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keychain sound mods

Hi all,

Was wondering if anyone here is familiar with those little toy devices for your keychain that when you push a button, it gives you some sort of sound or phrase.

What I'm looking for is how to easily access the preamplifier signals. I want to add my own sounds and phrases to the unit. It has the features I'm looking for: cheap, small, low power consumption, and loud. I know these things usually have a custom blob IC, but i'm hoping the amplifier sections can be accessed.

The types of units I'm talking about are like the "Yak-Bak", the Napoleon Dynamite movie phrase thing, the multicolored 8-button sound effecter, etc.

Any helpful advice would be appreciated. (except for 'build your own amplifier' (why reinvent the wheel?))

Regards,

--Electro-- aka The Other David

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Reply to
oicurmt
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Amplifier circuits (even very tiny ones that run on low power) are a dime a dozen. Not clear how "access to the blob" or "access to the preamp" will help you "add sounds" to them, however. Those sounds are typically hard-coded into the chips themselves and not changable by you or anyone else here.

There ARE units that can record sounds for playback at the push of a button, but not the pre-programmed mass-market ones you are asking about.

Reply to
Richard Crowley

Hi Rich,

I am hoping that just the recorded sounds are on that chip, and if i input my own line level audio signal to certain traces (or discrete components) I can get it to directly play it at higher volume... sort of like adding an auxillary jack to a stereo receiver, it bypasses the main source of the sounds (AM/FM, etc.) and just amplifies what coming in externally...

Hope that helps,

--L'ectro-- ww.dprg.org

Reply to
oicurmt

To access the playback signal, I would suggest simply replacing the piezo speaker with a connection to a line-level amplifier input. You may need a good bit of low-pass filtering, or you may not.

Are you talking about devices that also record? In that case, find the tiny microphone, remove it, and experiment with feeding low-level audio in.

Reply to
mc

often the amplifier is on the chip.

Bye. Jasen

Reply to
Jasen Betts

These things tend to be full-custom. You can't expect to generalize this kind of information across the whole class of gadgets. If you want to modify a unit, you will need to fully scope out the exact unit you want to start with. If it has a "blob" chip, it makes an sort of modification practically impossible for the average person without very specialized facilities.

Perhaps you have taken a wrong turn in attempting so solve some (unstated) objective?

Reply to
Richard Crowley

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