The Think Tank

A couple of years ago I made a skeleton that sits up out of a coffin in the yard and yells at unsuspecting trick or treaters.  I used a wireless remote that we use for Christmas lights later in the year and I used the soundboard from a cheap halloween prop to power his voice.

The wireless remote worked perfectly in every trial I put it through, but became very sketchy both years at the height of Halloween night: half the time it would not pop up, and when it did it often did not play the audio like it was supposed to.   My theory for the two problems are these: I think the wireless remotes are getting interference from lots of cell phones in the vicinity, and the voicebox I rigged up was always pretty hokey and needed redoing.

As such, I am making a wired remote for this year and I bought a couple of cheap MP3 players (2 for $15 bucks) on ebay that I will use to power the voice.

The player came about easily enough by removing two small screws, and then I had access to the lone circuit board.  I pulled the center disc off and soldered a couple of wires in its place (one to the outer ring and one to the center circle), which I then wired to a remote.  The push button takes the place of the original Play button and now functions as the on/off switch as well as Play/Pause.  The project took longer than it should have due to a little mishap with the soldering – my solder is very large and my skills are very low, which equals a big ass blop of solder where it doesn’t belong – but in the end I was victorious.

I will of course be adding a much longer wire to the button, and I will probably give it some kind of a housing (most likely PVC pipe), but you can get the general idea of what I’ve put together from the picture.  (You can also see the “blueprints” for the crypt I am building this year in the lower right corner).

Now I just need to wire it so the button also triggers the relay which activates my air valve to make the skele jump up.  That is probably a project for Saturday.