# Need help with talking skull



## Indyandy (Sep 7, 2005)

Have a Gemmy skull with motor and did the Instructable hack. Darklord sent me his beep track because I lost mine. (Thanks Darklord) Anyway I cant get it to work right. I am using a cd player for input and I ordered the premade boards from Jeff Wheat. Here is what I know:
1)With skull on/ board off/ skull plugged into board= eyes on, jaw open constant.
2)Skull on/ board on/ audio on (set on beep track)= eyes blink to beeps, jaw stays open. (cd player has to be set to full volume)
3) Skull on/ board on/ audio on (set to hear the song)= eyes barely blink and no jaw.
I tried reversing the skull battery wires and nothing worked. I have two boards and they both work the same. How can something that looks so simple be so hard?


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## Otaku (Dec 3, 2004)

Are you sure you reversed the battery wires and not the motor wires? Reversing the motor wires only changes the direction of rotation, but not the polarity of the power going into the MOSFET.


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## Indyandy (Sep 7, 2005)

Yup, I have taken the wires off the skull battery pack several times. I think I found my problem. The track I was using wasn't working. The beeps were not loud enough. Jeff sent me his demo track and it worked. Looks like I have to remake my track again.


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## DarkLore (Jan 25, 2009)

My skull tracks have prop audio on one channel (left or right) and the servo control on the other. I use Cowlacious Scary Terry boards with a sensitivity setting to adjust for the servo reaction.


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## JeffHaas (Sep 7, 2010)

Good to hear!

I have both the Cowlacious board and the Gemmy board. I found that they respond to different beeps, and make my beep tracks differently for each board.

IndyAndy - You should be able to open the sample mp3 I sent you in Audacity, and just copy the beeps from it into the track for your mp3. Then copy/paste them into the right spots for your animations.


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## Otaku (Dec 3, 2004)

JeffHaas said:


> Good to hear!
> 
> I have both the Cowlacious board and the Gemmy board. I found that they respond to different beeps, and make my beep tracks differently for each board.


Very true, I can use a 440Hz tone with Cow boards, but had to boost the beeps to a 100kHz tone to be effective with the Gemmy.


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## Indyandy (Sep 7, 2005)

The beep track I was using is too low. Can I take the track I have and change the beeps to a higher hz? I would be using Audacity and I think Darklord made the track with Vixen.


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## Otaku (Dec 3, 2004)

Not sure. I tried doing that with GoldWave and couldn't, I had the rebuild the beep tack with the new frequency.


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## JeffHaas (Sep 7, 2010)

Try opening the track you have, and the one I sent you, in Audacity at the same time. You should get two stereo tracks on different screens.

Split both tracks into dual mono tracks - click the drop-down on the upper-left corner of the track.










Then you can copy the higher beeps from the one I sent into the lower mono track you want to use.


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