We’re thrilled to announce Windows Mobile customers can now enhance their CoPilot Live experience with Text-to-Speech (TTS) voice guidance. CoPilot Live uses the latest TTS technology to provide clear, spoken directions at each turn—while pronouncing full street names. For example if you were lucky enough to have attended the big event yesterday, your CoPilot Live would have told you to “Turn left onto Dan Marino Boulevard”.
TTS is now available for FREE to Windows Mobile v8 customers. Here’s how to get your free upgrade to TTS:
- Visit our web site to obtain your TTS Expansion Product Key (Remember its free!)
- Once you’ve completed your order, you’ll immediately receive a confirmation email containing a file called ‘vcs_all-tts_8.0.0.3.pds’.
- Download the file, ‘vcs_all-tts_8.0.0.3.pds’ that was emailed to you, onto your desktop. Connect your device to your PC via a sync cable, and browse to CoPilot > Save. Place the downloaded PDS file here.
- Once complete, restart CoPilot Live. The TTS voice integration process will commence. This can take up to a couple of minutes. Once integration is completed, CoPilot Live will start up.
- Enter the Upgrade Product Key Code, you received in the email, into CoPilot Live v8 on your phone by selecting Menu > Settings > Licensing . Enter your product key, then press ‘Upgrade‘.
- In the Menu, go to: Settings > Language & Voice and select your preferred TTS voice.
- You now have TTS on your CoPilot Live!
Enjoy your journey!
CoPilot Live wins Engadget's iPhone GPS navigation shootout!! 
The instructions for updating to TTS are missing one important step.
Before being able the choose TTS voices in the Language & Voice menu, one must first ACTIVATE the TTS license using the key supplied in the download email.
So one must go to the Menu->Settings->Licencing Screen to enter the TTS activation code before being able to choose a preferred TTS voice.
Another note, is that entering the long activation string is made more tedious than necessary because there is no QWERTY on-screen keyboard in copilot V8. The alphabetical screen is counter intuitive to anybody who’s used to using QWERTY keyboards and a QWERTY on-screen keyboard option would be greatly appreciated for all text entry.
wseto-
Thanks for the great catch, we’ve updated the instructions in the post above!
I will pass on your feedback regarding the QWERTY on-screen keyboard to our product development team.
Regards,
Devon Valenti
Thanks WSETO!!!
Devon, newer windows mobile devices have excellent included on-screen keyboards. Can you just enable copilot to use the built in keyboards instead of creating a new qwerty option just fo copilot?
Hi Mike,
Thanks for the suggestion, I’ll pass it on to our product development team.
Regards,
Devon
Does anyone know why, that using the test button and selecting *SVOX us english voice, there is no sample voice or test voice, but if I select lisa or john as a voice it has a test sample.
VJPBNP –
Are you running the latest version of CoPilot Live on your phone – it should be version 8.0.0.620. If you have a version less than this, then you need to first upgrade to this version for your TTS voice to work properly. Here are instructions on how to do so: http://blog.us.copilotlive.net/?p=381
Regards,
Devon
TTS came out with too much stuttering on my device. If it works perfectly on your WM device, please let me know what brand (and how you optimized it?) Thanks.
TC -
Can you also confirm that you are running the latest WM version of CoPilot Live on your phone – it should be version 8.0.0.620. If you have a version less than this, then you need to first upgrade to this version for your TTS voice to work properly. Here are instructions on how to do so: http://blog.us.copilotlive.net/?p=381
Regards,
Devon
Thanks for replying Devon. I tried v8.0.0.620 over the weekend and stuttering were still there. Might it have something to do with my device only have 128MB RAM? I have an HTC Athena x7500 with around 50MB free RAM when running CoPilot. I searched around and it seemed all the high-end devices with 250+ MB encountered no problem at all. Thanks.
Hi TC,
TTS stutters are usually caused with the device’s CPU/RAM is running low.
TTS needs at least 4MB of free memory. The more memory available though, the better. If you have a lot of other applications installed on the device it may help to remove some to free up memory.
Another thing you can do is to check the storage card CoPilot Live is installed on. If the quality of the card is not good, when the device reads it, it could slow the TTS down and cause it to stutter.
I hope this helps the issue.
Regards,
Devon
Verizon Touch Pro2 with Windows Mobile 6.5 update and HTC’s Sense UI turned off.
Running straight CoPilot Live 8 with the TTS update and no problems at all.
Great new addition! Few comments, however…
I completed the order on the website, received a confirmation email BUT IT DID NOT CONTAIN A FILE ATTACHMENT. Not sure if it is still required. Send me an email if you need the order number.
Downloaded and installed the newest CoPilot Central 2.0 onto my Windows 7 64-bit desktop. Connected my phone through WMDC and then launched CC2.0 (said version 2.0.0.82). CC2.0 says HTC Touch Pro T7272 CoPilot v 8.0.0.57, and when I click Get Updates it only shows foreign voices to download. Check for Updates within CoPilot on phone says somethink like “latest update”.
Don’t quite know what to do next, as another post on the update blog says CP Central showed 8.0.0.620 on 2/11/2010!
Help!!!
OK, self-help on http://www.alk.eu.com/support/copilot-support/copilot8-us.htm which gave me the link to http://www.alk.eu.com/files/v8/winmobile/cabs/8.0.0.620-2577-tts.zip. Downloaded, followed the directions in the help and voila!!!
EXCELLENT!!! Great job and terrific update!!! I am now happy as a clam!
Will there be more voices made available at some point that are Text to Speech?
Hi Jeff,
We may release more TTS voices in the future, as of right now we don’t have anything planned though. Have you tried Eleanor under UK English?
Regards,
Devon
Hi, Devon. I installed the TTS file last week and couldn’t figure out why it wasn’t working until I read this forum. I have the latest version of CoPilot 8.0.0.620. What I can’t seem to locate is the original email with the Upgrade Product Key Code so how do I go about getting it resent?
Thanks,
Edwin
Hi Edwin,
We’ve looked into your original order and you should be receiving an email from my colleague with your Upgrade Product Key Code.
If you need any additional help, just ask!
Regards,
Devon
I have upgraded to the latest edition. Did the license upgrade, installed it, and the voice is not showing up in my settings. I have reinstalled it to no avail. After reinstalling it, everytime I start up Copilot, it goes through the installation of the TTS. My license is showing it is active. But when I go into voices, I only see John and Lisa. Before I upgraded, I was able to see the voice option, but obviously it did nothing. Help!
Hi Eric,
We apologize for the trouble you’re experiencing. For this particular issue, its best you contact our Support team directly: http://www.alk.eu.com/support/copilot-support/question-us.asp
They will be able to look at your license information and assist you.
Regards,
Devon