Amplifiers
Scare your enemies with a Pi prank box
Yes, Les Pounder is very scary, but buying OEP3W amplifiers from AliExpress is worse. He wonders what pranks he can pull with them…
OUR EXPERT
Les Pounder is associate editor at Tom’s Hardware and a freelance maker for hire. He blogs about his adventures and projects at http://bigl.es.
YOU NEED
Pi Pico or Pico W
OEP3W amplifier
Speaker
Half breadboard
PIR sensor
10K pot
9x M2M jumper wires
Code: https://bit.ly/lxf313pitut1
The Raspberry Pi Pico is an exceptionally cheap and resourceful little board. For T £4, we get a powerful microcontroller and plenty of GPIO pins. With a few extra components, we can build all manner of fun projects. In this tutorial, we’re using CircuitPython, a version of Python for microcontrollers, to play MP3 files. We need an amplifier, and the OEP3W at £2 from AliExpress, will do the job. But we’re not making a music player. Instead, we are using a sensor to detect movement and trigger an alert sound to play. Scaring away friends, family or next door’s cat.
We’ll go through how to wire up the circuit using a breadboard, then write the code to make it work. We’re using a Raspberry Pi Pico Win this build, chiefly because we had one to hand, but a £4 Pi Pico would be a cheaper and better option.