Making an Anti-Swear Box!

My child is learning to talk and I don't want him picking up any bad habits... so I made an Anti-Swear Box! This started as a simple idea for a button you could press to give you alternative words to swearing and the whole project just got out of hand!

• Adafruit Audio Effects Board- 16MB
• Roller Lever Switch
• Spring
• Sheet Ply
• Metal offcuts
• metal bar
• metal plate
• PTFE (a small plastic chopping board would do)
• Wires
• A Powered Speaker
• AA Batteries and holder or Mini USB power cable
• Polymorph
• A Unicorn
• Rainbows (and peace and joy)!

The project is built around an AdaFruit Audio Effects Board. These things are lots of fun and simple to use. You don't need to code them, just name the files you add in a certain way and that will determine how the board plays them. They come in 2MB or 16MB, so depending on how many sounds you want to play will depend on the size you need. I opted for the 16MB one. The board will play either WAV or Ogg Vorbis sounds. I struggled to get it to play the Ogg files, so opted for WAV.

I recorded myself saying my alternative swear words and then renamed the file. The sound board can do a few things with these files depending on how you name them:

Basic Trigger – The audio file will play when the matching trigger pin is connected to ground momentarily. Name the file TnnX.WAV (or.OGG) where “X” is the pin number you want to allocate the sound to.

Hold Looping Trigger -The audio will play while the trigger pin is held low, it will loop until the pin is released. Name the file TnnXHOLDL.WAV (or .OGG) 

Latching Loop Trigger – The audio will start playing when the button is pressed once and repeats until the button is pressed again. Name the file TnnXLATCH.WAV (or .OGG) 

Play Next Trigger – Have up to 10 files play one after the other by naming them TnnNEXTX.WAV up to TnnNEXTX.WAV (or .OGG). It will start with #0 and each time the button is momentarily pressed, it will play the next sound until it gets through all of them, then it will go back to #0.

Play Random Trigger – Like the Play Next trigger, but it will play up to 10 files in random order TnnRANDX.WAV up to TnnRANDX.WAV (or .OGG) every time the button is pressed momentarily.

It has 11 trigger pins and so you can connect up to 11 buttons or switches to play different sounds. I wanted to use one switch to trigger different sounds so I went for the 'Play Next Trigger' This meant I could have up to 10 different Alternative Swear Words.

These boards as a nice entry level into electronics (although the pins need to be soldered in if you are using them). To start you plug them into your laptop or computer and they appear as a memory stick would. You then just copy over your files (names correctly) and then once you have wired them up the sounds play once triggered.

To hear your sounds you have two options:

• 2 x 2W Class D Amplifier - Get booming instantly, optional baked in stereo amplifier that can drive 4-8 ohm speakers, up to 2.2W with only 1% distortion. You can connect up headphones if desired
• Stereo line out - Headphones, powered speakers or even wire up one an amplifiers to make loud sounds.

I opted for the stereo line out and used a powered speaker with headphone connector.

I prototyped on a breadboard before soldering directly to the board once I was happy it all worked. I used AA batteries when prototyping but in the final Box I powered using a mini USB to USB cable. I activated my board using roller lever switch.

Here is a tutorial from AdaFruit showing you how to wire up the board etc.

This is the hardest step to write up. I built the High Striker from bits of scrap I had in the workshop. I started off by making a little seesaw that moved freely up and down. I added some metal bar as the 'tower' and made the 'puck' from a piece of PTFE chopping board- my first prototype was in green but for the final box I used white. I then attached a spring to one end so that it naturally wanted to go to it's 'downward' position. Usually a hight striker is struck with a hammer or mallet but I built this part of the mechanism into my wooden enclosure box.

Laser cut out of ply, the box did a few things- hid my 'botched' high striker mechanism, held the 'hammer' to activate the high striker and gave my Anti Swear Box it's name.

I drew the box in Fusion 360, before borrowing a friends laser cutter to cut the pieces out. The box had a middle horizontal piece to keep the 'hammer' straight. The sections of ply were glued using wood glue and then clamped until dry.

The 'hammer' was made by tapping a thread into a metal rod and screwing a bolt into one end. The metal rod sits slightly above the high side of the see saw (inside the high striker). On the section of rod that sticks out the box I made a red polymorph button.

Note- Polymorph is also lots of fun to make with, its small reusable plastic beads that you heat in hot water and can them mould. Here is a video where we used it to make finger spinners over on Kids Invent Stuff.

The polymorph button sits on a spring. When the button is pressed the spring contracts (hitting the roller level switch) and the metal bolt activated the seesaw which sends the PTFE 'puck' flying up the pole.

When I started making the box I was going to have a little sign pop up that said '@$#!&' but as I started to putting it all together I changed my mind. I opted for a unicorn on top of the high striker and added rainbows to my 'puck'. I also painted the box blue, added some aluminium trim, a few signs and black arrows and my box was complete. You can see how the test of it went in the video linked above!