Marine Fog Horns

[hoytedow]

Originally Posted by WickedGood

plays any tune on request!

Was Clinton in town?

[DianneB]

The MP3 idea occurred to me last winter so being an electronics designer by profession and wanting something unique for my boat I started working with it. I couldn't figure out an easy way to use something like an MP3 player or laptop to get different "voices" quickly, at the push of a button, so I did my own version from scratch.

It uses a Read Only Memory (pre-programmed with 32 different sounds), a Digital to Analogue Converter, and a 20 Watt amplifier that plays through the paging horn. It simply has a selector switch to select the voice and, at the push of a button, plays a 4 second sound clip.

I plan a new version this winter that will accommodate sound clips of varying lengths.

Unfortunately, programming the different sounds into the memory is not simple, not something the average user could do, but maybe for the 3rd iteration I will try to develop a PC interface to make the E-Horn (as I call it) programmable by the user.

The current E-Horn has the following sounds:
Ferry Horn
Arooga Horn
Battle Stations
Gun Shot
Fog Horn
Laser Fire
Alarm
Sneeze
Car Horn
Door Bell
Duck
Jet
Machine Gun
Rooster
Dog
Creak
Banjo
Scream
Flush
Evil laugh
Yodel

No other boat on the lake sounds like mine and the "Ferry Horn" is my favourite - it makes my 24 foot cruiser sound like a 124 foot ship LOL!

[hoytedow]

No galloping stampede?

[FAST FRED]

Remember the frequency of the horn is legally related to the size of the vessel.

Tho it would be great to have the horn from an air craft carrier that 100A of 440V -3 phase is sure gona be hard on the inverter and batt bank.

http://www.kahlenberg.com/sound.html

FF