Haloween Gas Mask 2008
Beau Schwabe
Posts: 6,566
Every year our neighbors throw a huge production Halloween party. This year being no different than the rest, I always try to incorporate some of my electronic skill into a costume.
Not really knowing what I was going to do, I went to the local costume store and decided on a mask that would work.... I ended up picking up a cheap $10 mask that I thought would be perfect for a voice changing echo program I had created a few years ago. Oh yeah, and it had to have some sort of eerie light ... people love lights. Most of the program was done, I just needed to add some tri-color LED control, and modify the existing ECHO program so that I could hardware select a few different Sound and Light options.
All told, the original design took about 3 hours to write the code and pack everything in the mask.... Actually the original design used a Propeller Demo board which just fit in the mask without much room for anything else... my nose included. I ended up with the Audio Amplifier and Battery(s) in my pocket with an umbilical tether to the Mask. This was Ok for the Party, but I wanted to make it right before Halloween... (Yes, I'm a kid at heart, and I'm going to wear the mask as I answer the door, and walk around the neighborhood with my two girls)... Anyway, I combined the Propeller/MIC/Amplifier on to a Vector board and reduced the battery to a single AA 4-Pack. Now it works perfect without a tether and the mask is even lighter.
Enjoy!!
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Beau Schwabe
IC Layout Engineer
Parallax, Inc.
Post Edited (Beau Schwabe (Parallax)) : 10/28/2008 5:09:24 AM GMT
Not really knowing what I was going to do, I went to the local costume store and decided on a mask that would work.... I ended up picking up a cheap $10 mask that I thought would be perfect for a voice changing echo program I had created a few years ago. Oh yeah, and it had to have some sort of eerie light ... people love lights. Most of the program was done, I just needed to add some tri-color LED control, and modify the existing ECHO program so that I could hardware select a few different Sound and Light options.
All told, the original design took about 3 hours to write the code and pack everything in the mask.... Actually the original design used a Propeller Demo board which just fit in the mask without much room for anything else... my nose included. I ended up with the Audio Amplifier and Battery(s) in my pocket with an umbilical tether to the Mask. This was Ok for the Party, but I wanted to make it right before Halloween... (Yes, I'm a kid at heart, and I'm going to wear the mask as I answer the door, and walk around the neighborhood with my two girls)... Anyway, I combined the Propeller/MIC/Amplifier on to a Vector board and reduced the battery to a single AA 4-Pack. Now it works perfect without a tether and the mask is even lighter.
Enjoy!!
▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔
Beau Schwabe
IC Layout Engineer
Parallax, Inc.
Post Edited (Beau Schwabe (Parallax)) : 10/28/2008 5:09:24 AM GMT
Comments
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Chris Savage
Parallax Engineering
I'll have to have my wife do another recording of "Luke, I am your father!"· [noparse]:o[/noparse])
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zwovoC9usLI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0-GPytIgLs
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Beau Schwabe
IC Layout Engineer
Parallax, Inc.
Post Edited (Beau Schwabe (Parallax)) : 10/28/2008 4:28:13 PM GMT
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Chris Savage
Parallax Engineering
You would fit right in with my neighbors a couple of doors down - they are straight out of the Raiders black hole. Their favorite trick successfully applied year after year is to have a spectre fly down to their front door from a light pole outside the house on a guy wire. It's hard to explain but if that doesn't scare the kids the scary dudes in costumes do. The improper application of this has given nightmares to a kid for months, so play nicely... (I always make sure to explain to my daughter that it's all pretend a couple of times before we head anywhere near the place.)
In general Vector board has a very low parasitic capacitance compared to the SBB (Solder less Bread Board)... this parasitic capacitance is what kills the sigma delta.· With a few non-critical wiring exceptions, everything was wired point to point with the most critical being the sigma delta section. (See attachment)
As far as our "Halloween yard tricks" We have very large spiders in our yard with very large spider webs to accompany them (One·spider web is 20 feet high ... another is 9 feet high).... One spider is rigged to drop from the trees at just the right moment.
My girls (ages 6 and 3) love the mask, and look rather funny in a yoda sort of way when they are wearing the mask.· They like the echo set for the maximum delay (nearly a second for this design).
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Beau Schwabe
IC Layout Engineer
Parallax, Inc.
"I guess that you also pick those pins 8 and 9 because they are the shortest bond wires?" - No, The original design was done on the Demo Board where the ADC is already assigned to those pins... The only pins that I changed from the original ECHO program was 11 and 12 which were the differential Audio output... I moved this to pin 15 (This decision was based on a hardware advantage) and made it a Single mode output.
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Beau Schwabe
IC Layout Engineer
Parallax, Inc.