Nuts & Volts - September 2005

Project

by Dave Prochnow

Instant Replay

Add a Digital Recorder to an FM Radio

Have you ever been listening to the radio and wished that you had written down the name of a song or an artist’s name? Can you even imagine attempting to juggle a tape recorder or reach for a pad of paper right at the last second, only to grab just a portion of this information? You would probably look kinda silly going into the local music store and asking for the latest single by “Green Bay” rather than “Green Day” or trying to purchase “Mr. Backside” by The Killers instead of “Mr. Brightside.” Gulp.

Well, here is a circuit design that addresses this issue with great aplomb. “Instant Replay” combines a stock FM radio (for less than $10.00) with the nifty ChipCorder® IC from Winbond. Consider this article to be a little bit of a hack combined with a serious circuit design and all wrapped up in an elegant form factor. In fact, “Instant Replay” can be combined with a lot of other personal electronics, as well. Therefore, there is tremendous latitude

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for modification of the article’s concepts.

First of all, what’s with this ChipCorder thing? ChipCorder is a digital, single-chip tape recorder that can provide high-quality playback without the need for battery backup circuits (see Figure 2). This incredible chip requires only a handful of support components to record messages up to 40 seconds (e.g., for the I16xx Series) in duration and then play the message back on a standard eight-ohm speaker. Additionally, Winbond claims that the message has a retention of 100 years, can be overwritten 10,000 times, and can cost less than $20.00 (depending on the exact ChipCorder series device).

Chances are that you might already have a ChipCorder in your house, right now. Many promotional key chains, picture frames, greeting cards, and stuffed toys that speak high-quality human phrases use ChipCorder devices for playback. Even some warning alarms in automobiles and industrial control centers rely on ChipCorder for signaling a clear and understandable signal. “Hey stupid, STOP” gets a person’s attention a lot better than “Beep, beep.”

The maker of ChipCorder — Winbond Electronics Corporation America, a wholly owned subsidiary of Winbond Electronics Corporation of Hsinchu, Taiwan — is based in San Jose, CA. Started in 1990, the American branch began distributing signal conditioning devices for consumer and industrial markets. With the 1998 acquisition of Storage Devices, Winbond America quickly became a market leader in silicon voice recording and playback IC solutions — namely, ChipCorder. Additional acquisitions of Bright Micro Electronics and the Thin Film Transistor (TFT) LCD division of Cirrus Logic®, based in Austin, TX further entrenched Winbond America’s contribution to award-winning voice and speech chip solutions and state-of-the-art

TFT LCD-driver ICs.

Four new product lines are aimed at bolstering Winbond America’s speech products: the WTS70X series, the industry’s first single chip IC solution that converts Text-To-Speech (TTS); the W68xx series, a family of voice CODEC chips aimed at telephony, communications, and consumer applications;