It has been almost a year since I started the activity board project. So it is time to wrap it up. As said in the last activity board blog post, the only thing left to do was to finish the interface …

But before I work on the interface, there was one hardware part I needed to add: SOUND!

The Raspberry Pi has a headphone jack which allows you to connect a headphone. But because I wanted a bit more volume, I needed to incorporate an amplifier. Luckily Adafruit produces a very nice speaker bonnet with integrated amplifier.

I wanted to connect some sleek looking enclosed speakers. But since the AliExpress reseller had some issues shipping them, I took the easy route and connected an old satelite speaker form a home cinema set. I must say it sounds nice and warm.

And with the temporaty speaker in place (which will obviously will be the permanent solution), the hardware part is done.

Installing the Speaker Bonnet took some time. But luckily Adafruit has a lot of awesome documentation available. One issue I couldn’t solve in the configuration, is the occasional plopping sound whenever a sound starts or stops. I used a simple hack, by continuously playing a soundclip with sounds above the 20khz (This means I can’t hear this sound, and might scare away some stray neighbour cats as an added bonus).

And then we finally arrive at the last item on our to do list: Enzo’s Interface. To make the system modular and future proof, I added an interface selector which allows me to switch between multiple interfaces. This way I can add new interfaces when he grows older. The interface selector is controlled with the rotary encoder and activated with a secret key combination.

For Enzo’s interface I opted to recreate a mobile interface which allows him to ‘contact’ all of his TV friends.

By rotating the rotary encoder he can select the friend he wants to contact, and by pressing the illuminated arcade buttons, he can 'call’, 'message’ or 'facetime’ the selected friend.

When one of the illuminated buttons is pressed, a small sound clip of the corresponding cartoon is played.

The only thing left to do, is to hand over the controls to Enzo. Enjoy little buddy! I really hope you love it as much as I love you.

PS. If you want to take a peek at the software, check out the repository on GitHub.



Read all posts in this series:

Part 1: Enzo’s Control Room

Part 2: Building the Box

Part 3: Fire up the Lasers!

Part 4: Spray Away!

Part 5: Push the button!

Part 6: Assembling the panel

Part 7: The dial on the board goes round and round

Part 8: Take control!

Part 9: It’s all about the code!

Part 10: Bake me some Pi!

Part 11: The Final Touch