Hello, I am new here and have only seen an arduous demonstrated once in person at a public library.
Anyway.
I have a talking portrait of a pirate in my living room.
It was a Halloween decoration.
It has a motion sensor and when this is triggered it says one of several sentences.
Then it laughs, opens its mouth to show it's tongue and it's eyes bulge.
It has a circuit board within it, a small speaker , a battery compartment, the motor for running the mouth and eyes and an air compressor.
The one I have is falling apart on the inside. The plastic is cheap and The mouth piece doesn't work anymore.
It also doesn't have a volume control dial which is something i would enjoy because it is kinda loud.
I want to make a speaking portrait of my own.
It won't be quite as fancy , so this new project would be without the bulging eyes and opening mouth or pneumatic tongue.
I was thinking about using a raspberry pi but someone said this was way underspec'd for the pi and an arduino would be much better because it requires less power to run. The pi would suck batteries dry.
So all I would need is, an arduino (recommend a model), a motion sensor or equivalent, a painting or picture of someones face. a small speaker, a mobile power source such as a compartment for double a batteries , and maybe some way to control / adjust / change the volume, or this could be set when programming it.
I plan to use some of the sound files from the townsfolk (non player characters) in diablo 2 for the sound bank, (fara , akara, kashya, jamella, natalya) and some of the sounds from the characters in Warcraft three (arthas , dreadlord, deathknight, mountain giant, huntress, banshee , dark ranger, murgul ) and probably stacraft units as well, which would play randomly or in some sequence.
I suppose the sound bank would only take up a couple of megabytes or so. Probably much less.
I actually plan to make several speaking portraits.
The question is: Which arduino model would you recommend?
Also, what sensor would you suggest? There are many to choose from.
I am guessing the Grove PIR motion sensor is best but it is a little expensive; or a light sensor could work but it wouldn't work in the dark.
https://store.arduino.cc/usa/grove-pir-motion-sensor
https://store.arduino.cc/usa/battery-holders-4-aa-w-9v-battery-plug
I can get components from other salvaged electronics I guess. I just need a small speaker compatible with this. And a way to connect it all together.
Maybe I should attend some arduino workshops in my area before asking these questions.
Should be feasible and inexpensive I hope.
Thoughts and comments are appreciated.
You may use any arduino you like - I would opt for a Nano. If you want long battery runtime, then a PIR might be not the right thing (but check the data sheet). ypu can play sound from a SD-Card, there are code examples out there how to do that, e.g.