Time Required: Approx 90 minutes
Had enough of the inbuilt voices? Like the idea of recording your own (or your other half’s) voice and using it within CoPilot? It’s not difficult, and before long you’ll be driving around guided by your very own voice from within CoPilot!
You’ll need a computer, a microphone (or you can record using headphones plugged into a microphone port), and some sound editing software. Audacity works great, is free and available for Windows and OS X.
http://audacity.sourceforge.net/
If you browse your CoPilot memory card from your computer you’ll see in the CoPilot > Speech > en-gb folder a number of folders, one for each English-speaking UK voice. Inside each folder are 58 separate sound files, one for each voice instruction, for example “1kmwarning.ogg” is the instruction for “in one kilometre”.
We’re going to make a new voice today, so select a folder, e.g. Jane or Henry, then copy and paste it to create a new folder, rename this folder to your own name.
You can open the sound files with your sound editing application, and then play it to hear the instruction. Then select the sound (CTRL+A) and delete it (DEL).
Now press record and say the instruction clearly. If done correctly, you should see a “waveform” (a graphical representation of the audio you recorded) similar to the one that you previously deleted. If the levels are much lower, then you may need to speak louder and/or change the device microphone settings to increase the levels. Play the sound back to check if it sounds okay. You can easily delete any extra gaps at the beginning or end of the sound by simply dragging the gap and pressing (DEL).
Click File > Save once you are happy with the voice instruction and then close the file and open the next one and repeat for all 58 voice instructions.
Now start up CoPilot, go to Settings > Language & Speech and choose your name. You’re now ready to go on your first drive, voice directed by, yourself! Good luck.
If you’ve done this leave a comment below and if you have any questions let me know and I’ll try and help.
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11 Comments
looks easy enough to follow – is this possible for iPhone too?
Sorry Andy. It’s not possible with the iPhone at the moment. I’ll make a change to the posting to make that clear.
Does “at the moment” mean that you’re planning to add this feature in the future? It would certainly be a welcome addition!
I’ve asked a colleague in support for information on this. I’ll post back if I get any news. It would probably be a good idea to open a support ticket for assistance from the technical support team.
Support will be able to assist you with this Fabio.
We’re back to square one !. After a call to ALK support (On Christians advice).It seems Live services for the UK has not yet officially been released , which might explain why my live traffic does not work ! and why the link previously provided by Christian (to purchase traffic) has been quietly removed.
Jono, i guess you’ll be baring your backside after all, best choose a different store though, lol.
(Did you get your knuckles wrapped Christian ??)
“or you can record using headphones plugged into a microphone port”
Err, no you can’t!
No wonder your updates don’t work if your knowledge of IT is this far off!
Yes you can Adam. Have you tried? They work perfectly.
It’s a basic fact of physics that headphones and microphones are basically the same thing. Sure, one of them turns electrical signals into sound waves and the other turns sound into signals, but they’re both basically identical.
Help! I’ve got my microphone stuck in my ear now!
But seriously…
Yes, the headphones will work, just won’t be as good as a mic for clarity.
You likely could do this with an iPhone if it’s jailbroken…
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[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Alessandro Teglia, copilotlive. copilotlive said: RT @alead: so cool: how to use your own voice with #copilotlive http://bit.ly/6evzRG !! @copilotlive #gps [...]