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Sound Effects

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This section covers how to add sound effects to your ainmatronic or props. The best way I have found to do this is to buy these inexpensive sound playback boards from Cowlacious Designs.  You can buy these boards assembled or you can buy them in parts and do the soldering yourself with the included instructions to save a few more bucks.  In the picture there are two different boards shown the larger board (Model CAR/P100) records and plays back the recording while the smaller board (Model CAP100-60) mounted in the black box just plays back the recorded message.  I just have one of the larger boards and a bunch of the smaller ones and I just record my message on the chip and just replace it on one of the smaller playback boards.

If your looking for some great Halloween sound effects check out Hedstorm.

How the trigger works:

The trigger output on the board is made up of two pins and when these pins are connected together it completes the circuit and will start the sound recording.   Depending on how long you have the pins connected together the recording will play the entire recording and then repeat only if the pins stay connected.  So for example if you had the pins connected together for a second and recording was 10sec long the message will play the entire 10sec. If you had pins connected together for 11sec the recording will play twice a total of 20sec.

How to trigger the sound board: 

In the picture the small board mounted in the black box has a cable that is attached to a button and a metal bracket.  The button is a normally closed button meaning that in order not to trigger the sound recording you need to keep the button pressed down continuously. The button I used is from Radio Shack (Model 275-1548) and can be found in any of their stores.  I mount the button anywhere on my pneumatic animatronic where the button is depressed and then released once I trigger the pneumatics. So when the pneumatics are triggered it also triggers the sound as well and when the pneumatics reset it presses back down on to the button and is ready to go for the next scare.

This picture on the right shows the button is pressed up against a bar which moves upward when the pneumatics are trigger releasing the button and triggering the sound.  Once the bar comes back down to reset it pushes up against the button stopping the recording from repeating itself.

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