Silly sound effects - simply...

[Mike Deblis]

I'm having to build a quick "jeopardy" style fastest-finger-first
system, which I have done with a few d-type flip-flops & diodes.

As this is for a charity evening (we fund a school in sri lanka), I
thought I'd make it fun by having stupid noises when one of the
buttons is pressed - e.g. breaking glass, foghorn, bicycle bell etc.

But... I only have a couple of days left, so I was wondering if there
was a commodity chip (or even some example PIC & ROM code) for this
anywhere? I can find boring single noise chips, but I wanted something
a bit more fun...

Given time, I would probably have used a small PIC to randomly select
a noise from biggish prom, but even finding, recording and testing
such a system would take more time than I have left...

Ideas (very very quick & simple please) welcome!

Thanks

Mike

 

[GrahamH]

How about buying a number of those super-cheap voice recorder
key/pens/gizmos. Just wire to their respective play button contacts and mix
spur lines into an amp. Quick and easy to record to, even "on location".
I've seen them for a few pounds/dollars each.

PIC + DAC + flash interface (compact flash card etc) would be a better
solution. Write a little PC app to write wav files to the flash for each
sound. But given your timescales....

Idea 2: buy a toy or doorbell that plays one of N sounds. Hack the sound
selection. Limited choice of sounds but all-in-one and recording required.

Idea 3: use a PC as the controller. Buttons in on LPT1. Simple program to
scan inputs and play one of N wav files. PC is ridiculously big and
expensive to dedicate to this but if you have one that can be borrowed it
makes sense.

Graham

 

[MM]

How about buying a number of those super-cheap voice recorder
key/pens/gizmos. Just wire to their respective play button contacts and mix
spur lines into an amp. Quick and easy to record to, even "on location".
I've seen them for a few pounds/dollars each.

These gizmos use ISD family of ICs. They can be purchased from Digikey. Just
search on ISD... They are pretty simple to use, but I am not sure you can do
it in 2 days... Digikey might have some eval board however, which could save
you time.... Radio Shack might have these chips as well...

/Mikhail

 

[CWatters]

Ideas (very very quick & simple please) welcome!

Got to local boat shop and get some air horns and a ships bell.

Go to locak joke shop and get silly noise maker/woopiee cusion.

 

[Bob Myers]

But... I only have a couple of days left, so I was wondering if there
was a commodity chip (or even some example PIC & ROM code) for this
anywhere? I can find boring single noise chips, but I wanted something
a bit more fun...

Find someone with any of the various electronic
keyboards, such as Yamaha or Casio; many of
these (and pretty much any above the very low
end) will include a wide range of sound effects in
their "voices" selections. Either borrow the keyboard
or tape what you want.

Bob M.