Thymio as Sound Recorder
The Thymio has the wonderful feature of being able to play sounds from the SD card. In the Soundlibrary you can find many interesting sounds. But producing your own sounds would be even more exciting. Using a computer this is possible (see notes produce sounds on a computer), but takes a relatively long time and is not particularly suitable for beginners.
The idea behind this project is to produce your own sound files on the Thymio itself.
Create your own sound files
Download the program soundrecorder.aesl. Then start Aseba Studio, open the file soundrecorder.aesl and send and execute it on your Thymio.
After you start the program on the Thymio, it lights up in white. In this mode, you can use the "Left" and "Right" buttons to select one of eight possible sound files. On the circle leds you can see the current sound file. At startup, the middle front LED is selected, corresponding to the file "r0.wav". Then it goes around clockwise with "r1.wav" to "r7.wav". You can record eight sounds.
To record a sound on the selected file, you touch the "Forward" button. The Thymio goes into the "Record Ready" mode and turns yellow. Once you start talking (or anything "noisy"), the Thymio automatically switches to the "Record" mode and turns red. You can always end the recording with the centre button.
To listen your recording press the "Back" button. Thymio turns green and starts the playback. If the playback ends of Thymio turns white again.
If you do not like your recording, you can easily overwrite it with another sound using the "Forward" button again.
Use your sounds in your own projects
The recorded sound files are saved on the SD card. When you start another program or even when you shut down Thymio, all your sounds are preserved. Thus you can use your sound files in your own projects.
Here (in German) you can find out more about playing sounds from the SD card.
Tips for Teaching
For easy use of the sound recorder, for example in the classroom, you can simply copy the file vmcode.abo to the SD card of Thymio. Thymios provided with such a SD card have, in addition to the six pre-programmed "coloured" behaviour, an additional "colourless" behaviour with the Sound Recorder. The sound recorder can be started by touching the middle button. But once the Sound Recorder is selected, it can only be exited by switching off the Thymio.