Arduino controlled air horns

[ssande]

I have a project that I want to add a set of air horns to which play Dixie.  They sell units like this, but because of the way they integrate the pump with the air control they tend to go too fast or slow, and sound bad.  I found a set of horns available in India that have individual solenoid controlled valves to each horn that is controlled by a microprocessor.  Unfortunately the microprocessor is preprogrammed with tunes from India.  I was thinking though that I could take the horn and valve setup and control it using a Arduino with a selector switch the runs several different tunes.  Some of the other tunes could be "Frist Call" typically played at the opening of a horse race, Oringinal Star Trek theme intro, etc.

Has anyone tried or played around with anthing like this?  I have downloaded the scores from these tunes and it looks like you can do them all with 6 different tuned horns.

[DVDdoug]

That sounds like a good Arduino project!   

The air solenoids will need more voltage & current than you get direcly from the Arduino.   You'll probably need MOSFET for each solenoid.    I assume they run off 12V.  Can you find out how much current they take?   Or, do you have a multimeter to measure the current?

I have downloaded the scores from these tunes and it looks like you can do them all with 6 different tuned horns.

As long as they are tuned to the correct note/pitch...

Doesn't traditional indian music use a different musical scale than Western music?   The Western scale has 12 notes per octave.     But most songs don't use all of the notes, and you can sometimes transpose (shift up or down) to allow a particular instrument with limited notes to play a song.  Ane of course, some songs span more than one octave.  But in this kind of application you should be able to "fake it" and play the note in the octave you happen to have.

Another small detail.  With automobile horns, sometimes there is a fraction of a second delay.   So, you might have to build some "overlap" into the timing.  That is, start the 2nd note slightly before the 1st note ends.

[ssande]

I belive you are correct about Indian music.  I do not have the horns, but planned on trying to source them for the solenoid setup and horns and then retuning the horns to the correct pitch.  I am sure with a little experimentation I could get any delay or overlap figured out for the solenoids.  Sometimes I wish I could do things the easy way and be satisfied, but that is just not my style.....

[dxw00d]

With automobile horns, sometimes there is a fraction of a second delay.

Provided the delay is a constant, then it won't matter. All notes will start a fraction late, but will be consistent with each other.