Introduction: Arduino NFL Sound Bite Machine

About: I am a maker, DIY'er, Dad, Engineer, and all around life Long Learner. My mission is to try new things, attempt to do more by learning from others and share my experiences with others for enjoyable experience…

This is a Arduino Uno Powered, SD Sound Card Driven, NFL Sound Bite Machine. Upon turning the unit on, the Dallas Star lights up and a pushbutton in the back will play 13 different highlight sound bites from the Dallas Cowboys History. Of course I am not a Cowboys fan, as this is a gift. If it were mine, it would be a Green Bay Packers Machine. They have many more highlights to choose from since winning the most National Football Championships (13 as of now).

Ok, enough football talk... here is what you need...

1 - Arduino UNO ($10) - you might be abe to use a Leonardo or smaller controller but I had this in surplus.

1 - Arduino SD Sound Board ($5)

1 - SD memory card ($7)

1 - NFL Helmet of your Team ($25)

1 - 3 Watt 2.5" speaker 8 ohm or similar ($2) taken from an old clock radio.

3 - High output Blue LEDs w/ resistors. ($1)

1 - Battery pack holder 4 x AA for 6 volts DC power

1 - Toggle on / off switch

1 - Pushbutton switch - momentary

Wood, plexiglass, paint & glue.

Step 1: Build the Circuit & Box

Build the box and bottom board as fitted together to receive the plexiglass. The circuit is mounted on the bottom board for a good layout of the components and ease in wiring. I had to relocate the terminal strip because the speaker was hitting it in terms of the depth of the box. The battery pack is under the corner as shown in the pictures.

The code was pretty straight forward as found on other sites but I will put my code here:

https://pastebin.com/GC31EWEV

I found the sound bites on YouTube and recorded them to my phone. Then I used two free software sites to prepare the files to be used... First you need to comvert the file from MP$ to WAV. I used a freeware site called CONVERT. Use 8 bit, 16,000 Hz for the settings. Once you have the file in wav format, then edit it, trim it down etc... fade in fade out... etc. etc. with a free sound file editing software called Audacity. Do this for each sound bite you wish to store on the SD Card. I renamed the sound bite files for single digits as the card is particular about file name size and underscores, etc. so I went simple. I referenced this guy's video for the details on how to get this to work:

Once I breadboard tested his circuit, I then built the box and installed it as a complete unit. See pictures for further comments or email me with questions, I'll be glad to help.

Good luck & Go Packers!