A complete Demonstration Kit, which includes all the essential hardware and software components to demonstrate voice synthesis functions, is available from Gleichmann Electronics.

The development tool from NEC Electronics is hardware-based on a low power 78K0R/KG3 16-bit microcontroller (MCU) with 20 MHz operating frequency. In addition to 256 Kbytes of Flash memory and 12 Kbytes of RAM, the device also includes a 16 x 16-bit hardware multiplier, a buzzer output controller, a BCD adjustment as well as a wide selection of serial interfaces. Thereby, voice signals are outputted via one of the channels of the internal 8-bit D/A converters or one of the seven 16-bit PWM timers.

Another important feature of the demonstration kit is an Audio Data Conversion Tool (CvADPCM) for conversion and downloading of voice data via the USB port. CvADPCM runs as a Windows™ application on a PC and converts WAVE files (PCM) into frequency data, which can then be loaded to the IAR Embedded Workbench. Thereby, the compression and expansion of data is implemented by Adaptive Differential PCM (ADPCM) library. The library is extremely compact middleware and is available free of charge from NEC Electronics.

The kit is provided together with sample programs and sample voices. A code-limited version of IAR Workbench, which serves as compiler, is also included in the kit. The 78K0R/KG3 MCU is designed for a wide supply voltage range of 1.8 V to 5.5 V and furthermore, has an on-chip debug interface for direct debugging via a USB connection.

Moreover, components installed on the board such as 4-way mini-joystick, an illuminance sensor, a loudspeaker, a tone filter and a headphone connection simplify the visualization of application examples.