Movement AND sound?

Hi there!

Sorry for the late reply but here you go...

It's absolutely doable. While the Wave Shield is great I'd use the Adafruit FX sound board as it's smaller, less expensive and much easier to use-
learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-audio-fx-sound-board

I'd use NiMH or NiCD cells to power your servos and sound board as I don't think alkaline batteries will be able to give you the right combination of capacity and current draw. Since you're using an Arduino Uno I'd use a standard 9V to power the Arduino Uno. Use a 6V battery pack to power everything else- power the servos directly from the battery pack and use a 3.3V switching regulator (Pololu makes a good cheap one) to power the sound board (the sound board will run on 3V to 5V.) The reason you want the regulator is to isolate the power supply for the sound board as the servos generate a fair bit of electrical noise. Make sure all of your boards share a common ground!

How you hook it up is have your bend sensors connected to the Arduino Uno on the analog input pins. The Uno will run your code and read the sensors and then make the servos move as well as send a trigger signal to the sound board. Connect the Uno digital out pins to the input pins on the sound board using small switching transistors. The sound board triggers sound whenever one of it's input pins is grounded. In your code on the Uno you tell a digital pin to go high for a few milliseconds- this turns on the transistor, which pulls the the sound board pin to ground and triggers the audio file to play.

I have a tutorial for something like this here- www.instructables.com/id/Arduino-animatronics-make-your-awesome-costumes-m/#step8

The example photos and code show a setup using an Uno with a Wave Shield but the FX sound board is identical.

Hope this helps!

Happy to help! If that tutorial doesn't make sense or you need additional help just let me know!

Can you post your two separate code examples?

OK try this. Make sure when you copy and paste into your Arduino IDE window so it looks exactly the same as shown here. I haven't tested it with servos but it compiles no problem. You can change the pin numbers to whatever you want. This should sweep the servo on pin 9 first and then allow the other servos to follow the sensors. You may need to play around with the delay values a bit.


/*
* Servo sweep and follow
* This example uses servos and analog inputs to move the servos according to the sensor input values and sweeps another servo
*/

#include <Servo.h> // include the servo library

Servo servoMotor1; // creates an instance of the servo object to control a servo
Servo servoMotor2;
Servo servoMotor3;
Servo servoMotor4;
Servo servoMotor5;

int analogPin1 = 0; // the analog pin that the sensor is on
int analogPin2 = 1;
int analogPin3 = 2;
int analogPin4 = 3;

int analogValue1 = 0; // the value returned from the analog sensor
int analogValue2 = 0;
int analogValue3 = 0;
int analogValue4 = 0;

int servoPin1 = 5; // Control pin for servo motor
int servoPin2 = 6;
int servoPin3 = 7;
int servoPin4 = 8;
int servoPin5 = 9;

int pos = 0; // variable to store the servo position for servo motor 5

void setup() {
servoMotor1.attach(servoPin1); // attaches the servo on pin 5 to the servo object
servoMotor2.attach(servoPin2); // attaches the servo on pin 6 to the servo object
servoMotor3.attach(servoPin3); // attaches the servo on pin 7 to the servo object
servoMotor4.attach(servoPin4); // attaches the servo on pin 8 to the servo object
servoMotor5.attach(servoPin5); // attaches the servo on pin 9 to the servo object
}

void loop()
{
for(pos = 0; pos <= 180; pos += 5) // goes from 0 degrees to 180 degrees
{ // in steps of 1 degree
servoMotor5.write(pos); // tell servo to go to position in variable 'pos'
delay(15); // waits 15ms for the servo to reach the position
}
for(pos = 180; pos>=0; pos-=5) // goes from 180 degrees to 0 degrees
{
servoMotor5.write(pos); // tell servoMotor5 to go to position in variable 'pos'
delay(15);
}


analogValue1 = analogRead(analogPin1); // read the analog input (value between 0 and 1023)
analogValue1 = map(analogValue1, 0, 1023, 0, 179); // map the analog value (0 - 1023) to the angle of the servo (0 - 179)
servoMotor1.write(analogValue1); // write the new mapped analog value to set the position of the servo

analogValue2 = analogRead(analogPin2);
analogValue2 = map(analogValue2, 0, 1023, 0, 179);
servoMotor2.write(analogValue2);

analogValue3 = analogRead(analogPin3);
analogValue3 = map(analogValue3, 0, 1023, 0, 179);
servoMotor3.write(analogValue3);

analogValue4 = analogRead(analogPin4);
analogValue4 = map(analogValue4, 0, 1023, 0, 179);
servoMotor4.write(analogValue4);

delay(15); // waits for the servo to get there
}

OK, now if you remove the sweep function code section in the loop does the code for the sensors work? If that is the case then the sweep section of the loop is just repeating before the sensor part of the loop can take place. The trick is to get them to work at the same time and Arduino typically isn't very good at that. Usually Arduino can only do one thing at a time- it has to complete a function first and then move onto the next function. So you might be able to have the servo sweep, then stop and then have servos move according to sensor inputs for a specific length of time- but you probably cannot do both functions at the same time. The trick is getting the Arduino to see the sweep and sensor parts of the loop as two separate functions so it completes the sweep part, then does the sensor part and then repeats the entire loop.

What about if you put the sensor function part of the code before the sweep function in the loop? Also try bracketing the sensor part of the loop. Next try lengthening the delay at the end of the sensor part. Try those changes and see what happens. Also what release Arduino IDE are you using? I wrote the original code back under Arduino 22 and quite a bit has changed since then.

As soon as I can get some sensors and servos set up I'll get on this and help figure it out. If all else fails you can get a $10 Pro Mini and just have that blink the eyes every five seconds in a timed loop. That way it's guaranteed to work regardless of what all the other servos are doing.

Figured it out! After a fair bit of modifying code and testing I confirmed my belief that writing the sweep code using a delay function was screwing up the timing- the Arduino can't do both tasks with multiple delay functions. Any time you write a delay it stops the processor from any other task so it works fine when you want things to work sequentially but it's terrible when you want to perform multiple tasks at the same time.

The delay written into the sweep code caused the processor to wait until the servo completed the sweep. When it does that it can no longer read the sensor during the delay period. When I was testing it I wrote various delays and saw how it affected the servo movement for both the sweep and follow code snippets. So I went searching for a sweep code snippet using a timer function (millis) in order to get rid of the delay function and then mashed up the code here. I've fully tested this with sensors and servos and it works great. Your sensor following servos are on pins 4,5,6,7 and your sweep servo is on pin 9.


/*Honus
Analog servo sweep and follow
/* www.bajdi.com
Sweeping a servo with a switch case and without the delay function
*/

#include <Servo.h>

Servo servo;

unsigned long previousMillis;
byte servoSweep = 0;

Servo servoMotor1; // creates an instance of the servo object to control a servo
Servo servoMotor2;
Servo servoMotor3;
Servo servoMotor4;

int analogPin1 = 0; // the analog pin that the sensor is on
int analogPin2 = 1;
int analogPin3 = 2;
int analogPin4 = 3;

int analogValue1 = 0; // the value returned from the analog sensor
int analogValue2 = 0;
int analogValue3 = 0;
int analogValue4 = 0;

int servoPin1 = 4; // Control pin for servo motor
int servoPin2 = 5;
int servoPin3 = 6;
int servoPin4 = 7;

void setup(){
servo.attach(9);

servoMotor1.attach(servoPin1); // attaches the servo on pin 4 to the servo object
servoMotor2.attach(servoPin2); // attaches the servo on pin 5 to the servo object
servoMotor3.attach(servoPin3); // attaches the servo on pin 6 to the servo object
servoMotor4.attach(servoPin4); // attaches the servo on pin 7 to the servo object
}

void loop(){
if (millis() >= previousMillis){
previousMillis = previousMillis+100; // each case gets 100ms
servoSweep = servoSweep +1;

if (servoSweep == 7){
servoSweep = 1;
}
}
switch (servoSweep){
case 1:
servo.write(0);
break;
case 2:
servo.write(60);
break;
case 3:
servo.write(120);
break;
case 4:
servo.write(180);
break;
case 5:
servo.write(120);
break;
case 6:
servo.write(60);
break;
} // end of sweep

analogValue1 = analogRead(analogPin1); // read the analog input (value between 0 and 1023)
analogValue1 = map(analogValue1, 0, 1023, 0, 179); // map the analog value (0 - 1023) to the angle of the servo (0 - 179)
servoMotor1.write(analogValue1); // write the new mapped analog value to set the position of the servo

analogValue2 = analogRead(analogPin2);
analogValue2 = map(analogValue2, 0, 1023, 0, 179);
servoMotor2.write(analogValue2);

analogValue3 = analogRead(analogPin3);
analogValue3 = map(analogValue3, 0, 1023, 0, 179);
servoMotor3.write(analogValue3);

analogValue4 = analogRead(analogPin4);
analogValue4 = map(analogValue4, 0, 1023, 0, 179);
servoMotor4.write(analogValue4);

delay(15); // waits for the servo to get there
}

Whoops!! I didn't see your last post here until after I posted again
This is awesome! you are a life saver for sure!! Thank you so much for all your effort!