Soundboard with > 10 (~20) physical buttons?

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billyhoiler
 
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Soundboard with > 10 (~20) physical buttons?

Post by billyhoiler »

Hi everybody,

for a few weeks now I am contemplating on building a physical soundboard for my daughter to play and learn.
I want 12-20 very short sound samples (could be words, instruments, drums) controlled by physical buttons and sounds playing from a little speaker.
No need for MP3 support, 2MB should be enough for short mono wav files.

The FX Soundboard seemed to be exactly what I need, but only works with 10 buttons (right?)...
I read up on matrix circuits and using the analog pin to use more buttons with fewer pins but the FX Soundboard is readymade from what I understand?
Then I found the Trinket Audio Player but that one only plays one file...

I found a project on here which used 3 FX boards to create a 30 sounds board, but is that really the best solution?
If things work as expected I will most likely create another soundboard and want to keep the electronics costs down.

Any hints appreciated. Thank you.

----------
Me: A complete Arduino newbie but not afraid to dive in and actually want to learn with this project.
(a cgi artist at heart I´ve only done a bit of php+actionscript programming in the past and learned about Ohms law "a 100 years ago" at school)

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mikemeaney
 
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Re: Soundboard with > 10 (~20) physical buttons?

Post by mikemeaney »

The beauty of multiplexing is that you can have hundreds (if not thousands) of buttons. I'd look into using some of the Adafruit keypads or multiplexing Breakout boards in conjunction with and Arduino and WAV shield. Sorry I'm wrapping up my lunch break so can't say much right now. If you need more elaboration, feel free to ask. :D

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billyhoiler
 
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Re: Soundboard with > 10 (~20) physical buttons?

Post by billyhoiler »

Thanks for the quick reply Mike.
While I was planning to buy an arduino for learning purposes anyway, I was hoping to get away with the cheaper and smaller modules for this specific task...
An arduino + shield is quite expensive to leave in the project.

Would it at least be possible to exchange the arduino with a trinket (pro?) in the end. (manually connect the wav shield to the trinket?)

Is there no way to modify the FX soundboard code to accept more inputs?

Like I said I am a total newbie and it seems adafruit is very popular but are there maybe other places that might offer boards better suited for my needs?
Thanks

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adafruit_support_mike
 
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Re: Soundboard with > 10 (~20) physical buttons?

Post by adafruit_support_mike »

billyhoiler wrote:Would it at least be possible to exchange the arduino with a trinket (pro?) in the end. (manually connect the wav shield to the trinket?)
Yeah, that will work.

You can do most of your development and testing on the regular Arduino (using Serial.print() for debugging messages) then move the code over to the Pro Trinket when it's done.
billyhoiler wrote:Is there no way to modify the FX soundboard code to accept more inputs?
Nope. There are 11 trigger pins and six kinds of trigger that you can use for each pin, but the design goal was to make it a "no programming necessary" device.

If you want programmability, we have the Music Maker:
https://www.adafruit.com/products/1790

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billyhoiler
 
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Re: Soundboard with > 10 (~20) physical buttons?

Post by billyhoiler »

Thanks Mike.
Ok, I´ll go with the arduino uno and the wave shield and switch the arduino to a trinket when I am done.
Which trinket should I order for that purpose? (pro? 3v? 5V?)

regarding the music maker: there is not reason to switch from the wave shield if I am fine with WAV and mono sound, right?
like I said I want to keep the overall costs down and the music maker is more expensive than the wave shield.

Cheers

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adafruit_support_mike
 
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Re: Soundboard with > 10 (~20) physical buttons?

Post by adafruit_support_mike »

You'll need the 5v Pro Trinket.

A regular Trinket doesn't have a big enough microcontroller to run the Wave Shield, and some of the chips on the Wave Shield want 5v.

If you're happy with the Wave Shield and can get it to do what you want, by all means use it.

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