Custom TomTom Voice Files

This weekend I was following up on an idea that was burning a hole in the back of my brain. I wanted to find out how to create my own voices for my TomTom ONE GPS unit. A little Google searching and I came up with this fine gem courtesy of Graeme Lucas in the UK.

The process is pretty simple if you’ve dealt with audio before. If not, the instructions are very complete and you should have no problems. It only takes Audacity (free), a knowledge of what phrases to say and what to call them, and convert them in to the CHK file (Graeme provides a utility for free). I was quite happy with the result although I did have to tweak a few of the audio clips to make it sound more natural. This afternoon I took the girls to the movie and my voice navigated us there and back. Now it’s time to do some character voices!

If you have a TomTom and would like to load my voice, download it and copy it to the /voices folder on your TomTom unit. Using Microsoft Explorer, the TomTom will show up as a drive letter. Again, full details are on Graeme’s site.

Have fun and let me know if you create any TomTom files of interest. We can setup our own exchange if this works well. Now to get to work on some character scripts…