# Hacking a Kids' Toy w/ Arduino?



## highbury (Nov 5, 2009)

Hey everyone,
I'm a noob on the technological side of things and I was hoping that someone might be able to help me out. I have a kids' toy that I want to use for a prop that I'm building.

This small battery-operated assembly is from a child's animated stuffed animal. It's a push-button activated motor with a post that moves side-to-side, along with an audio track. When activated, it runs through a one minute routine of movement and sound. For my needs, I have pulled it apart and cut the two grey wires and removed the small speaker as I don't need the audio. I have also cut the wires for the push-button and wired them together, so now the one-minute routine starts when I turn on the battery pack.










My question is can this be connected to an Arduino in any way? I'm thinking about picking one up and dabbling with it. I want to set this motor up, along with an mp3 track (which I know I'll also have to pick up an audio shield) and have it all triggered by a PIR sensor.

I'm not dead set on an Arduino, so any other recommendations are also welcome.

Thanks!!


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## JeffHaas (Sep 7, 2010)

This is actually an easy project for a microcontroller. You'll need:

- A microcontroller (Arduino is fine, you program it in a variation of C. I can provide you with starting code that does almost the same thing you want.)
- A relay module (the relay will close the circuit and turn on the toy so it goes through its routine, it's an electronically controlled button.)
- An mp3 playback module (The Adafruit WAV shield will work, so will the Tenda MP3 board that's discussed here a lot)
- A PIR motion sensor
- Plus some wires to connect all the parts.

Get an Arduino, there are many places on the web.
Look on ebay for "Arduino relay" - there are tons of these and they're cheap. You probably only want one or two relays on the board, they can come with a lot more!
Look at the Adafruit WAV shield (needs soldering) or the Tenda MP3 board, or the Electronics 123 board:

http://www.adafruit.com/ - search for "WAV shield", they also now have MP3 shields
http://www.mdfly.com - search for "mp3"
http://www.electronics123.com/kits-and-modules/Audio-Effects-and-Sound-Modules/ - look at the 75 second USB recording module, or the 300 second version for more options. If you want to use one of these, get a relay module with several relays on it so you can have the Arduino trigger the relay instead of the button.

PIRs are at Radio Shack or on ebay. Search ebay for "arduino pir".

Hookup wire - search ebay for "dupont wires" to find pre-made wires with male/male or male/female ends, this will save a lot of time!

And go to http://arduino.cc/ and download the software, and take a look at the tutorials, to get an idea of what you're getting into.

You will also probably need a soldering iron, wire cutters, solder and a few more things like that.


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## Retroplayer (Feb 22, 2013)

For this application, you don't really even need a microcontroller. A PIR sensor module will output a "discrete" signal, meaning on or off. You could simply use that output to trigger the prop through a relay. And if you look at those mdfly MP3 modules, they have direct button inputs to play an audio file directly with just a switch. So using a double pole (DPST) relay could trigger both at the same time from the output of the PIR module.


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## JeffHaas (Sep 7, 2010)

That would work too. Remember, with electronics, there is always more than one way to skin the cat. (Dead, alive, undead...)


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