Thread: sound with prop help

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Can anyone point me to some tuts on how to make props play sounds when activated?
I can not figure out a cheap way to have a pop up screem when it is activated..

thanks

There aren't any what I would call definitive sites for this yet. What I can tell you is for decent sound with precision activation, you're looking at buying a micro controller and a digital recorder/player fo some kind. There are a variety of controllers and recorder/players out there. So, I'd want to hear about the prop before making recommendations. And a warning. None of these are cheap.

If you're looking for cheap and do not care about reliability (as in, you could have a looping track and just power the speaker on and off). If this is fine, you can buy a cheap mp3 player off Geeks.com - Computer parts, Laptop computers, Desktop computers, Computer hardware or the like for $5-$10, a set of powered speakers with an amplifier. Now you'll need to look up a tutorial on a beam breaker power supply. Set that up and plug your powered speakers to the beam breaker system. Put your MP3 player on endless loop and plug the speakers into the mp3 player.

The mp3 player will be continuously playing. But, the speakers will only come on when the beam is broken. Hope that helps.

there's the Halloween howler gadget that detects motion and plays sounds. an alternative maybe to having the actual prop rigged up to play the sounds.


Halloween Howler Recorder | Everything below $29.99

http://www.chipsinternational.com/order.html

Interesting. Have you heard one of these? I'm wondering how the amp/speaker are. If decent, I'd definately, pick a few up. Not sure if it's worth hacking if not.

A scream, eh?

My super simple, but imperfect, solution to making Bob scream when he sits up:

YouTube - Lab rough draft test

Alls I did was find the scream I wanted off the internet, put it on a CD, put the CD player on repeat, and hooked it into a set of computer speakers. When Bob is triggered, the speakers go on and the cd plays.

it's imperfect as the audio can cut in in the middle, but the scream I chose minimizes the noticing of that.

This board will record 50 secs of sound and plugs into a USB port. Hack the Play button to attach a small snap switch to activate the board (this assumes that your prop is moving); just place the switch where a moving part can hit it and start the player. It looks like a second hit will stop the playback unless the file has finished playing. If there's a chance that the return motion will re-trigger the playback, you can add silence to the end of the MP3 file to keep the player active, allowing it to be shut off by the return motion. A relay can also be used as the triggering device. How you start the player kind of depends on the prop and the triggering method.

50 second USB recording module

Nice timing - the delivery man just dropped off my Electronics123 order with this 50 second module and with it I got a single colour sound to light organ for lightning effects and a spare ISD17120 chipcorder chip. They were a little slow answering an email but I can't complain about the delivery speed and the products look good and the price is good.

Otherwise the sound board from Cowlacious can trigger on a number of things including a mains supply making it easy if you use a PIR light! I've got one of these coming as well (my wife is going to go ballistic when she sees the credit card bills)