I’ve been trying to figure out this voicebox, on and off, for the past couple of days.
I’ve tried a couple of different layouts, however, there are two big challenges I’m facing right now.

The first challenge is that while the incredible people who were able to reverse engineer and post working code to make your computer talk, they did not provide any of the hardware schematics or details on what you would need to build in order to properly utilize their code. The write up makes a reference to using a DAC to convert the audio signal and to read the “readme” file to get the details on how to do it and unfortunately, when I opened the readme file it was an exact copy of the instructions that I had just read that pointed me to the readme I was reading.

I’m now looking for similar projects on instructables, in hopes that they will do a better job of explaining things and maybe give me some kind of schematic or blueprint to work off of, or see something in the code that gives me the insight I’m looking for to fill the knowledge gap.

The second challenge I’m facing is regarding my bag of DACs.
The units I picked up can be used to either convert digital to analog signals or analog to digital, depending on your needs.
Save for one (which I’ll circle back to) any tutorial I have found for this piece of hardware involves converting analog to a digital, and the one I did find for for a D-A conversion had an OBVIOUS error /mismatch on the screen regarding the pin layout of an NPN transistor.

For better or for worse, seeing things like that just makes me question what other errors/oversights were hidden in their instructions when I follow them and they don’t work, instead of first questioning what I might have done wrong. I’m not saying I’m infallible, just that if the first thing I see when starting a project is a mistake in someone else’s work, I’ll have a hard time trusting the rest of their information (or wanting to trouble shoot it) if my output doesn’t work or make sense when I’m done as they’ve already shown themselves to be (lack of better term) unreliable sources.

I think I have a starting point for my new tack.
Someone has built a music playing weather station that changes notes being played based on environmental inputs… and I see some references in this new code setting up a couple of pins on the NodeMCU for I2C communication (which was referenced in the project…) which I didn’t see indicated in the other sketches I was looking at and I’m wondering if I need to include those pin references on the voicebox in order to get proper communication going between it and the DAC…

There’s only one way to find out for sure… and if that fails, I’ll ask for help.