anyone make a custom sound effect circuit board

[rik]

Hi, I am looking to find someone who could design and make up a circuit
for me for a reasonable charge. I already have some of the electronics.
I am not sure if they can be used or whether the project should be
restarted from scratch. The basic spec is below.

The project is to add some electronics to a wooden rocking horse I have
already made and to play recorded horse sounds as follows.

Inputs needed
- rocking motion sensor(s) to lead to two different sound effects
- low speed (trotting)
- high speed (galloping)
- when the rocking stops the horse is to neigh
- microphone to pick up whistle sound and horse to neigh
- remote control to turn the electronics on or off

Outputs
- mouth speaker and eye leds
- belly speaker

Power
- must be battery supply
- ideally to be from a single voltage

Any time the horse neighs the leds in his eyes are to light up. There
are two separate speakers - one in his mouth (for the neighing sound)
and one under his belly (for the trotting/galloping sounds).

The size of boards and power pack needed to fit into a space about 5" x
3" x 4".

I already have the sounds recorded on a APR9600 board/IC, and I have a
radio-controlled board (similar to garage door opener) to turn the
system on and off.

That's about it. Any pointers appreciated.

 

[Charles Schuler]

Hi, I am looking to find someone who could design and make up a circuit
for me for a reasonable charge. I already have some of the electronics.
I am not sure if they can be used or whether the project should be
restarted from scratch. The basic spec is below.

The project is to add some electronics to a wooden rocking horse I have
already made and to play recorded horse sounds as follows.

Inputs needed
- rocking motion sensor(s) to lead to two different sound effects
- low speed (trotting)
- high speed (galloping)
- when the rocking stops the horse is to neigh
- microphone to pick up whistle sound and horse to neigh
- remote control to turn the electronics on or off

Mercury switches could serve as motion detectors.
The remote control adds some overhead ... doable, but do you really need it?

Outputs
- mouth speaker and eye leds
- belly speaker

Easy and straightforward stuff.

Power
- must be battery supply
- ideally to be from a single voltage
Doable.

Any time the horse neighs the leds in his eyes are to light up. There
are two separate speakers - one in his mouth (for the neighing sound)
and one under his belly (for the trotting/galloping sounds).

No problem.

The size of boards and power pack needed to fit into a space about 5" x
3" x 4".

No problem.

I already have the sounds recorded on a APR9600 board/IC, and I have a
radio-controlled board (similar to garage door opener) to turn the
system on and off.

A cheap microprocessor with some additional memory should take care of this.
The sounds could be stored as binary files in EPROM or flash memory (lots of
ways to go here). A D/A converter would then provide the sounds (along with
an amplifier). There are some really friendly uPs out there ... e.g.
Picaxe.

You are not likely to find a professional to put this together for you (at a
price that you would accept) but you might find an engineering student
looking for a thesis or a senior project. Good luck.

 

[James Harris]

....

No problem.

I presume the sound effects chip/board can only play one sound at a
time. That might be a bit of a problem. Wouldn't the OP need to
arbitrate between the two sounds. Also there would be just one output
so it would need to be switched between two speakers. That sounds a bit
awkward. How would you plan to do that?

....

A cheap microprocessor with some additional memory should take care of this.
The sounds could be stored as binary files in EPROM or flash memory (lots of
ways to go here). A D/A converter would then provide the sounds (along with
an amplifier). There are some really friendly uPs out there ... e.g.
Picaxe.

Would this really need a microprocessor ... or were you thinking to
play the sounds from the micro's RAM? Hmm. If so, I think I can see how
you would deal with the two speakers mentioned above. Since the OP has
the sounds already, though, would discrete (term?) electronics be
enough? It would save developing the software for the cpu.

 

[Rich Grise]

Would this really need a microprocessor ... or were you thinking to play
the sounds from the micro's RAM? Hmm. If so, I think I can see how you
would deal with the two speakers mentioned above. Since the OP has the
sounds already, though, would discrete (term?) electronics be enough? It
would save developing the software for the cpu.

Well, if "discrete" includes a counter, PROM, and DAC, then it would
be fairly simple, especially if the sounds have an "end" flag to stop
the counter; then another PROM for the start address of each particular
effect - nothin' to it!

Cheers!
Rich
*PROM == ROM, PROM, EPROM, EEPROM, flash, diode matrix, whatever... ;-)

 

[joseph2k]

Well, if "discrete" includes a counter, PROM, and DAC, then it would
be fairly simple, especially if the sounds have an "end" flag to stop
the counter; then another PROM for the start address of each particular
effect - nothin' to it!

Cheers!
Rich
*PROM == ROM, PROM, EPROM, EEPROM, flash, diode matrix, whatever... ;-)

After reading all this it sounds like a 22V10 FPGA state machine should be
enough to finish this.

 

[James Beck]

Well, if "discrete" includes a counter, PROM, and DAC, then it would
be fairly simple, especially if the sounds have an "end" flag to stop
the counter; then another PROM for the start address of each particular
effect - nothin' to it!

Cheers!
Rich
*PROM == ROM, PROM, EPROM, EEPROM, flash, diode matrix, whatever... ;-)

I'm kind of jumping in here late, so I don't know if this is even
applicable at all, but here goes.

I saw a system where they used an MCU to select the upper 4 address
lines of a big EPROM and a counter with A0 of the EPROM going to and INT
pin to give a sample count. The MCU would select one of 16 sounds,
start the counter, count the number of A0 transitions as a sample
count/2 number and stop the counter when the end of sound occurred. The
DAC was a simple resistor ladder right off the EPROM data lines. Sure,
it could only do 1 sound at a time and the low pass filter was just
passive components, but it worked. Definately no high fidelity but very
understandable and they even did some little music samples.


Jim

 

[[email protected]]

Inputs needed

- rocking motion sensor(s) to lead to two different sound effects
- low speed (trotting)
- high speed (galloping)
- when the rocking stops the horse is to neigh

1st question would be - do you have any micro controller programming
experience? If so this part could easily be done in software with a
tilt switch or mercury switch. If you dont, then it can be done with
some general logic IC's and capacitors to set rocking speed thresholds.

- microphone to pick up whistle sound and horse to neigh

small op amp with a passband filter should do the trick here. no one
really talks in the freq range of a whistle.

- remote control to turn the electronics on or off

Again with a micro a sleep routine could be programmed. slave a timer
circuit off the tilt switch to make it come awake for a predetermined
amount of time and when the timer runs out..it powers everything off
again if there isnt any motion.

Outputs
- mouth speaker and eye leds
- belly speaker

the LEDS are easy and again can be tied to the logic IC circuitry, a
microcontroller would also do this easily. The speaker issue is easy
too. If your going to use the playback IC for your sounds, you can use
a CD4016 or CD4066 CMOS IC to route the audio, at the right time based
on the gallop ic set, to 2 different LM386 IC's. One for the mouth
speaker and one for the belly speaker. If you want to use 1 amplifier
IC seems you might be able to use a FET to pass audio to the
appropriate speaker for each different sound.The FET could also be
logic controlled and done without a micro.

Power
- must be battery supply
- ideally to be from a single voltage

everything should be able to operate off a 9v batt or for lots of use,
a set of 4 aa batts.


Some of the ideas others have givven are talking about using a much
more complex set of hardware , if the APC9600 works, then keeps for
your application and you dont need higher fidelity, then keep it in
your project. Jameco electronics also carries a line of record/playback
IC's

Keep us informed...

Good Luck -Eric

 

[rik]

1st question would be - do you have any micro controller programming
experience? If so this part could easily be done in software with a
tilt switch or mercury switch. If you dont, then it can be done with
some general logic IC's and capacitors to set rocking speed thresholds.


small op amp with a passband filter should do the trick here. no one
really talks in the freq range of a whistle.


Again with a micro a sleep routine could be programmed. slave a timer
circuit off the tilt switch to make it come awake for a predetermined
amount of time and when the timer runs out..it powers everything off
again if there isnt any motion.




the LEDS are easy and again can be tied to the logic IC circuitry, a
microcontroller would also do this easily. The speaker issue is easy
too. If your going to use the playback IC for your sounds, you can use
a CD4016 or CD4066 CMOS IC to route the audio, at the right time based
on the gallop ic set, to 2 different LM386 IC's. One for the mouth
speaker and one for the belly speaker. If you want to use 1 amplifier
IC seems you might be able to use a FET to pass audio to the
appropriate speaker for each differentsound.The FET could also be
logic controlled and done without a micro.


everything should be able to operate off a 9v batt or for lots of use,
a set of 4 aa batts.

Some of the ideas others have givven are talking about using a much
more complex set of hardware , if the APC9600 works, then keeps for
your application and you dont need higher fidelity, then keep it in
your project. Jameco electronics also carries a line of record/playback
IC's

Keep us informed...

Good Luck -Eric

thanks for your helpful comments i will get back to you another time.