an annoying waste of time...

[rossfree]

Hi all,

Sitting here at work... and my mind is wandering. Thought I'd share a gag toy I put together with a 12f675 and still haven't used yet.

My son lives in our basement. In the summer months he would occasionally complain about a cricket that would drive him crazy while he was trying to go to sleep.

If you've ever tried to find a cricket, you'd know it's damn near impossible. You never know when the buggers are gonna make their noise, they only make it in the dark and when they finally do you flip the light on to find them and rip the house up trying.

Since I live vicariously through my 18 year old and he never does any of the annoying things I did when I was his age...

I made a programmable cricket!

It consists of only six parts. The PIC '675, two resistors, a photo sensor (out of a night light) a small piezo beeper from Radio Shack and a 3 volt lithium camera battery (L544).

All the parts fit neatly onto a small circuit board and I bent a wire up and towards one of the PIC pins to make a simplistic push button switch for toggling through the multiple programs I put in it.

The sky is the limit! You can set it to sleep for hours, days or months, only to come on and watch for light changes in the place you've put it. At some point, with simple programming, you can have it chirp, at some random time after the lights go out.

Place it in some out-of-the-way spot in your friends bedroom. It chirps once... maybe twice... then it goes back to sleep until the next night (or a couple of nights later... it is... YOUR... program).

Then it chirps again...

and goes back to sleep (crickets do need their rest too)...

until... then next night...

when it chirps... again...

and goes back to sleep...

Ahh... but after a couple of weeks of this...

your friend DOESN'T go back to sleep...

cause he wants to KILL the little B#ST@RD!

I pulse the piezo such that it REALLY DOES sound like a cricket! And when it sleeps, it comes on every second or so to check the lights and then goes back to sleep conserving energy. It'd probably work for a couple hundred of years on single battery! Ha!

Can you say MOTHER_IN_LAW?

Classroom?

Boss?

Conceal it in a Christmas present... something that might be nice in their bedroom... and program it to start chirping a month later (to cover your tracks :-) !!!


It's the gift that keeps on giving!

LOL

Regards,

Ross

[mister_e]

i did something similar to this to afraid my ex girlfrien at her home... may i say that YEAH

When she build her home, i suggest her to wire the house with speaker wire for paging, ambient music, door bell and bla bla ba. We put a " Mister'e multizone amplifier programmable controller" to do the stuff. Working very good, she was able to have music from tuner, cd, or else sound source from the main controller.

Few weeks before left her, i put a "mister'e ghost/crackle/voice from 4th dimension emulator" wich consist of a few pre-recorded sound on a chip. These sounds where activated randomly by motion detector connected to her home alarm system.

AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHAAAAAA

was fun to heard about her by some of her friends.
"We think she's crazy now... she heard voices and sounds sometimes..."

Well it was a battery powered system... seems to be die as now.... as now ;)

don't do that...

[Acetronics2]

Now, I do understand why you spend so much time on this forum ...

Cheese !!!

Alain

[mister_e]

Hehe not really proud of my sarcastic or a%sho^!e attitude but... 'electronic wise' it's a great application.

I do really appreciate the 'programmable cricket' Well done !!!

[rossfree]

Love the ghost/crackle/voice... great!

Here's one...

Take a CD player... good for say 40 hrs on a couple of batteries. Open it up and solder in a few wires to the control buttons. Connect them to a PIC via appropriate isolation. Connect it in parallel with PC speakers (everyone's got a computer these days).

Throw in a photo sensor.

When the lights go out... at some random time thereafter... the PIC turns on the CD player, toggles through to the appropriate wav file and plays it over the speakers. Then it turns the cd player off and goes back to sleep... until the NEXT time.

Record all the wav files you want ahead of time and burn them to the CD. Limited only by your imagination. From chain rattling, to noisy foreplay, to toilets flushing... or maybe the computer just talks to itself once in a while... **quietly** "damn... found another freakin virus"

I have an old cd player with wires hanging out of it. Yep... been there done that! :-)

I crack myself up!

ahaaahaaahaaaahaahahahahahahahahaha

Ross

[mister_e]

hehe, i was thinking to be the only one who think about those crazy stuff.

My previous was based on a toy who had the capability to record multiple sounds... Sounds was not so great but clear enough for my purpose. I was needed something really small to fit in the wall, back to the home alarm system main panel.

If i have to redo something like this, i'll use those ISD chipcorder... they're easy to use and can provide enough recording time. in SMD everything can fit in a matchbox.

[nomada]

Hi rossfree

What a wonderfull idea you came up, a friend of mine will be married next week and your virtual cricket would be a very good joke for that special night...

Can you put your code available, the reason of asking you this is because during the next week I will attend some spanish clients and as always they will not give me time to write and teste the code for the bug. If you can't no problems, friends as always.

mister_e could sell his idea of creepy sounds to the Turism Bureau of Scotland, they would appreciate to have a new kind of ghosts in their castles.

Have a nice weekend

[rossfree]

Hi Nomada,

I don't have any finished code to give you... like I say, I built the thing but haven't really used it yet. If I get a chance, I'll throw the schematic together and upload that. When I have some finished code I'll upload that as well.

Ross

[Dwayne]

I think one of the best things I did with electronics was with my sister. I had these wireless headsets that transmitted on 900MHZ FM. My sister and her family lived upstairs, and I lived downstairs. I had a complete recording studio in the basement. 16 trak digital Multi-recorder with gigs of harddrive, and the works. I took another 900MHZ transmitter, amplified the signal, put on my voice synthesizer, and reverbed it. Flipping the switch, I lowered my voice and acted like I was talking so someone on a cell phone...I said somehting in the nature of "When that guy that is bald hits the sack tonight, we can take out the two kids and the girl...Make sure you take out the blonde kid first... etc etc. The transmission was short, yet concise... and I cut it off in the middle. There was no doubt my sister knew who the voice was talking about... She came down stairs (while I was laying on a couch) shivering to high heaven. It looked as if she saw a ghost. after about 10 mins, I finally let on to her what happened. (Shame on those little brothers of hers).

Dwayne

[mister_e]

AAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHAAAAAAAAAAAAAA LMAO... is she still talking to you ???