Finished at Last!
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The sound effects mod is done. I finally settled on an enlosure for the Adafruit sound board. I found some 5.5" x 3.5" x 0.9" tins on Amazon with a clear plastic cover that suited my needs. It's a bit oversize, but the height gave me enough enough clearance to also place the AAA battery pack inside the enclosure, which is attached to the tin using industrial strength Velcro. The clear plastic was easily cut with an X-Acto knife, allowing me to run the wires through the enclosure to the switches, speaker and LED. The trigger switches were then epoxy glued onto a small piece of Styrene.
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To attach the LED to the jacket, I bored a hole in the acrylic piece with an X-Acto blade until I had an opening just right for the LED, which I placed inside a 3mm LED holder. It sits snugly in place and looks great. The switches I attached to the jacket using more industrial strength Velcro on the inside of the jacket. It's close enough to where I can place my thumb over the acrylic piece and use my fingers to trigger the sounds from the other side. I bundled together the wiring using zip ties, as I ended up with a LOT of excess cable (I wasn't certain exactly how I wanted to run the wiring when I began this project. Knowing what I know now, I would have used a lot less). The speaker is attached using, yep, industrial strength Velcro. It's a 2 watt 4 ohm speaker, and with the built-in amp on the sound board, it's pretty loud. It was originally going to go inside the enclosure, but I though it would be more easily heard down by the switches.
The enclosure and excess cable sit perfectly in the right inside pocket I had added to the jacket when I had it custom tailored. I added a strip of Velcro to the pocket to help keep it sealed shut. The left inside pocket is home to my Gray's Sports Almanac replica.
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Here's the final sound mod in action:
https://youtu.be/EhgnAqp8Bec
Thank you to everyone in these forums for your guidance. I am really pleased with the way it turned out.