Need ideas for playing sounds at different times

I am trying to play different animal calls at different times for a certain
length of time each day. Say, the sounds come on for 60 seconds (which would
be fixed) every 2, 3, or 4 hours, which would be switch selectable.

I have a sony walkman, but it needs the play button pressed in order to play
the tape, and then needs the stop button pressed in order to stop it.

After the experiences I have had trying to get solenoids to work pressing
buttons, I am looking for a more state of the art solution.
Would a portable mp3 player work? I guess the ideal would be to use a
relay or transistor as a switch and electronically turn on the player and
then turn it off again. Even if I had to make up a separate black box with a
timng circuit inside to connect to the player. Does anyone have any
suggestions as to what type of player I may be able to adapt to this
project?

TIA,
Joe

 

This sounds like a natural application for a PC. I suspect
this can be done with minimal programming, by launching
the Windows Recorder to play specific sounds in response
to a timer. Maybe you can find a timer that can run from
a batch file.

If you don't have a good PC to dedicate to this, you might
use an only junker (even the original 4.77 MHz PC/XT) to
simply do the timing, and output control signals via the
printer port to go to you Walkman via a relay or transistor
switch.


Bob Masta
tech(AT)daqarta(DOT)com

D A Q A R T A
Data AcQuisition And Real-Time Analysis
Shareware from Interstellar Research
www.daqarta.com

 

Thanks Bob, this will be used in attics, crawlspaces and outdoors, so must
be portable and battery powered. I think I am going to simply insert the
tape, press the play button, and then use an oscillator, coupled to a divide
by chip (cd4020?) to divide the number of oscillator pulses into the correct
time interval and fire a oneshot to switch power to the player and start the
tape turning for about 60 seconds. I'll have a 4 position dip switch to
switch from the different outputs of the cd4020 to get the right time delay
for my 'turn on' pulse to the oneshot.

Thanks for the suggestjon,
Joe

 

Hi Joe,
Take a look at the 4060B - built-in 'oscillator' and divider on one
chip. I made a simple circuit to do more-or-less the same thing using
the 4060 - a 'squeaker lure' to draw in predators to my automatic
cameras. It uses a keychain voice memo recorder - but the tape player
power could be switched just as easily.

Arch

 

You could record "nothing" at low res onto mp3 tracks of hugh
duration (hours), and then place the animal tracks in between tracks
of nothing. The nothing tracks should compress so far as for this to
be a doable solution. Then any standard mp3 capable player will do ya
with a single button press, or constant replay. Offices use discs for
their hold messages these days. Large blank spaces are the hard part.