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[trevortheweather]

Thought I’d share with you my recent attempt at getting some sound effects onto my model boat.  After researching the available sound generation systems and finding they don’t exist or are rather expensive I thought I’d try to cobble together something from the kit I had lying around the house.

The core of my DIY sound generator is an MP3 player which I use to store sounds I have downloaded from the internet.  A ready source of sounds from boats, planes, cars, etc is the www.YouTube.com  site (using the search facility will normally find an example of what you want in a few seconds).

The other part of my sound generator is the X-mini capsule speaker which despite its small size delivers a big sound with lots of bass and is as far away from tinny as you can get.  The X-mini comes with a USB connector (for recharging purposes) and a normal earpiece size connector to link to the MP3 player.  A picture of the above items is shown in the attachment below.

Any MP3 player could be used in this set-up as they are normally battery driven and all have an earpiece socket and volume adjustment and are very cheap to buy these days. The X-mini capsule speaker costs £13.99 at the cheapest internet outlet I could find but I can thoroughly recommend it for both model and leisure use.
The only slightly techie part of the set-up was using some software to convert the YouTube video files into MP3 sound files. Luckily this software is available FREE and in a very easy to use form from
http://www.dvdvideosoft.com/products/dvd/Free-YouTube-to-MP3-Converter.htm
You might also need to edit the created MP3 file to get rid of unwanted sounds or gaps so that when you play the track on the MP3 player (with track repeat/loop set) it sounds continuous and not jumpy. I used the Nero Wave Editor software to tidy my soundtrack but there are many other programs (mostly free) which can be used too.

To re-cap the steps to set up and run the sound generator are :-
1.   Purchase or scrounge an MP3 player & X-mini capsule speaker
2.   Ensure devices are charged up and ready to go
3.   Download and install the free software from dvdvideosoft.com to your PC (see above link)
4.   Search the You-Tube.com website for videos containing the right sound you are after
5.    Run the software and input the URL address of the YouTube video you wish to convert to an MP3 sound track file
6.   Edit the MP3 soundtrack to remove superfluous background noises  and make the track repeatable
7.   Download the final sound track to your MP3 player
8.   Connect the MP3 player to the X-mini capsule speaker
9.   Place the speaker and player inside your model (as close to the expected source as possible) and play the sound track
10.   Scale the volume by ear outdoors
11.   Set the MP3 player to repeat the sound track

I am now using this DIY sound generator in my Classic Runabout speedboat model with the sound of an original full-size boat engine idling as I figured you’d only really be able to hear the speaker when the boat is running at low speed or still in the water anyway. It sounds amazing so I am very chuffed to have ended up with a working system and not had to spend anything in the process.

Obvious limitations to this system over tailor made solutions are a) no automatic change to sound on acceleration, b) no servo link to change sound being played c) no simultaneous sound capability. Will be working to resolve these limitations in due course but for now I’m just content to have some authentic noise coming from my model.

Trevor