untitled

17. Screw the covers of the phono plugs back in place and feed each tac-
    tile switch to the proper location.
    We placed one switch in each hand and a switch under the puppet’s nose.


18. Feed the phono jacks behind the puppet, as shown in Figure 7-18.

You might want to secure the switches in place in some fashion. We used

a strip of adhesive-backed Velcro (somewhat wider than the switch) for

the switch behind the nose. We stuck this to the back of the switch, put

the switch in place, and pressed the adhesive back to the fabric, right

under the puppet’s nose. Another idea is to use a few stitches of thread

to stop the switch from moving.

Programming sounds .........................................................................

Even with your picture-perfect puppet and circuit, Merlin won’t murmur a

thing without sounds programmed into the sound synthesizer chip. For this

part, you have to study a bit on the software provided by the manufacturer.

SpeakJet doesn’t provide a lot of documentation for using the software, but

we felt that the chip was the best bet for our puppet because it offers so

many cool options for creating sounds.

Figure 7-18:
Place tactile
switches in
the puppet.

Chapter 7: Murmuring Merlin 159