A Talking Seat - Script Help (Raspberry Pi)

Question

Project Aim: Create a seat that when you sit on it, audio starts. When you leave, the audio stops. Next time someone sits down, the audio begins again. Each time it is a random track, different from the last.

Context: Outside with access to power

How it can work (I think): I’m wondering if it is possible with using a Raspberry Pi and PIR Sensor (plus some other bits and pieces?). Basically, when someone moves into the range of the PIR sensor, this event is detected and sends an input to a GPIO pin on the Pi. With the right script, this can then fire an event – e.g. play a random audio file from micro SD card. Does this sound correct/doable?

Help!: I believe its not too abstract an idea or function, that has probably been done before. But I just can’t seem to find exactly what I’m looking for, where someone has already written a script I can use/modify. So I’d love to know, do you think this idea is doable/achievable? And, where acatly do you recommend I can track down a pre-made script/instruction on making it a reality.

If you know someone who could write such a script, please do put me in contact.

Thanks!

Answer 1

This is actually not that hard to realize. You have to come up with an idea for a sensor that you can build into your chair, I would recommend just a simple one that works like a push button: when someone sits down, you got a connection the RasPi can recognize. After doing that make sure, your RaspberryPi has power, a GPIO connection to the sensor and speakers attached. The Script is also quite simple and its structure would look like this:

import RPi.GPIO as GPIO
import simpleaudio # just as an example, was the first one I found online

sound = 'path/to/your/soundfile.wav'

def playSound(directory):
    play = simpleaudio.WaveObject.from_wave_file(directory)
    play.play()

try:
    while True: 
        if GPIO.input(numberofyourgpio):
            play_sound(sound)

except KeyboardInterrupt:
    pass

Finally you can set this to start after booting the RaspberryPi and you will never have to care about it not being started anymore.