Thank-you for this! I combined this with Lost Wax proton pack build and my son has an epic costume this year. I'm not sure if anyone else ran into this or not, but I did find I had to switch PB1 to pin 11 and SW1 to pin 12 to get my buttons working correctly.
Thank you for the note! It makes me happy to hear people are building these and getting them working. Have a fun and safe Halloween, and I will take a look at that 11/12 pin configuration. 😅
It was likely something that I messed up 😖but thanks again for putting together such easy to follow directions and providing the files so that even a hacker such as myself could make it work 😆
I had some electrical interference from the neon el-wire modules on my pack. Outside of that, the build has been pretty reliable. I'm glad you found this one useful and that it worked! My hope was that people could follow along, and skip ahead if there were concepts they're already familiar with. I think a bit of electronics experience is required, and minimal programming for those who might want to customize the Arduino code a bit.
Same here.. I had to switch it as well to make it work so I think its a mistake in Scotts instructions:) Btw I have added basic lights to free Arduino pins - red lights loop on the pack, on/off red diod on wand and green-yellow diods on wand end when fire is on:D Works like a charm:D
Thought bubble: "What's Scott up to...oh of course! Some amazing s**t!" So awesome! No love for the overly complex and unnecessary state machines (I laughed for like 5 mins)? 🤣🤣😭
Thanks, Muhsin! I'd been meaning to do a full walk-through of this project, and it was nice to finally get done. I'm glad you enjoyed the state machine mention. When writing code for devices like these with a 16 MHz CPU and 32 KB of memory, a higher-level React/Redux-style approach is not exactly a priority. 😂
If you want to skip the “shields up” bit and always have the fire sequence, I think you can set the shield bit to always be high or true. Then the code won’t wait for that first button press.
Thank you @scottschiller I would also like to ask, would it be easy to swap sound effects easily? I was hoping to use the Sound Effects from Ghostbusters Afterlife rather than the 84 pack (technically I'd want to use both and have a switch that switches the sound effects but that sounds ambitious)
@thefwaynes Swapping the .wav sound files shouldn’t be much trouble, but see my notes on the files and flashing them to the device. Sometimes copying from your regular desktop works OK, but not always because computers sometimes put metadata like .DS_Store (i.e., macOS) files onto devices and that can mess up playback when you are trying to use the device. I’m presently mobile and I forget if I covered it, but you should be able to make and flash your own image with your own sounds directly to the device. The only other thing I can think of is the overheat sequence, which relies on a fixed timer of about 14 seconds in the code. If you replace the main “blaster” sound, I recommend a loop of the same duration as what I made to start.
One final question @scottschiller Would it be possible for me to add more toggle sequences. Specifically two wuring up sounds like in afterlife. It wouldn't be affecting the function of the pack but it would just change the hum in the background.
@thefwaynes Easiest thing would be to edit the existing sound files, no code or electronics changes. If you have some examples of the afterlife stuff, I may be able to look.
All of this is amazing and yes I'll be building one in a smaller version into my sons Proton pack but... my question is since I'm new to this, is where do you get the actual sound files from? I can't see where to get them. Also, does it matter what type of speaker you put into this set up? Finally thank you so very much for this, it's an amazing design and so appreciated how you went through it.
Thanks, Oberon. I have source code for the Arduino and related assets on my GitHub: github.com/scottschiller/ghostbusters_proton_pack_sfx If you have a Spirit Halloween or similar pack which already has a little built-in speaker, you could try connecting it directly to the Adafruit sound module's 3.5mm line (headphone) output. However, it likely won't be very loud. You could either add a small 5V-ish amplifier, or try a version of the Adafruit module which has one built-in. Worth noting: I have not tried or tested the version of the Adafruit FX sound board that includes the 2x2-watt amplifier, but I believe it should be otherwise compatible with the "headphone-out" version that I use in this video. Let me know how it goes!
@@scottschiller THANK YOU SO MUCH! I absolutely appreciate your reply and your video, thank you for sharing and giving us all a chance to create something so cool. I'll go subscribe to your channel, wishing you an awesome up coming week. I'll let you know if I can get the components and set it up somehow. I'm currently stuck in Denmark so it's beyond me if I can get the stuff but I'll try. So the sounds used are in your link? For now I think I'll focusing on the proton pack sound not the Neutrino wand as my son doesn't have it. It's a recently released small backpack type from some company, I hope to install it into that. Yes I need to make it somewhat loud so the speakers can be heard. :) Thank you once more
You are most welcome! I have some unrelated fun stuff on the way that I think you might also appreciate. ;) All source code and related sound bits I used are at the Github link, correct. Once you have all the hardware and whatnot set-up, ideally you should be able to recreate what I did by going through the video. Let me know if you get stuck at any point. I know a few folks have mentioned taking on this project, but I haven't heard for certain if anyone has replicated it yet. If you only need the proton pack "hum" sound, just having it power on and play that sound on loop should be a great start for your son's set-up. Let me know how it works out!
@@scottschiller outstanding! Yes I'll try to get my hands on all the components and when I have them I'll show you how I made it work. Thank you once more! Looking forward to more awesomeness from you! I've been wanting to create a smooth swing TRON Disc with lights and sound, but for some reason it's not been that popular. :( I love those discs though. Too bad no one made a real good replica with lights and sound since we know how little NeoPlex Lightsaber circuits are and how much they can do. Have a great week!
Is there any way for it to complete a sound every time the trigger is pulled? Like a laser blast sound plays to completion each time so they stack? Or is that a limitation of the board all together?
This could be done, albeit with some specific limitations. This particular SFX board can play only one sound at a time. You would need to modify the code to basically ignore the button up / “release” events which would typically stop the sound. In order to get stacking effects, you would need a different sort of sound board. I imagine there’s something out there, but I don’t have any specific ones to recommend.
This is a great tutorial. I was hoping to find a video just like this but geared toward the Spengler wand and its effects like you did the Matty wand. Any plans for that....maybe....please.
Thanks. Are the SFX on the Spengler wand not very good, or not high-fidelity? I had thought they sounded better, since that’s a newer device. I don’t have a Spengler one myself, although I did try ordering from Toys-R-Us initially-there was some shopping issue and it ended up bouncing, and I was refunded. 🤷♂️🤨 It’s possible someone could take my Arduino work here and adapt it to the Spengler wand, if you wanted the 1984-era sounds and whatnot. The work would involve getting wiring for the wand’s existing buttons, or perhaps adding some new ones like I did on the Matty wand.
They are great, I just want to mod it like the Spencer wand upgrade kit from Ghost lab 42. But their kits are rare. They tie the wand into the pack so the cyclotron lights changed color, music plays, they changed out the 3 leds to an actual bar graph. Your video was very educational though. I'm watching the Odin Makes weekly build series of the Foam Pack build and is going to Arduino it using Bekonix programming system.
This pack came with the vertical blue bar, and the four red circular lights. Both are separate electronic modules and I didn’t build those. An Arduino could probably run the pack lights as well as the sounds.
Well everything came together pretty well except that it plays the wrong files in spite of their labeling. I saw your note about reformatting the adafruit but, alas, to no avail. T00 is my pack powerup, etc. But when I push the power button, it plays fire_stop then loops pack_powerup. When I fire the first time, instead of shields it plays hum and at rest it plays fire lol. It's all over the place. I'm just going to relabel the files and see if that gets me there. The serial monitor shows everything executing without a hitch and just to be sure I manually triggered 00-05 (disconnected from UG and reset it) and the triggers are correct... it just plays the wrong sound file even though the files are named correctly and match with the program. Beyond the shadow of a doubt it's something I'm doing or my board is janky. Edit: After some poking I noticed one pattern... T00 plays T05, T01 > T00, T02 > T01, T03 > T02, T04 > T03... it's like they're all offset by one with 00 restarting back at 05. Edit: Attempted to rename/reorder the files... didn't affect it at all. Still plays the EXACT same sounds regardless of file name. Extra weird. Is it pulling some kinda meta-data? Edit: Loaded the example sketch for the soundboard and for no apparent reason it has Trigger 0 assigning T05. That explains the offset, but no clue as to why it's doing that. Edit: My new challenge in the meantime is when I push fire, it's playing the whole 18 second clip and not releasing when I release the button. If I hold the button down, debug shows it "finished sound and overheated/restarted" but it just finish out the long sound file and goes back to the hum. No "fire stop", no "holding until overheat and restart". I noticed you made some discoveries in your code that you intended to change but it still seems to match what's downloaded. Were there any changes you made after the fact that may affect this?
Strange! Thanks for the detailed report. Ghosts in the wiring? Heh. Sometimes I had to reformat the SFX board to get all sounds working, and image it vs. trying to copy files from my OS one-by-one. I think when I had trouble, it would be that a given sound just wouldn't play at all. It sounds like you have identified the pattern, but it might help debugging if you make a short series of sounds that say the T## in each. Since the triggers are OK, maybe something is up with the serial connection or code. If you use the Adafruit example programs instead of the GB stuff and do serial control, does the SFX board work OK?
@@scottschiller I used to work I.T. a loooong time ago... and this is the reason why I got out, lol! Swearing toward the heavens and trudging forward on a seemingly ceaseless bug hunt. Fortunately, I can do all things through spite which strengthens me ^_^. So, I disconnected it and used it stand alone. Works perfect. 0-5 trigger as they should when grounding the pins. Someone recommended I add
Ah well... without changing much of anything (definitely not any wiring or input/output values) it all just stopped working. I think I may have damaged the pins somehow. No idea how. Even the original and unmodified sketch won't work. But... I now wash my hands of it and don't think I'm gonna touch it again, Some of us have that "gremlin's curse" where electrical things just cease to function in our presence. Thanks anyway!
Ah! It’s annoying when electronics don’t behave as expected. I had to put a ferrite bead / choke on some of my Arduino wiring, there was some interference sneaking in somewhere. I have heard of some folks who have a natural electrical charge or similar, that makes it difficult for them to work with electronics.
I had same issues when I started my project 2 years ago.. Found out that there was a loose contact on my Adafruit so I soldiered it and everything started to work like a charm:)
The Arduino code should fire an “up” event, and stop the firing sound. Take a look at the console output, if you have debugging on etc., and see if it is attempting to stop, play the “fire stop” sound, and then returning back to the rumble state.
@@scottschiller ⏻ POWER_SWITCH: ON ✓ setPower(1) maybeStopPlaying(): No sound playing? play(PACK_POWERUP) last_played_sound = PACK_POWERUP ⦿ FIRE BUTTON: UP ↑ Debounce: Ignoring delta of 8 Debounce: Ignoring delta of 9 Debounce: Ignoring delta of 9 Debounce: Ignoring delta of 11 Playback ended: PACK_POWERUP maybeStopPlaying(): No sound playing? play(HUM_LOOP) last_played_sound = HUM_LOOP Playback ended: HUM_LOOP maybeStopPlaying(): No sound playing? play(HUM_LOOP) last_played_sound = HUM_LOOP this is the serial output when I hit fire
@scarface7883 Thanks for the debug info. Looks like it thinks the fire button is “up”, e.g., released. Can you check your wiring, and make sure that is connected the right way? It should be reporting the button as “down” first, then “up.”
I did not show the breadboards in detail, my apologies. I used them just to make connections to the switches in prototyping, in part, and to have something to mount the sound board on. The schematic is the “recipe” if you will for the wiring, and you can use whatever kind of breadboard you like.
This is covered in the video. The stock “Matty” wand has its own sounds, but the purpose of my project was to add new and upgraded sounds using a dedicated sound board.
