Little Soundie Turn On Without Button Press

Sensors Sound & Audio
1

I just recently purchased the little soundie. I had used the noisy cricket before and I figured they’d work well together; I could use the switch (on the potentiometer) to power on the soundie adjust the volume, etc. And that works, kind of. The switch on the pot will power on the soundie board (i.e. the light goes on), but it won’t actually make the board work; you have to push the little button on it. After searching through these forums, it sounds like there’s not an easy way to get this board to work unless you wire up a microcontroller or come up with some other circuit to simulate the button press using the PB pin. I wanted to check to see if I missed anything because if that’s the case, it makes this board pretty much worthless without hooking it up to a microcontroller.

Thanks for any advice folks can offer.

2

You will need something to fool the board into thinking the button has been pressed momentarily, but not appear to the board that the button is always pressed.

Try connecting a 0.1uF capacitor and 1M ohm resistor in parallel and then connect those between PB and VIN. That should create a small pulse on PB to emulate a short button press, but won’t be long enough to reset the Little Soundie.