For this project, I decided to give my fish (Fish[0] and Fish[1]) a voice! The project used a computer attached to the internet to synthesize voices through the sound card and play them through a hidden speaker behind the fish tank.
The user was given a web interface, where they could type in a phrase that was less than 40 characters and select which voice would say the phrase. A few advanced features such as typing (time) and (date) could be used in the string and they would be replaced with the current time and date before being spoken.
The web interface passed the data to a computer in my bedroom, which used PHP to handle the request. Each voice (Fish[0], Fish[1] and the Snail) had a unique voice that varied in pitch and speed. The info would then be passed to 2nd Speech Center, a text to speech program that also had a command-line interface. The audio was then sent through the sound card and played through a small 2" speaker hidden behind the fish tank.
The web interface also kept a log of everything that was ever submitted for the fish to say. Many people made the fish and snail have conversations with each other. A problem with this project was that the user had no confirmation that their message was actually spoken other than a little message telling them so. The user couldn't hear the voices of the fish, but it didn't stop a lot of people using it while it was active. Unfortunately the fish ended up dying and I took the whole thing down.
