[Otaku]

I'm going to try to build a talking Mr. Thrifty this year. I plan to have it clothed in a half-rotted little girls dress, and loop a soundtrack that repeats something like "Will you come play with me?" in a sweet little girls voice while it sits near the edge of the graveyard. I'm going to try to use a second input to the servo board that is a loud scream. This second input would be triggered by a PIR that is very directional and only triggers when the TOT is really close to the "little girl". The scream would be louder than the voice track and so would wash out the spoken words and drive the servo to max position. I'm also thinking of having LED eyes light up for the duration of the scream. So, has anyone tried using dual inputs to a servo board, and what results did you get? All advice is appreciated!

 

[thedudedrummer]

I know very little about this subject... as I am just getting into animated skulls right now... but my suggestion would be to buy a cheap mixer board and combine the two imputs into one output... so that way the voice is heard... and by playing the secondary track it plays with it... by tweaking volume and levels on the mixer this should be easy... or just get a Y audio cable going from 2fem mono to 1male mono... and just tweak the levels on the player... I hope this answers your question... Mike

 

[thedudedrummer]

oh... and an easy way to get the eyes to light up only when the servo maxes out for the scream is to place a pressure switch either mounted to the jaw or so that it makes contact with the servo control arm at max swing... this way it will not go off before the scream... leaving the subtle movements of come play with me to dark eyes... thats just the way I'd jimmyrig it... no offense to jimmy lol

 

[Otaku]

It occurred to me this AM that I can use the PIR to switch a relay that allows the second soundtrack to go to the servo board. The same relay will also light the eyes. This is gonna be fun!