Voice-Controlled Alarm Clock Instructable

Thanks for posting the project. I put together one using a logger shield that contains the DS1307 RTC and memory card slot. I also attached a relay control shield I built for controlling things with voice. I hope to be showing this at this year's 2017 Maker Faire at my exhibit space, "No-Bang Hat for the visually impaired". http://makerfaire.com/maker/entry/59848/
This would make an ideal device to help the visually and mobility impaired.

The clock fits well inside a speaker box. I used a 3 watt PAM digital amp to drive the speaker. Next I added an external electret to the ext. mic jack. I've tried several electret microphones, but get nowhere the same sensitivity as the one on the board. Because the board is inside a box, I can't use the on-board microphone. Apparently, when using an external mic, the signal does not go through an auto-adjusting gain amplifier like the on-board microphone does. Since I'm warned not to add a pre-amp, how can I get the same response like the on-board mic can provide? I would like to speak to MOVI from about 3 feet and not up very close to the microphone.

This topic has been discussed at some length in this thread:

http://www.audeme.com/forum.html#/20160106/external-microphone-5138266/

Gerald's recommendation when the question was posed some time ago was the Adafruit MAX9814 together with an attenuator circuit. I went with that and it works quite well. The thread goes on to discuss a voice bandpass filter that helped me out with a very noisy (car) environment - you may or may not need that part.

There have been some other threads where some more "out-of-the-box" microphone solutions were proposed, though I don't think anyone posted any feedback on how effective they were or not.

Hope that helps.