wav is the wav file you make to have the car say when the lights come on.

That is about the simplest way to comunicate with the laptop, so it knows what to say and have it 'talk' for you. (I am assuming that you don't just want the laptop to randomly talk, right?)

I am trying to give you as much info here as possible, but I realize it is all very sketchy. If you really want to go this way, let me know and I'll help or do whatever.

The other route is to remove the laptop from the equation, and use a Motorola microprocessor. This is only if you are really into electronics...

[jokeplayer]

Could you send me some more info on this? I'm thinking of doing it for a school project...