NerdStoke's Raspberry Pi-Powered Gadget "Translates Dog Barks" — After a Fashion

Pseudonymous YouTuber NerdStoke has shown off a Raspberry Pi-powered device that translates his dog's barks into discernable speech — at least, sort of.

"That's pretty much where the idea came from to build a device to translate my dog's barks in a human speech," NerdStoke explains in the introduction to a video which shows a dog barking for no readily apparent reason, brought to our attention by the Raspberry Pi blog.

"So here's what we need: We need a tiny dog, one that barks a lot; the dog's gonna have to wear a little collar with a microphone that can listen to his barks; the barks get processed through a device that has a whole bunch of code and stuff on it; and then that device decides what the dog's saying and outputs it through the speakers."

Described as "the worst idea I've ever had," the result is a Python-powered system running on a Raspberry Pi Zero single-board computer. An initial plan to analyze the precise frequencies of the dog's bark and hope that different tones correspond to different desires fell flat - and was replaced with something a little more Heath Robinson: a time-based analysis.

When the device detects a bark, it uses the system clock to pick the most likely reason: If it's around mealtimes, it shouts about the dog's hunger; if it's first thing in the morning, it demands to be let outside for a walk; after its owners has been at work all day, it's probably after a stroke. Effectively, it's a bark-triggered time-based Magic 8-Ball for dogs.

The device is, at least, somewhat more successful than the one posited by cartoonist Gary Larson in a popular Far Side comic: While that translator did, indeed, deliver on its promise, it turned out that all dogs were ever saying was "hey!"

The project can be seen on the NerdStroke YouTube channel; thus far, it has not been added to the associated GitHub repository.