Exploding Kittens Soundboard

The people from Exploding Kittens (awesome card game funded via Kickstarter!) were opening spots for their secret club. Access means you get prototype stuff for free. To gain access to “the crate”, you have to earn your spot by proving yourself worthy. The rules can be found here.

As a fan of the game, I decided to create an Exploding Kittens themed soundboard and document it, as an attempt to become part of this secret club. It's also an easy, good first project to get familiar with the Touch Board. Let’s go …

Build

I started off by picking en element from the game and reproducing it physically. The obvious choice, is one of the kittens on an explosion card.

Based on the card, I drew the kitten on a piece of wood and cut it out using the jigsaw. After a bit of sanding, I applied grey paint to the front and when dry, applied the details using black. Taking into consideration the fact that I’m not a woodworker and that I suck at drawing, the result is not that bad!

To have the kitten be able to stand up straight, I added a hinge and a small piece of wood.

Electronics

The electronics are simple. The Touch Board (also a Kickstarter by the way …) is an Arduino compatible board, offering capacitive touch sensing and mp3 play out, making it perfect for this project. Using conductive paint, four pads were created, each capable of triggering a different sound effect. The board supports up to twelve touch points, should you want or need even more sound effects.  Copper tape connects the pads to the Touch Board. No programming required!

Even through the wood (18mm), hovering your hand in front of the pad, triggers the sensor and plays the sound effect.

The Touch Board is powered using a LiPo battery, which can be charged via the board when connected via USB. There is also a handy on/off switch available onboard.

Finally, the speaker I used is a rechargeable, powered speaker connected to the Touch Board using the stereo jack. Alternatively, a small speaker and amplifier breakout board could be used.

More!

Now, because we’re big fans of this game (and many, many people are trying to gain access to the crate), we decided to step up our game.

The bonus item for this build is a homemade kitten pillow! Using her sewing machine, my wife Sarah created this red pillow with golden lining. Beautiful, right? Too bad our cats prefer to sleep next to it rather than on it.

This team effort earned us a spot in the crate! Wooo!