Basic Stamp: Biology teacher wants to record bird song--any advice?

Elliot Burch

Hi Basic Stamp community.

I am a high school biology teacher and I want to use Basic Stamp 2 to record bird songs. I need helpful advice in the following areas:

1. Cheap input mic (quality of sound is not important) and program code for the Basic Stamp

2. Clock chip and simple program to tell the Basic Stamp when to record (say every hour on the hour for 1 minute)

3. Flash memory storage of some sort and instructions/code to get Basic Stamp to send file to Flash memory

Any advice you may have would be much appreciated! I hope to turn on some of my students to the idea of "remote sensing".

Thanks,

Elliot

Mike Green

The Basic Stamp is not capable of recording audio. It's neither fast enough nor has enough memory to do so. There are a variety of audio recorders that a Stamp can control (turn on and off on a schedule). Probably the best would be to buy a cheap, but adequate cassette recorder and use the Stamp to turn it on and off using a simple relay. Usually these recorders have a pause plug that the Stamp could trigger (using a relay) and they have external microphone jacks so you could have a remote microphone if you wanted.

There are plenty of examples in the various Stamp tutorials of a Stamp controlling a relay and using a real-time clock/calendar. I believe the StampWorks manual has examples for a clock and the Industrial Control manual has plenty of examples of a Stamp controlling a relay or solenoid or motor.

sylvie369

I think that what you want is some kind of timer to turn on/off a recorder. You'll need some other device to actually do the recording, as Mike pointed out.

"I hope to turn on some of my students to the idea of "remote sensing"."

Excellent. I think that's a very admirable goal.

Elliot Burch

Thank you for your thoughts.

I wonder if there is a simple, cheap, mP3 recorder available to do the recording and if I could hack into the circuitry so as to connect it to the basic stamp??? On another post I seem to remember a rocket project in which a $10 camera was hooked to the basic stamp to capture photos during the parachute phase of the launch. The designer had opened up the camera and figured out how to have the basic stamp press the right buttons. Hmm.

I appreciate your assistance!

Elliot

kelvin james

Possibly one those digital voice recorder/ playback modules that can be had in kit form or assembled, might be worth a look. Shouldn't be too hard to control with a stamp. The recording time may be a problem though.

DJSandberg

Elliott,

Radio Shack makes a record/playback module for $11.· This should work easily with the Basic Stamp to record your bird songs.

Daryl

Elliot Burch

Thanks Daryl,

If it really is that cheap I could afford to purchase more than one in case I blow it out when trying to figure out how to hot wire it. Do you know what the device is called?

Thanks

Elliot

Mike Green

I think this was what he was referring to: www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2102855&cp=2032062.2032398&parentPage=family.
It's a nice unit, but very limited in how much it can record. You can buy larger chips, up to about 2 minutes, and a Stamp can control them to record multiple phrases. I suspect you want something with a larger capacity.

I know you can buy a nice MP3 recorder controller that plugs into an iPod and that could be hacked using a reed relay in place of a button push (www.griffintechnology.com/products/italkpro). iRiver (www.iriver.com/product/) also makes several lines of tiny MP3 compatible recorders that could be similarly hacked if you've got a steady hand with a small soldering iron.

sylvie369

http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2102855&cp=&sr=1&origkw=voice+recorder+module&kw=voice+recorder+module&parentPage=search


You won't blow it out, but I'm not sure it'll be capable of doing the recording you want. It'd be a good educational tool for students to learn with, though.

Elliot Burch

Gosh you folks are great! Thanks so much for your kind thoughts. When I get something up and running I will be sure to make a solid post!

EB