A Circuit That Can Trigger Sound Effects

Thread Starter

jsthomps

Joined Mar 30, 2010
31
Hi all,
I would like to build a device that will play a wave or mp3 sound effect when an external event occurs. I'm into restoring old electromechanical arcade games and I would like to enhance and expand the game sounds. The external event would, in most cases, be the operation of a relay. I would like to have about 16 triggerable sound effects that would be stored onto a SD flash memory card. Examples would be:

  • Crowd sounds when a home run is hit
  • Explosion sound when a ship is hit
  • Gun shot sound when a rifle trigger is pressed
Thanks,
Scott
 

JDT

Joined Feb 12, 2009
657
Sound recording/playpack IC's are made. OKI is one manufacturer. Google.

It is possible to do this with an Atmel microcontroller:-
http://www.atmel.com/dyn/resources/prod_documents/doc1456.pdf
but both the above methods require a lot of development and probably are not worth the effort for your requirement.

Better idea is to use a PC. Doesn't need to be much of a PC, as long as it's got an audio jack and a serial port.

Write a simple application in Visual Basic that plays one of a number of wav files on an "event". This event can be a keyboard key press or, better, a character received on the serial port. You can also do it with a script language like Perl or windows scripting.

It is easy to program a simple PIC micro-controller that outputs a character on it's serial port when an input pin is triggered. Different character for each pin. Connect contacts from your relays to the PIC, connect the serial link to the PC and the PC line-out jack to a decent audio amplifier.

Bang! Job done.
 
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