My wife ended up getting one of those 30 dollar Dixie air horn kits of the internet. and it sounds like garbage. when you power it up the compressor sounds very strained to run and and the notes come out with varying delays to it. you can get that it is dixie but it isnt right. since the horns are tuned my thought was to get a better 12v compressor and a res tank for it then use elec solenoids triggered for each horn to make the notes. I know a ardiono cannot handle the power to drive the solenoids them selves. but they make relay modules over at adafruit that could be used to trigger each one. with that being said is there anyone out there that will nursemaid me thru this to help me build this for the wife? thank you for taking the time to read this.
You might just try upgrading the compressor first. Maybe the delays are caused by a lack-loss of pressure???
What do you need help with? Can you write the software?
You can test the software by connecting LEDs instead of solenoids/horns, and you might want to slow-down the tempo for that kind of test.
You can use a relay board/module and I assume you have found relay boards with enough relays on them. Those are fairly straightforward to use. I don't about the relay boards, but in general Adafruit (or SparkFun) usually have very-good documentation & guides to using their stuff.
Another option would be to use [u]MOSFET drivers[/u] but I'm not sure if you can find a pre-built board.
… A long-long-long time ago when I had a horn relay fail* I replaced it with two relays and a 555 timer, with the idea of making the horn sound like a high/low European siren. It didn't work exactly as planned. There was some noise/instability with the 555 when the relays switched so the high/low sound was rather erratic and faster than planned. But it was still fun. My sister called it the "doodle-doodle" horn.
I 'was gonna' build something with DIP switches to make different sequences with the 2 standard horns but for some reason that never got completed. (It wouldn't have used a microcontroller).
Later, I did something similar when building a car alarm. But this time I used a microcontroller (not Arduino) and I made it go high-both-low-both-high-both... That did work as expected and I re-wired the regular horn to go through the alarm system and make the same sound.
- People worry about relays wearing-out and failing, but it was an old car and that's one of the very-few times I've seen a relay fail.
P.S.
Of course, you'll get labeled a racist. 
The compresor is a package thing. there is the relay that turns it on then the compressor and 5 horns. ill find a quick link. all of these kits are very similar.
as for the software No I cannot but the wife has been a web designer for a long minute and took both dbase and C+ in college, So I am pretty confident in her getting that part done, if not I know we could come here as I have seen lots of incredible help on here already. I am much more of a cut and dry hardware guy. I stopped my hardware/software merging with the basic stamp a few decades ago.
I will look into the mosfet idea. I will see what I can do to organize this idea into a workable problem. right now I dont think i have laid it out very well. thank you so much for the advise. let me do a bit better research. I will be back with a better laid out description of what I have and what I would like to accomplish.
DVDdoug:
You might just try upgrading the compressor first. Maybe the delays are caused by a lack-loss of pressure???What do you need help with? Can you write the software?
You can test the software by connecting LEDs instead of solenoids/horns, and you might want to slow-down the tempo for that kind of test.
You can use a relay board/module and I assume you have found relay boards with enough relays on them. Those are fairly straightforward to use. I don't about the relay boards, but in general Adafruit (or SparkFun) usually have very-good documentation & guides to using their stuff.
Another option would be to use [u]MOSFET drivers[/u] but I'm not sure if you can find a pre-built board.
… A long-long-long time ago when I had a horn relay fail* I replaced it with two relays and a 555 timer, with the idea of making the horn sound like a high/low European siren. It didn't work exactly as planned. There was some noise/instability with the 555 when the relays switched so the high/low sound was rather erratic and faster than planned. But it was still fun. My sister called it the "doodle-doodle" horn.
I 'was gonna' build something with DIP switches to make different sequences with the 2 standard horns but for some reason that never got completed. (It wouldn't have used a microcontroller).
Later, I did something similar when building a car alarm. But this time I used a microcontroller (not Arduino) and I made it go high-both-low-both-high-both... That did work as expected and I re-wired the regular horn to go through the alarm system and make the same sound.
- People worry about relays wearing-out and failing, but it was an old car and that's one of the very-few times I've seen a relay fail.
P.S.
Of course, you'll get labeled a racist.