Design and Implementation of a Smart Speech Interface using OCR and TTS APIs on ESP32-CAM

Traditional TTS (TTS) systems are large, expensive, and inefficient, making them unsuitable for use by those competing in the eyeball challenge. These have limited portability and rely heavily on hardware for Optical Character Recognition (OCR) and TTS. The article describes a low-cost, lightweight solution based on the ESP32-CAM module, OCR, VoiceRSS, TTS, and Application Programming Interfaces (API). An amplifier module uses OCR to turn the text acquired from images into high-quality speech. The benefits include portability, real-time computing, and decreased power usage. The test results were outstanding, with 98% precision for high-contrast text, 92% for low-contrast text, and 89% for small print. Furthermore, it achieved high voice intelligibility (9/10) and low average power consumption (0.72W). These results support the proposed system's potential as an effective and appropriate solution for assistive reading devices in a variety of settings.