This project used Adafruit wave shield, Sonic range sensor, two motor controllers (IBT-2 and IMS-2 more on this later), LEDs, two micro switches.  My plan was to test each of these separately, I've worked with all of them in the past (except the IMS-2 motor controller), but wanted to refresh my memory.

The plan was to have a master Arduino then have it control the Arduino with the Wave shield.  Their are limited pin's available with the Wave Shield.

I build a Wave Shied in the past and planned on using it.  I couldn't get the Wave shield working again.  I suspect the problem was acidic solder flux, next time I will clean the flux off after finishing a project.  I ordered a new one and with the speaker.

Then I purchased the Captain Underpants theme song to the movie, I also found the audio of a toilet flushing.  I converted these so they would run on the Arduino.  I also soldered wires for the speaker to the shield.  When I tested this arrangement I was not happy with the speaker it was not very loud.  I had a cheap portable speaker that I tested and the sound was much better, louder.

I then wanted to test being able to trigger the Wave Shield from the master Arduino.  My plan was to simple set a Pin high.  First I connected a micro switch to the wave shield arduino to use that to trigger it.  I connected the switch to pin 12.  Immediately had problems when the wave shield started up.  After posting a question on the Adafruit forum, I got a quick answer.  Pin 12 is a reserved pin used to read the memory card.  I then read the spec sheet (like I should have from the start), I then used 8 to trigger.  This test worked after this change.  Then I went to trigger it from the master arduino.   I spent an Saturday afternoon trying to get this to work unsuccessfully.  I took a break came back and looked at it Sunday and released that I had not setup up a common ground between the two arduino's.  Once I setup common ground the test worked.

Testing the IBT-2 motor controller was very easy and worked first time.  The IMS-2 (I have the C version) was a different story.  I could find very little documentation on this, everything I found was for the IMS-1.  I followed the documentation for the IMS-1 setup, the test didn't work.  It was right after this I released the Arduino was bricked.  What I discovered is that the IMS-2 gets power from the high side automatically,  when you put power to the high side you will see a LED light up on the motor controller.  The IMS-1 (and IBT-2) both get power from the low side.  The solution was simple do NOT connect the power to the VIN pin on the IMS-2 from the arduino.   From now on I'm going to use the IBT-2 motor controller, it is very well documented.

Lastly I need to work out the details of my power.  I planned on run two 12v motor cycle batteries connected in Parallel.  I also needed 5v power.  I used a LM-7805-CT Linear Regulator and two micro capacitors on either side.  This worked about extremely well, so well that I built a second one to use for another project.