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Please help. Need hearing device for my children.

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bgordon

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I have a challenging project for someone, and your help would be VERY appreciated by my children.

I have two children with serious stuttering problems. There is a new device on the market which is a God send to help stutterers. It looks like a hearing aid, but instead of amplifying the sound, it simply introduces a very slight delay, and a slight pitch adjustment. This tricks the brain into thinking they are speaking with someone else, which for some reason eliminates stuttering in a good number of people.

The problem is, the device costs about $5000 and I need two and I simply cannot afford it.

I have some electronics experience, i.e. I've build a new computer interface for our electronic oven, I've built some IC projects, etc.

So, really the project is this. A small microphone that pics up the sound, a circuit that adds a slight delay, and a circuit that slightly raises or lowers (either one) the pitch, then plays it through a small speaker. I'm also somewhat of an amature fabricator, so I know I could build the case. The trick would be getting it small enough.

Ok, there it is. Any suggestions? Worst case scenario, I could build a small device to place in their shirt pocket with an earphone. That way we wouldn't have to go quite so micro. Best case, I'd like to make it small enough to fit in or around the ear. The real devices look just like a hearing aid.

Thank you all so much for any direction you could provide. You can't imagine how frustrating it is for a 5 year old to stutter uncontrolably. She is entering kindergarten next year and I really worry about her being teased. Thank you so much.
 

I do not know how to change pitch, but writting, delaying and reading is quite simple by microcontroller.

For example this circuit:
http://www.atmel.com/dyn/resources/prod_documents/doc1456.pdf
http://www.gaw.ru/pdf/Atmel/app/at45_to_avr.pdf

There is an AVR microcontroller and DataFlash memory to story sound. It is only for example in your case, as DataFlash has limited number of write cycles (near 100000). You need to change DataFlash to RAM in it. To adapt this circuit you need to know C or/and Assembler.

You can delay voice by this little circuit. The only question - how to change pitch? It can be done by dsp convertion, but it will be quite difficult for you to impliment it.
So, I think it will be better to use hardware method. There are a lot of circuit of voice changers on the web. One example is here:
**broken link removed**
**broken link removed**
You can use it in output of your delayer.
 

Hi,

You can try hearing aids devices .these are available in market as like phonak hearing aids, bluetooth hearing aids .
 

I had read somewhere that it is hearing your own voice that caused the problem. I recollect that there was a device that when you spoke introduced white noise into the earpiece, this was suppoised to help a lot. Maybe more recent work has been done along the lines that you are suggesting. Possibly a test would to be putting fingers in ears whilst speaking, maybe worth a try, probably a bit optomistic? If it works it would a lot easier to implement.
 

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