any1 good with electronics/soundboards

breakpoint

Hey guys.

Im looking for some1 that knows electronics pretty well.

The thing Im looking for is : some 1 to make a soundboard or help me make one with aux jack.. going to the speakers


Im making a iron man suit with speakers incorporated. and I would like something that has 3-5 buttons with different frases/qoutes from the movie,. Ive got the Qoutes


Cheers and thx in advance for the responds.

Thatoneguy

I have a suggestion. Why don't you just use a cheap mp3... Just a thought.

breakpoint

That was my first thought. BUt since imma use 4-6 sounds or somthing I cant be skipping and looking for the right track when some1 talks to me..


so I thought I could use something like a soundboard u find on the internet but portable...


like 1 button for each "qoute"/frase

breakpoint

at the moment I have found this. comes with a great video also.

It holds up to 2 min of audio. and theres another model that holds 6 min

and u can use loads of buttons. gonna send him a email and chat with him^^

lets just hope he ships to europe xD

Drewid

I'm not sure which part you found (atm there's no link) but I know of a couple things that might work. One is the Replica Props sound chip. You can send him your mp3s and he'll program the chip. It's usually used for the Proton Pack, but no reason why you couldn't make an Iron Man sound board out of it.

Sound board for props and costumes model 4M

Another possibility is the personal soundtrack T-shirt from ThinkGeek:

ThinkGeek :: Personal Soundtrack Shirt

That one has 20 sound options that you put onto an SD card. Hope this helps!

breakpoint

Hey drewid...

totally like me to forget the link -.-

but yea what the same thing u linked I was talking bout ^^

Sound board for props and costumes model 4M

Imma check out the thsirt thing now

cheers

breakpoint

drewid.. That tshirt looks like it might be it


Imma write them and ask how it would wor with my speaers .thanks alot for the link m8

Drewid

Very welcome! I know the speaker is removable from the shirt. You could use that speaker instead (depending on room). Worse comes to worse, some wire cutters and strippers will fix all but the very worst case of scenarios

breakpoint

Imma have to keep looking around to learn how to wire amps /speakers and all that.... might have to take apart everything. cuz if the box from the shirt has a amp inside imma have to go mechanic on it:P


never done it before but sometime is the first tiem right

xD

Drewid

Speakers are very, very easy. Most of the time all they have are two wires: one for the positive and one for the ground. The amp is usually on the circuit board that you wire the speaker into. Here's a quick example:


I wanted to change out the speaker that came with a voice amp from the one on the right to the one on the left:


The other end had this clip:


Which connected to this amp:


All I did was de-solder the leads on the right speaker and solder them onto the speaker on the left. Easy peasy!

scottinthebooth

You used to be able to get computer speakers that would take batteries. I think they've all been replaced by wall transformers now. Still not impossible to power with batteries but they certainly make it more difficult.

Drewid

Computer speakers are a slight misnomer. They are a combination of speakers and amplifiers. It was the amplification circuit that needed the power to drive the speakers. If sound cards had powerful enough amplifiers built-in you wouldn't need the extra power source.

scottinthebooth

Right I thought breakpoint was talking about amplifying the sound. Then its all in one package. I've seen the soundtrack shirt and while the pushbutton player is great it doesn't have a high volume output, hence my computer speaker suggestion.

Drewid

Gotcha. I haven't seen the shirt in-person so I wasn't sure what it's amplification is. In that case, I'd probably cut the speaker wires and connect them to a 1/8" jack and connect that to a small amp like this one:

RadioShack® Mini Audio Amplifier - RadioShack.com

That one can get fairly loud and is nice and cheap. You'd want to keep the input reasonably low to prevent distortion but otherwise it should work fine.

breakpoint

hey hey ^^

thx for the answers to the both of ya..

to clear up abit,, I wanted kinda to amplify the sound and make it "clearer" so I thought of thoses comp speakers(that has amps inside the speaker box)
Like these How to Build Portable Speakers - YouTube

so basicly I want to replace the thsirts speaker with a pair of those is the vid..
still no response from the thingeek, about if the "box" has any amps.. if not Ill try to hook em up to the comp speakers and see how it works.
the thing is.. if the tshirt didnt have an amp.. how would I have to wire everything :S


thx in advance

Drewid

I'm sure the T-shirts control pad has a small amp built-in to drive it's speaker but I don't know if it's going to reach the volume you want.

Do you already have a set of computer speakers you were planning to use? The wiring could change a little bit depending on what you already have but I would approach it by cutting the wires that go to the T-shirts speaker and solder those to a 1/8" audio jack (male or female depending on what would work best with your speakers). A mono-jack would work best since you're not getting stereo sound from the control pad (we know this because it has only one speaker). This also simplifies the build by keeping the number of connections you have to solder down to a minimum because you're re-using audio input jack of the computer speakers.

If the computer speakers you want to use has an external transformer you won't even have to solder anything to the speakers amp board. Just cut the adapter off and wire the battery pack in where the adapter was. Test before you solder since you'll need to get the positive and ground leads right.

breakpoint

thx drewid ^^

I havent got niether the shirt or speakers yet, wanted to know IF it was possible and how much hassle before I pent any money.

but thanks alot for all the information

endo500

Breakpoint let me know how your adventures go because I was thinking of doing the exact same thing for the sentinel costume i'm building. I want to play some of the recorded sounds from the old x-men tv show.

I'm currently looking into various speaker/amp/button options. I'll let you know if i find anything interesting.

Drewid

No problem . I went through similar challenges when I was building a Pipboy and getting a voice amp to work with my helmet. The simple answer is yes, it will work. And there are ways to start slow and build up over time. Jacking that into the radio shack amp will be easy, cheap, and get you started quickly. It's not the best but it doesn't pretend to be either.