DIY Speaker Whoopie Cushion

Turn your DIY Speaker into an Arduino powered Whoopie cushion with this easy to make circuit. By adding a pressure sensor to trigger 8 bit sound files the opportunities for fun are endless. Place under cushions or hide under chairs for a 21st century laugh riot.

DIY Speaker Kit

Arduino Uno 9 volt battery

DIY Electronic Whoopie cushion kit :

Piezo pressure sensor

2 Jumper wires

1M Ohm resistor

Speaker cable

Barrel Connector

Sticky pad

Make circuit up as shown above
Jumper wire (yellow): Speaker SIG to Arduino Pin 3

Jumper wire (green): Speaker GND to Arduino GND

Piezo sensor red/positive to Arduino A0

Piezo sensor black/negative to Arduino GND Resistor from Arduino A0 to Arduino GND

Coding with Arduino:

We’ve attached our piezo sensor to analogue pin A0 Speaker so we’ll now need to use a sketch that takes a reading from that pin. In this sketch we’re reading the value from pin A0 and using that to trigger a sound from pin 3. You will notice LOADS of lists of numbers first, these are the sound files that have been turned into arrays.

Download INO sketch ELECTRONIC WHOOPIE CUSHION INO here and open in the Arduino IDE on a computer and upload via USB to the Arduino.

Turn the speaker on, tap the Piezo sensor and wait. Does it trigger a sound?
No - go back and check the previous steps or watch the video. Yes - you are ready for the next step.

Make sure the speaker is on, and place the Arduino, speaker, battery and amplifier in the DIY Speaker box, leaving the sensor out and ensuring the speaker cable are not twisted and touching.

Place box near or under a chair and place the sensor under a cushion. We has soft seated swivel chairs, and the sensor responded by simply being taped underneath the chair fabric at the front.

There are 6 pre programmed sounds for you to use with your electronic whoopie cushion:

• siren
• bark
• Meow
• Telephone
• Zap
• Wubba

To change the sound, you simply comment out the sound array you no longer want to use, un comment the new sound array and change the 2 name references at the bottom of the sketch. Upload and re-test. This is highlighted in green on the 2 sample codes above, changing from using bark in the left sketch to bark in the right.

For simple safety, do not leave your Whoopie cushion on and unattended. You would be missing the fun any way!

Things you might need to tweak for the perfect Whoopie:

• volume of speaker

• positioning of piezo sensor

• choice of chair

• choice of sound