Not a lot to add that isn’t in the description or in my recent project, HAL 9000. The design was pretty straight-forward; a google search of images gave me enough material to sketch up what seems to me to be a pretty good copy (albeit with a few minor modifications to make design/printing easier). I already had all the needed components, including a PCB, so I made mounts for this and the speakers.
I did briefly consider using a ¼” audio jack/plug for the power cable to better match the show, but I honestly didn’t feel like taking the bit of extra effort this would require. And any case I could think of, one wouldn’t even see it, so why bother?
Printing all the pieces, a little bit of glue for the speaker grill, soldering up the PCB and I was basically done. After I printed all the pieces, I did find a couple things that needed tweaking. Not enough for me to bother reprinting, but I made the adjustments to the file so future prints should look and function better.
For the audio side of things, I grabbed a copy of the theme song as well as pertinent scenes/quotes from the show. For static, I just found a free file online and looped it to different lengths for my needs. I created two folders: 01 has a single copy of all the audio files and 02 has all of the audio I wanted in sequence to create a looping effect. I either call individual files from the 01 folder or the have the 02 folder loop indefinitely.
For coding, I originally figured I’d just write a simple bit of Arduino to make it do what I wanted. But since I ended up using the same everything from my HAL 9000 project, I decided to just use ESPHome as well. I also figured having it connected to my Home Assistant instance would make things a little easier, depending on how I decide to incorporate it for a Halloween prop (using other motion sensors, etc.).
I’m pretty happy with the end result. Took a little longer than I planned, but still not that much effort. And now I have a head start on Halloween!