Bathroom Music Box

Building things should be fun

My younger brother called me up one day to chat and his son, my nephew, could be heard in the background telling his dad “big summer blowout”.  It was a semi-popular phrase amongst parents of young children due to the Disney movie Frozen.  In one scene the shop keeper must adapt to a significant change in the weather.  He was selling summer items at the inopportune moment when the lead character, Elsa, turned her town into a winter wonderland.  Eager to offload his out-of-season goods he tells customers “Yoo-hoo, big summer blowout”.  At some point my brother’s humor being what it is used that phrase while his son sat on the toilet and now anytime my nephew needs to go Number Two he runs through their house yelling “yoo-hoo, big summer blowout”.  No amount of re-teaching will convince him to stop.  He thinks it is hilarious.  So did I.  My brother, embracing fatherhood to the fullest, asked me to put it on repeat so that any guest who made use of his facilities could enjoy some potty humor while on the potty.  If nobody has told you that raising kids is the best experience you will ever have in this world - consider yourself now informed.  Go, and procreate. 

There is nothing fancy here.  After my laughter subsided at his request I decided that the technically challenging requirement I would introduce would be to run this as long as possible consuming as little power as necessary between battery swaps.  It runs on an Arduino Nano with the LED indicators removed and in deep-sleep mode until the PIR motion sensor is tripped by a warm body walking across the field of view of the sensor.  It sips sub mW levels of power until one of 7 pre-recorded audio files playback from the 10W speaker.  My brother can easily change the audio clips to any of his choosing by plugging in a micro-USB cable and placing them on the MP3 voice playback device. 

This remained in service for maybe one week - I’m not sure how long his wife actually tolerated such an annoyance.  But the fact that it was on the bathroom counter at all indicated to me that she is infinitely more patient with my brother than he deserves.  

Erik Zweigle

San Jose, CA

USA