Continue to Site

Welcome to our site!

Electro Tech is an online community (with over 170,000 members) who enjoy talking about and building electronic circuits, projects and gadgets. To participate you need to register. Registration is free. Click here to register now.

  • Welcome to our site! Electro Tech is an online community (with over 170,000 members) who enjoy talking about and building electronic circuits, projects and gadgets. To participate you need to register. Registration is free. Click here to register now.

audio sample

Status
Not open for further replies.

Aug3r

New Member
Hi, I'm wondering about adding some electronics to my 1st graders terrarium.
Obviously, it'll be disposable...but I have ALOT of parts and such...
She made a model habitat for a snow owl...I have a 555 timer, flash drive....small speaker...yeah I'm not sure what else I would need ..
I imagine it kinda liek this...flip a switch and every 5 minutes or so you hear the sounds of a snow owl...any help would be great...like I said..I have alot of junk/parts!
thx for taking the time to read this!
 
It *could* be done without a microcontroller...but it would be easier for you if you had a parallel access flash memory chip. The 'flash drive' if it is USB would need a USB host, and then you're looking at microcontroller + host USB IC + lots of software (we're talking C, and lots of it). So, at least for a 'true DIY' approach, you can forget about the flash drive :/



If you can find a parallel access flash chip (not serial, no filing system) you can read them just like eeproms...provide an address, and read the data out. Of course you would have to program it with a PC, and some circuitry in a basic audio format so its just the audio samples back to back.

You'll need lots of logic (CMOS/TTL) to access the data, then clock it from the flash chip to a DAC...or you could make a cheap R2R ladder DAC using an octal 'latch'. So a rough design would involve a 'trigger' which determines when the sample is played. A counter + clock to increment the adress for the memory, and clock it in....then a latch to clock the data into a DAC. And even then you've got to drive a speaker.

As far as 'DIY' goes, its a big project, whether you use micro's or not. You can buy 'kits' which record audio clips, and plays them. (check out https://www.jaycar.com/ )....faling that you may be able to buy something ready made...like a childs toy or something, and hack it using a 55 timer to trigger it to play the sound. All those idea's use 8-bit audio...which isn't the best quailty, but unless you've got great speakers, that won't matter anyway :D

So, in varying levels of complexity? I wouldn't attempt to build it from scratch. Try, in this order:

- Look for a kit (google 'voice playback') - its still 'electronics' so you can say you've built it.

- Look for a digital voice recorder - in this day and age devices like this are cheap as chips. Then replace the switch with a relay controlled by a timer.

- Attempt to build it yourself. As I said, I admire your enthusiasm, but its a tough project, requiring knowledge of digital electronics, logic, software and memory.

good luck!

Blueteeth

Example of a kit:
**broken link removed**

Edit: Don't know why I didn't think of it before....try and get the cheapest MP3 player you can find. Many are just USB pen drives with audio out and a few buttons. All you need is to load on a sample of a snow owl..then open it up and connect the button to a relay, driven by a 555 timer. It already has 'audio out' so it could possibly drive a speaker, or perhaps a 386 audio amp will do for a small 8 ohm. That is the quickest, cheapest, and simplest thing I can think of.
 
Last edited:
thankyou very much for your ideas and input blueteeth. I'm gonna give the last one a try but not right away. I do have electronics schooling, but this is meant to be disposable...so I didn't want to spend alot of time on it...thankyou again.
 
'Disposable' hmm, well you can always re-use circuits, so perhaps a modular approach? The 555 timer circuit is pretty simple as you know so you can chuck that afterwards. But as for the actual 'sound generation' even with the price of chips..it'll be steep.
 
In amateur radio literature the past few years I've seen a few voice playback projects - using relatively low cost and simple ICs that record, store and playback audio information. It's possible this has already been mentioned in a different way. The only problem I see with the amateur radio stuff is that it would tend to be communications quality - not sure if that's good enough.

Does sound like a nice project though. Went thru that phase with my kids. They are now nearly 30 yrs old - and I've been surprized a number of times by how they recall that stuff or the lessons learned.
 
Indeed steve ^^ There are IC's that include their own non-volatile memory, ADC, and DAC plus contorl logic designed for that purpose. ISD*** series for example. https://www.futurlec.com/ICSFOthers.shtml

They still require some form of utility circuitry...as well as an audio amp. The quality is probably that of telephone. 8-bit 8Khz, maybe upto 10-bit.

ou would still have to record a snow owl...either via a PC sample played out the soundcard to the chip (you have to reduce it to mic level though) or literally find a snow owl and start a conversation :D

Blueteeth
 
If you are still determined to do this 'from scratch' (ill-advised) then you may be able to get away with using serial eeprom. I'm currently doing a 'datalogger' project and I noticed that the 93c** series serial eeproms have 'consecutive read' function. Soo....you may be able to load in a sample (8-bit...say 2-3s? = 3*8kbs = 24kbytes) and send it out to a shiftregister rigged to a R2R dac.

The 'start' would involve a clock and a parallel-serial shift register to load in the command (to read the address) which is fixed, so the parallel input would be tied to VCC or GND. You'll need a counter as well..so already we're getting quite a few chips involved. But...its all hardwired with a few passives plus its dirtt cheap.

Sorry I'm just spitting out idea's here, I go for 'clever' solutions rather than cheap and easy, probably why I over complicated everything. FInd a ready made product and hack it ftw!

Blueteeth
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Latest threads

New Articles From Microcontroller Tips

Back
Top