Next Gen. Comm badge chirping?

GeneralFROSTY

GeneralFROSTY

Master Member
RPF PREMIUM MEMBER
With the Qmx comm badge replicas coming out very soon, I'm already looking for options to give it the authentic chirping sound from the show.
In the past (80s and 90s) we've seen sound modules that go behind your shirt that were rather bulky and still delivered poor sound.
Now that we're in 2013, I'd like to know if we have any "updated" options for a sound module?
 
Glad someone else brought this up. I suggested something like this to GMprops a while back and he seemed intrigued, but had too much on his plate at the time. It seems like a no brainer to me. Batteries are so small nowadays. Even to get something inside the comm badge itself doesn't seem impossible.
 
Exactly.
The last time we had a chirping soundboard was in the 90s (that I know about) and my phone has a teenie speaker that has great volume. I really think a non-obtrusive sound module can and should be made.
Guess we oughta hit up GMprops...
 
I have the sound file (full quality) so we'd need a thin, loud speaker, power supply, sound board and trigger - all these things can be made small enough to hide behind a uniform or any other shirt and not be bulky.
 
As I posted in the other thread Bill Hickey and I used to sell one that ran timed dialog with different Actors Voices on diferent chips that were interchangable.

This was in 1992 or 93 so it should REALLY be simple to do it now as it was not that hard to do back then.

I'm surprised this has not been done yet as their are a few members here who could do it.
 
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So who should we commission to have these made?
What would we want specifically?
My thoughts:
Smallest, most unobtrusive design possible
Speaker with quality sound output
Authentic chirp sound
Possible voice sounds (maybe on a timer, few seconds after chirp) featuring at random, Riker, Data, Picard, Worf and Geordi.

As I've been stressing, with the forthcoming release of the Qmx badge and the new Anovos uniforms, it should be really easy to see how well this product will sell.
 
I don't want to out anyone but there are three people on this board right now I know have the capability to do these right now.

My advice is to tread cautiously if you start talking about doing specific voices as thats when I think we will run into trouble
 
The most important things for me would be small size and speaker loudness. Something loud enough to hear on a con floor would be amazing. Authentic chirp of course. Timed dialogue would be neat, but I wouldn't want it to be on random.
 
The speakers we used in 92 you could hear so the ones now would sound like a ghetto blaster! :lol

The unit size was as wide as a playing card with the length jus a little bit longer.



Risu said:
The most important things for me would be small size and speaker loudness. Something loud enough to hear on a con floor would be amazing. Authentic chirp of course. Timed dialogue would be neat, but I wouldn't want it to be on random.
Click to expand...
 
Im sure they will chime in if they want to proceed.

You never know things may be in motion behind the scenes as we post
 
I use to have a licensed comm badged that chirped, but the magnetic back end was too thick and its outline was visible on my tunic :-/
 
If I was going for one of these, I'd want it without voices. Although, I think it would be amazing if they actually had a little bit of extra space to load some other sounds clips. That way if you wanted voices, you could add them, or if you wanted the theme song, you add that. If people are adding their own sounds files, there's no legal issues. And then I could walk the con floor tapping my badge and play the latest hit by Ke$ha, lol.
 
Just about every other ST prop down to the obscure "Relativity" tricorder has been hero-ized now, so it's seems like an obvious choice to do something like the comm badge, which is so iconic. Personally, I'd rather see something that could be installed inside a hollowed-out badge if possible, rather than the pack behind the shirt. The reason being, most of the TNG uniforms are tight enough that anything except a VERY slim backing would make the badge protrude. And if you are going to bother making something that slim, you might as well put it in the badge so it can be displayed as one piece. It probably wouldn't work for the QMX metal badge, but a resin one could be easily hollowed out.

This is all just my own speculation of course. I don't know enough about electronics to know what is and isn't possible.
 
Yes, I'd rather have a hollowed out badge with the device inside, I think we've agreed at this stage in our hobby, it IS possible.
However, having a sleek module that can be used with the Qmx badge would be great.
The time is right for such a product. I only wish that electronics were my forte, I'd be selling them out the wazoo already!
 
The resin badges are really thin, I don't think you'd be able to get a battery, chip, and speaker inside that thing, no matter how thin you got the walls. The 3-7 uniform jackets had a fair amount of wiggle room inside, I'd much rather just have a separate electronics unit that could be encased in a pouch made of fusible interfacing.
 
First Contact Communicator? No way, too thin. Next Gen? Plenty of room. And if there's room for that stuff, then there's room for other, bluetoothish kinds of things as well. I always thought it would be cool to do a hero Next Gen comm that could open showing the configuration of stuff inside as shown in the Star Trek:The Next Generation Technical Manual, and in one episode of the series.
 
I'm not too familiar with the size of the communicator but in some of my projects ive used a scrapbooking voice recorder. The units are very thin and if you break open the case most are broken into 4 modules, mic, speaker, circuit board and batteries so you can rearrange things if you want. I'm not sure which unit this is from but this gives you an idea of whats inside them.
!BWLD25!BGk~$(KGrHgoH-EIEjlLl09!jBKWNDyy3YQ~~_12.JPG


Were not talking hifi quality sound but for a chirp sound effect it should suffice.
 
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