I’m creating a permanent-outdoor, interactive, rock climbing installation aimed at making rock climbing accessible to the blind. I was wondering if there is any easy way to connect a proximity sensor like Zio Ultrasonic Distance Sensor - HC-SR04 (Qwiic), Ultrasonic Distance Sensor - HC-SR04 or ZX Distance and Gesture Sensor to the Spectacle Sound Kit? And what sensor might suit my purposes the best?
The idea is when motion is detected at around 40cm the speaker is turn on at 40db and the closer the hand gets to the sensor the progressively louder the sound gets is until the climber’s hand is about 5cm and sound level is at 70or 80db. At 3-4cm (end of sensor range and when the climber’s hand is on the hold) the sound is turned off. The wall will have around 24 - 50 holds in total.
Note: I have support from confident coders and people confident with electronics but I am not very experienced. I am also recording my own sounds for the rock climbing wall.
I do not think the Spectacle boards will be a good option for your microcontroller for this project. The audio-based programming firmware on the Spectacle Director Board limits it to what is available in the [Spectacle Web App so you cannot easily add in another sensor like the HC-SR04 or the ZX Distance and Gesture Sensor.
What will probably be easier is to use one of those sensors connected to an Arduino or similar microcontroller along with an audio board like the [Qwiic MP3 Trigger or one of the other [Audio Boards SparkFun carries. Something like the [WAV Trigger could work as well but it may be overkill for your project. To get started with either of these boards, I would recommend reading through their respective Hookup Guides linked on their product pages.