Large Scale Central

Servo Animation with Synchronized Sound

Electronics
#1

I made my first servo controller many years ago (see: http://www.trainelectronics.com/Animation_servos/index.htm ) and have used servos in many animations. Frequently it made sense to add sound to the movement that the servo provided so I have used my servo controllers to trigger an external sound unit of one sort or another. This worked well but it was frequently a challenge to synchronize the sound clip with the movement of the servo.

When I recently revised my original servo controller to add to its functionality and make it easier to set up I decided that it would be a good time to make the sound synchronization easier, too. This involved designing a new circuit that would include both a microcontroller to operate the servo and a separate MP3 player that could be used to play multiple sounds that I could synchronize with different events in the servo’s operation.

Details on this new device are on my web page, here: http://www.trainelectronics.com/Servo_PIC/ServoDFPlayer-MP3/

and a YouTube video is here: https://youtu.be/GQ4I8fQeyDw

Please let me know what you think and if you have any questions.

dave

#2

Neat. Nice PCB. very crisp. Were do you have them made? Definitely consider atmel/ardunio vs pic. More market share :slight_smile:

#3

Very interesting… nice work… Wish I know more about the way they work but guess brain dead on old stuff like old relays.

#4

Martin Sant said:

Neat. Nice PCB. very crisp. Were do you have them made? Definitely consider atmel/ardunio vs pic. More market share :slight_smile:

Martin - I had the boards made by https://oshpark.com/ - nice boards but they don’t solder as well as the ones I get from http://www.seeedstudio.com/depot/ - I just ordered more boards from Seeed.I also am in the process of converting the software for the Arduino Pro Mini - the final circuit board will be a bit larger but may be a better choice for some folks.

Stay tuned!

dave

#5

Dave, what PCB design software are you using? I’m doing Pad2Pad now and I love the s/w and the boards that come out are very nice but a bit pricey.

I uploaded some test gerber files to the seeed site and they were very competitive, like half. I think I need to switch s/w :slight_smile:

Noel, servos aren’t too bad, basically you send them a 5v pulse every 20ms or so (they don’t seem to be terribly picky about the exact time). The width of that pulse controls the angle of the servo arm. Now, that width (1ms-2ms) needs to be fairly precise but that’s really about it.

#6

I’ve use MYROPCB.COM, although I typically use a more expensive board material, like FR4 or the FR 400 “family”

Fast, cheap, good quality, made a really small PCB for a Z scale F unit with 7 LEDS on it, the size of your thumbnail.

Greg

#7

Martin Sant said:

Dave, what PCB design software are you using? I’m doing Pad2Pad now and I love the s/w and the boards that come out are very nice but a bit pricey.

Martin - I use a program called FreePCB (from http://www.freepcb.com/ ) - the price is right and, in spite of being a bit buggy in places, it crates Gerber files that I just zip up and send to a variety of fabricators.

Another PCB company that I have used successfully is https://www.itead.cc/open-pcb/pcb-prototyping.html

dave

#8

Thanks guys. I need to get my designs off of perf boards and Pad2Pad is getting too expensive.

#9

For those of you who are more Arduino minded I have rewritten the code in their version of “C” and repurposed a circuit board from my Defect Detector. I added the code and some other information to the web page:

http://www.trainelectronics.com/Servo_PIC/ServoDFPlayer-MP3/

The code is not well documented and needs to be optimized (functions created, for example) but it does work! Stay tuned for a revised version

dave