What you need to do is use a little voodoo to transfer a human soul into the doll. I hear it works really well, they made a movie about it. Child's Play I think was the name of it.
What you need to do is use a little voodoo to transfer a human soul into the doll. I hear it works really well, they made a movie about it. Child's Play I think was the name of it.
Yea but that, you have to make sure the soul your using is not from a psychotic serial killer. Having a killer doll will ruin anyones day.
The desired effect is to make her go "awwww", not "EEEEEEK!" lol
I added the limit switches to the mouth. I managed to find 2 identical switches with long levers which made them easy to install. A dab of superglue gel, and tada! I now have feedback whether the mouth is open or closed. I am holding off on installing the speaker yet. I stopped at a thrift store and found a pair of USB powered speakers for $5. It would cost that much in parts to make my own amp. I may just gut those and use them. Not sure yet, they also make handy prototyping speakers as I can power them right off my breadboard.
Anyway, attaching pictures of the limit switch upgrade.
Well, "mouth opened" work perfectly, but not "mouth closed". When I reassembled, I noticed that the body of one of the switches is in the way of a screwpost on the motor gearbox. I will need to tweak things a bit. I also will add bump-stops to one side of each of the switches so they are more reliable when pushed together.
Got the library done for the MP3 module. You can now install it on any pin, not just a serial pin. Having some issues with the way the module works, though (not my code, I don't think.) Already see some enhancements I can make to the library.
When you select an MP3 that doesn't exist, it just plays a random one. These modules have no feedback for number of files or errors, so you have to keep your code tight and file naming of the MP3s well controlled.
I decided to go with a MM74HC942 300-baud single-chip modem IC for storing and retrieving the data in an audio track. This chip is a bit hard to find (and may even be obsolete), but it does all the things that I need and comes in a prototype friendly DIP package as well as surface mount.
For a mini-tutorial, I will likely revisit this using more common and easily-sourced components. The advantage to using a special purpose IC is that it is simple to build a circuit and write code. The disadvantage is that these types of chips tend to go obsolete quickly and are hard to find. A discrete method (using common parts) is not especially complicated, but requires a lot of components.
The other advantage to using a single-chip modem is that I can use it to transmit as well and just record the output directly to the audio. No need for a program to handle it.
Using the 74HC942, all you need is a 3.58Mhz crystal, some caps and a few resistors. You may or may not need some audio amp ICs depending on what you are interfacing with. In my particular case, the MP3 module output is max at 200mVpp, which happens to be about perfect.
The SPACE and MARK frequencies are 1070Hz and 2025Hz (SPACE = 0, MARK = 1) since this uses the BELL 103 standard
I also ordered an RTC module. One that will be easy to mount in a remote location so I can access the battery externally. It is using the DS1307 chip. I will be replacing that chip with a MCP7940 once I can get sample ordering from Microchip to work (or breakdown and place an order with Digikey.)
I guess I should give up on asking for more ideas. Nobody has even been following this thread in quite a while. But, hey, if you stumble in here and have some, I'd still love to hear them. Until then, plugging away...
Hmm... I found this while poking around: Google Code Archive - Long-term storage for Google Code Project Hosting.
Softmodem implements a software FSK modem on the arduino using the analog inputs. Stripping it down and specializing it could do the decoding of data from audio without a modem IC. I'll give this a bit of a look while I am waiting for the ICs to arrive.
I had to move the bottom limit switch over to the other side. Also added hot-glue as bumpers to dampen one side of the switches so it had something to push against. This made them more reliable. I also added an LDR, a microphne, and some tilt switches inside the head. I forgot to add some IR LEDs to the eyes, so I will do that next time I have him opened up.
I also finished the library for the MP3 module (I posted it in the audio forum.)
