The Norwegian maple outside my house is falling apart. This summer a good sized chunk of it fell from the tree, including this part where a Northern Flicker nested. I saved the piece and turned it into another ersatz nature piece.
The wood is super rotten and almost the consistency of paper at this point. I found a scrap piece of wood left from the LightLogo Neopixel Grid and screwed it into the back of the wood to provide a good place to install the hook.
I found a great video of a Northern Flicker and used youtube-dl to download the video. After splitting the audio I brought it into Audacity and cut a short section of its call and drumming to use. I exported the clip as an 8000hz mp3 file. I used the Encode Audio application to change the audio sample into the series of numbers needed for the Arduino sketch.
Like the Ersatz Nature: Log project I used an Arduino sketch running on an Adafruit Trinket. This is not a high fidelity way to play back audio: an Arduino mp3 shield, for example, would produce better sound. But with these Ersatz Nature pieces I purposefully used extremely lo-fi audio playback to emphasize the simulation.
I made a couple changes in the sketch. First, I added timer function. I also turned off the looping function in the sketch and instead put my code in the void(loop) section of the sketch. The sketch waits anywhere from 3 to 10 seconds to play the sample again.
The speaker is wrapped in some fabric to hold it firmly in the hole.
I enjoy when projects present themselves like this one, with the literal windfall of a piece of wood that suggested its former occupant and another place to put a speaker.
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