Help Darth Vader needs a voice!!!!
ydeardorff
Posts: 38
Hello to all,
Sorry for the duplicate post but I posted in the wrong forum section.
I am an unoffical star wars geek, and on a budget. I have purchased a collectors edition Darth Vader Costume. This costume is absolutley awesome however it has one short fall,...no voice.
I need a fairly inexpensive alternative to create a real time (VOX·with speaker noise cancellation) voice changer that is portable and can run on say 9v batteries.
This unit can either be loaded with pots (potentiometers) to be adjusted manually, or be programmable through a serial or USB interface to a computer via programs like sony sound forge, or cooledit.
Even components that can be splice together to recreate james earl jones voice from mine is acceptable. Ive been to ITT so soldering is cake for me I just need to know how and where to solder the connections, and where to get the parts I need.
Can anyone help? The voice doesnt have to be perfect, but as close as possible would be preferred!
I have found one company already doing this, but Im not paying 500 USD for it. I have some money to spend but not that much!
Please send me all your ideas! I really need some help here!!!
I was thinking of maybe checking out some music equipment like voice changing microphones ect to check there. But please keep the ideas coming!
Post Edited (ydeardorff) : 2/3/2006 9:29:59 PM GMT
Sorry for the duplicate post but I posted in the wrong forum section.
I am an unoffical star wars geek, and on a budget. I have purchased a collectors edition Darth Vader Costume. This costume is absolutley awesome however it has one short fall,...no voice.
I need a fairly inexpensive alternative to create a real time (VOX·with speaker noise cancellation) voice changer that is portable and can run on say 9v batteries.
This unit can either be loaded with pots (potentiometers) to be adjusted manually, or be programmable through a serial or USB interface to a computer via programs like sony sound forge, or cooledit.
Even components that can be splice together to recreate james earl jones voice from mine is acceptable. Ive been to ITT so soldering is cake for me I just need to know how and where to solder the connections, and where to get the parts I need.
Can anyone help? The voice doesnt have to be perfect, but as close as possible would be preferred!
I have found one company already doing this, but Im not paying 500 USD for it. I have some money to spend but not that much!
Please send me all your ideas! I really need some help here!!!
I was thinking of maybe checking out some music equipment like voice changing microphones ect to check there. But please keep the ideas coming!
Post Edited (ydeardorff) : 2/3/2006 9:29:59 PM GMT
Comments
This place sells the chip for $5: http://www.smallbearelec.com/Detail.bok?no=258
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http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000231FSQ/sz-category420-20/ref%3Dnosim/102-9545321-4196950
http://www.boscovs.com/StoreFrontWeb/Product.bos?itemNumber=16835&type=Product
http://www.etoys.com/genProduct.html/PID/3565199/ctid/17?cpncode=09-6757121-2&srccode=cii_10043468
http://www.entertainmentearth.com/prodinfo.asp?number=HS85260
and finally:
http://search.ebay.com/darth-vader-voice-changer
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Here's the page from the manufactuer: http://www.holtek.com/english/docum/consumer/8950.htm
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Let me know
Thanks again!!
Post Edited (ydeardorff) : 2/3/2006 10:06:12 PM GMT
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I found one person on ebay selling one, but Im still waiting for a reply from them. That and Im not getting any warm and fuzzies when the member has a feedback count of 7. lol
Thank you for the input, I will try to get ahold of them later today. IF I can get a number from them.
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Jon Williams
Applications Engineer, Parallax
http://www.hasbro.com/pl/page.viewproduct/product_id.15397/dn/starwars/default.cfm
Seems to me I saw these at the Walmart around the corner, price unknown, but probably cheaper. Seems to my failing memory that this was large enough for an adult. Perhaps a further Google search will find it closer, cheaper.
kenjj
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I have attempted to get ahold of holtek, and sent them several emails,... but they dont even have a place on their website to purchase the holtek HT8950 voice modulator. Im working on getting one of these if I can, and·if the results of it are up to par. I may pass on the results of my search to all the other persons I have met that are also looking for a cheaper alternative. Hyperdynelabs has a nice one with all the features, but 500 dollars is just flat out rediculous.
Have you thought of hacking the mask and amplifying the output to the speaker, or provide a higher quality speaker?
The holtek chip wont provide the characteristic breathing sound of Darth Vader, unless you tried to mimic it with your voice.
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Post Edited (Paul Baker) : 2/4/2006 9:47:50 PM GMT
Trying to find a prefabbed board for this sound module is turning up zip. Having the chip is great if I had a board for it to go on. I have in the meantime ordered a darth vader voice module from www.dse.com.au in hopes it might work with a radio shack amplified speaker without sounding cheasey. time will tell!
Im surprised there isnt more out there for voice modules, everything that seems to be made is for kids, or for telephones, but nothing for costuming, or other apps without costing 500 bucks or more.
Why don't you roll your own??? There are severall sound recording modules that can record and playback sound based on an address
location, and it sounds quite normal... I would record some of Vader's voice, and playback based on address of snippet selected.
Here are some links;
www.intec-group.co.uk/sound_recorder.htm
www.cowlacious.com/AudioProd.htm
Here is the ISD site listing the chips, and recording lengths;
www.winbond-usa.com/mambo/content/view/36/140/#ProductSelectionGuide
An ISD chip with an LM386 amp would be easy to wire up....
Bob N9LVU
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Plus if I get enrolled in the 501st starwars costuming fan base, I could find myself participating in functions, including charity events, and other organizations for kids, and fans. I mean if you are showing up for a sick child in the hospital you dont want to sound wrong, am not correct?
There just has to be a way to get this right without spending 500 bucks on it!
I was also messing around with sony sound forge last night and I'll be damned If I could get a pitch shift to work without it slowing down the entire wave file. lol
I plan on running a battery powered amplifier to a speaker located in my helmet in either the upper or lower grill, if I can find it I might just use the already existing speaker in the mask, and run some sort of cancellation circuit to it, so when ever I speak the breathing sound will stop to allow talking.
Anyway, anyfurther ideas? I have done searches for "voice changer" "voice modulator" "voice amplifiers" "darth vader voice" ect and come up with nothing any good as of yet!
Again neither of these will provide the characteristic breathing sound. This is where an ISD chip comes in, on the chip you would have a pre-recorded sound of him breathing. Your controller would listen to the sound level of the mike, when the sound is silent for ~1 second, it would start the breath sound, then repeat at a regular rate for the duration of the silence. When sound on the mike is detected again, the breathing is interrupted until the next period of silence.
Either route you choose will require some circuit design on your part to incorporate the breathing, TANSTAAFL (there ain't no such thing as a free lunch), what you dont spend on a pre-built unit, you will spend in sweat equity (effort).
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Hmmm, try this unit, you might have to add some filtering and effects, but it might work!
electronickits.com/kit/complete/surv/ck211.htm
You might be able to hack one of these to be usable;
afgen.com/phone.html
Here are some more kits;
www.highlights.com/jump.jsp?itemID=1890&itemType=PRODUCT&iProductID=1890
store.qkits.com/moreinfo.cfm/FK930
store.qkits.com/moreinfo.cfm?Product_ID=1274
www.mobilefun.co.uk/product/3137.htm
There are more, "Google" IS your friend...
Bob N9LVU
· Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck talk in the cartoons, but·at Disneyland they're silent and wave, sometimes shaking hands with the crumb-crunchers.
But now a new issue. Vader chest box lights are in need of your technical help!!!
The darth vader chest box has three lights on the left side of it that blink, at a specific rate, and·in a specific pattern.
The change interval is 1 second, and the pattern is as follows:
1)TOP
2)BOTTOM
3)MIDDLE + BOTTOM together
4)MIDDLE
5)TOP + MIDDLE· together
6)ALLTHREE
7)TOP +BOTTOM together
START OVER
I could use some help with this.·It must be run on not more than 6vdc, preferrably 3vdc.
And frankly I havent got the first clue on how to make this!
Post Edited (ydeardorff) : 3/20/2006 9:49:40 PM GMT
I find your lack of faith disturbing,.....
Post Edited (ydeardorff) : 3/20/2006 11:27:43 PM GMT
Its a simple state machine, and I can even show you how to design one, the most dificult part will be getting a 1Hz clock signal (and that should be that big of a deal either).
The most amusing thing is that the sequence you provided is a grey code (1st state to 2nd state isn't a grey transition, but all other transitions are), this is frequently used by state machine designers to reduce the amount of logic required for transistioning from one state to another, so its clear that that is exactly what the original designers did.
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Post Edited (Paul Baker) : 3/21/2006 6:59:56 PM GMT
Someone came up with a circuit for using two cmos chips, and a 555 timer chip, but I cannot get the parts I need for it, and it is a self destroying circuit. Im looking for something that will last me along time.
If someone can come up with the parts needed, and the schematic, I will build it.
It just so happens I did pretty much the same thing for my 8 year old daughter this Halloween. I took an off-the-shelf Darth cheapie costume with a "rubber" control panel on the chest, poked a couple of holes in it, and with 5 LEDs, 5 resistors, a SPST switch, a 12F675 PIC and 2 AA batteries gave her "blinkies" to impress the crowd. It was a big hit. My version randomized the blinks, but that was just a choice in coding. And I only used the PIC because I had a free one handy. The Stamp would handle the duty easily.
In short, creating your version is definitely achievable.
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Truly Understand the Fundamentals and the Path will be so much easier...
The states should be laid out:
Ok so the binary representation of the lights is laid out. Now we can start laying out logic formulas, we are concerned with only on states, I will represent a wanted 0 as the lower case and a wanted 1 in upper case. So for the bottom light's transition from the 1st to second state would be bmT (IOW we want the previous state's bottom light to be off, the middle light to be off and the top light to be on). This is read outload as "not b and not m and t", this is a logical expression. When combining multiple transitions you combine using an "or" (expressed as a +). So to express the entire state of the bottom light (all state transitions) you get:
bmT + Bmt + bMT + BMT (001 or 100 or 011 or 111)
This represents the entire 1st column of the table above, similarly the M column is:
Bmt + BMt + bMt +·bMT
and for the T column:
BmT + bMt + bMT + BMT (the first one is for the "wrap arround" state transition)
Now whenever you have an expression where you are "or"ing two expressions that only differ by one of the bit's alteration, you can simply the expression by writing a single term like so:
bMT + BMT is the same logically as MT, so the three equations can be reduced to:
bmT + Bmt + MT for bottom light,
Bt + bM············ for·middle light,
BT + bM··········· for top light.
Using grey codes as I mentioned in the previous post is why they reduce down to simple logic equations. The reason the logical expression for the bottom light has an extra term is that the transition from state 1 to state 2 is not a grey code transition. Grey codes are a sequence of states where only one bit changes it's state.
Later I will show you how using a D register and some AND, OR and NOT gates to implement the state machine.
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Post Edited (Paul Baker) : 3/21/2006 7:33:23 PM GMT
I havent played with binary before but we breifly passed over it in ITT.
Im not sure how this is applied to a circuit, If Im correct arent IC chips preprogrammed? Does knowing the binary needs of the circuit help you pick out the proper IC chip for the duty?
Or is this part of learning how to·build this?
Sorry just alittle greek to me.
Post Edited (ydeardorff) : 3/21/2006 11:54:35 PM GMT
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