So I recently decided I wanted a cool side project and figured home automation would work. I came up with the idea that I wanted to be able to “talk” to my house from any room in the house and have it talk back to me and perform some task. In example if I said house turn the lights on, the lights for the room I was in when saying this would come on.
The speech recognition and sending commands bit I have coded and working, the hangup I am now at is trying to figure out the hardware. At this point I am not sure how I can get 5-10 separate mics hooked into one computer, as well as the same number of audio outputs going to speakers (1 mic and 1 set of speakers per room). Also the ability for the pc to be able to send output to a specific speaker set(audio only to the room I am in) as well as determine where the command came from(determine which mic the command was picked up from) would be needed.
So basically what kind of hardware(sound card + mixer board combo?) is needed to monitor all these inputs(at the same time) and be able to output to one of the many speakers hooked up to it.
After getting frustrated from a good amount of googling giving me 20 different ways to record my very own single, or mix like a club DJ, I figured I would see if anyone here had some insight as to what would work.
Edit after looking at bwilmot’s post(thanks)
Well after more looking I see this http://www.iautomate.com/whole_house.html
Which gives a breakdown similar to what I was looking at doing but it looks to be rather pricey, any experts out there know of any cheaper hardware or solutions that have come out recently as 2k+ just for microphones and mixers is probably too high for me.
Chris
