MSP2MSP

@@kkrambo You might want to look into an ISD4003 or something similar with less pins and require less external components, and many of the other chips in that category will be a bit cheaper also, though many will probably have lower sound quality which is probably fine. Just to get an idea of how it fits in, the ISD4003 can record and play 4 minutes of audio and takes care of most of the work, here is an example of it being used as a voice shield for an arduino including some of its benefits, the parts a kit comes with, how to program it and load audio samples, and a link to a coinbot that use

The http://www.ti.com/product/cc2564 (also look at the cc2567 and other in the series) have an evaluation board and has the propietary one licensed from Stonestreet One and also has open source one here: http://code.google.com/p/btstack/source/browse/#svn%2Ftrunk%2Fchipset-cc256x which has been ported to the msp430 but has a guide on how to port to other chipsets, also it has licensing options for certain chips if needed, here is an excerpt from the homepage "On embedded systems, a minimal run loop implementation allows to use BTstack without a Real Time OS (RTOS). If a RTOS is already used,

This looks like an awesome thing to learn from especially since it already prepped to use the CAN bus, not to mention it having speakers, oled display, and ethernet webserver. I'm more at the hobbyest and share what I know stage and after I learn more about CAN network functionality I'd be loaning/giving like most of the stuff I get to a friend into electronics to learn about microcontrollers. If you have any left, I am interested, but wondering if you'd be willing to repackage to fit into a cheaper USPS flat rate box?

I see plenty of Bluetooth Shields with BLE that support arduino, it will be interesting to see more projects for the msp430. Good luck with your project.