Hey!
I have a conundrum that I cant solve alone.. Thanks for any guidence anyone can give me on this.
I'll try and keep it simple. I have a puppet,
I want to hide a speaker inside the puppets head so the puppet can talk to passers by.
(I can fit a 15cm cube in the head (approximately) - theres some wiggle room for antennas to stick out of that space if needed. )
I need to also hide a mic on the puppet so the puppet controller can hear the passers by and reply to them from a distance.
The puppet controller has their hands full so they needs to be able to speak handsfree.
He needs to stand up to 200m away and may not always have a direct line of sight (So im ruling out bluetooth - have tested and its been crap).
We've tried sticking a small kids size walkie talkie in the puppets head.
the reception works fine except its no where near loud enough and the puppet controller has to wrangle the walkie plus puppet controls.
the passers by cant speak back via a walkietalkie set up so we tried the buetooth mic on the puppet/bluetooth earpiece and recieve on puppeteer but the signal failed us.
We've tried sticking a mobile phone in the puppet.
the recpetion died on us randomly - worked fine on the test!! - and on loud speaker it wasnt loud enough to be heard over 10 kids talking.
It worked great for the puppet controller as they could hear the kids talking to the puppet (when the signal was working) but replying to them didnt work.
We've tried sitting the puppet on a speaker discuised as a chair with a neck radio mic for the puppet controller.
the speaker sounded super mufflely and lower voice tones were not understandable. It was fine for the puppet controller, except our bluetooth mic dropped out again and they couldnt hear the kids. Also the speaker looks and sounds like a great big speaker and the sound isnt coming from the right place on the puppet.
Any advice on what I could try next?
I think radio is the most reliable, could do with it going two ways but having an open channel so no one needs to press any buttons.
Sorry i dont have all the technical lingo, hopefully this makes enough sense?
Thank you thank you!!!
Kind Regards,
Hollie J
I have a conundrum that I cant solve alone.. Thanks for any guidence anyone can give me on this.
I'll try and keep it simple. I have a puppet,
I want to hide a speaker inside the puppets head so the puppet can talk to passers by.
(I can fit a 15cm cube in the head (approximately) - theres some wiggle room for antennas to stick out of that space if needed. )
I need to also hide a mic on the puppet so the puppet controller can hear the passers by and reply to them from a distance.
The puppet controller has their hands full so they needs to be able to speak handsfree.
He needs to stand up to 200m away and may not always have a direct line of sight (So im ruling out bluetooth - have tested and its been crap).
We've tried sticking a small kids size walkie talkie in the puppets head.
the reception works fine except its no where near loud enough and the puppet controller has to wrangle the walkie plus puppet controls.
the passers by cant speak back via a walkietalkie set up so we tried the buetooth mic on the puppet/bluetooth earpiece and recieve on puppeteer but the signal failed us.
We've tried sticking a mobile phone in the puppet.
the recpetion died on us randomly - worked fine on the test!! - and on loud speaker it wasnt loud enough to be heard over 10 kids talking.
It worked great for the puppet controller as they could hear the kids talking to the puppet (when the signal was working) but replying to them didnt work.
We've tried sitting the puppet on a speaker discuised as a chair with a neck radio mic for the puppet controller.
the speaker sounded super mufflely and lower voice tones were not understandable. It was fine for the puppet controller, except our bluetooth mic dropped out again and they couldnt hear the kids. Also the speaker looks and sounds like a great big speaker and the sound isnt coming from the right place on the puppet.
Any advice on what I could try next?
I think radio is the most reliable, could do with it going two ways but having an open channel so no one needs to press any buttons.
Sorry i dont have all the technical lingo, hopefully this makes enough sense?
Thank you thank you!!!
Kind Regards,
Hollie J
It doesn’t sound like anything cheap is going to work. Bluetooth isn’t meant for that range. You’re in two complete UHF wireless mic territory, plus some kind of small powerful PA speaker inside the puppet (amp located remotely, perhaps under the chair). 100 or so watts into an unbaffled 3” speaker might give enough lower voice register to sound natural and be able to project 10 or 15 feet. A phone speaker obviously doesn’t cut it, and a big bulky cube wont fit in the puppet.
You might be able to do this ”cheap” with FM transmitters, if you knew enough to jack their output up a wee bit above FCC limits to get enough range. Not all that hard to do, doesn’t require anything expensive. But the talking puppet will still require some juice, or you’ll be stuck with a tinny speaker that’s hard to hear unless you’re right on top of it. A speaker the size of an Alexa would work, but that would need to go into puppet the size of Big Bird, not Kermit.
Is a wired solution completely impossible? Maybe wired for the first 200 yards, and wireless for the last 10-20 feet. THEN bluetooth will work all around. Full duplex could use cheap equipment and operate hands free.
You might be able to do this ”cheap” with FM transmitters, if you knew enough to jack their output up a wee bit above FCC limits to get enough range. Not all that hard to do, doesn’t require anything expensive. But the talking puppet will still require some juice, or you’ll be stuck with a tinny speaker that’s hard to hear unless you’re right on top of it. A speaker the size of an Alexa would work, but that would need to go into puppet the size of Big Bird, not Kermit.
Is a wired solution completely impossible? Maybe wired for the first 200 yards, and wireless for the last 10-20 feet. THEN bluetooth will work all around. Full duplex could use cheap equipment and operate hands free.
200 meters? Some of these UHF wireless mics for vocal performance are good to just 150 feet.
https://www.amazon.com/pxton-Earpieces-Rechargeable-Flashlight-Charger (Unsure if this clipped URL will work - the rest of it was heinously long, giant string of random characters)
To handle the distance problem, I'd iterate on the above 4 walkie talkie set for ~$40. One set "to" the puppet, one set "from". Says they work "VOX" so no button to press to make the puppet talk. Picking up audience voices coming back would be harder - probably need to modify the microphone on one set for that. Like, put it inside a horn, which could be pointed at the audience in an unobtrusive way.
Speaking of "horn", is there any way to get such a shape - could be curved or bent - inside the puppets body? So just the mouth of the horn in is in the head, while the length turns 90 deg, then goes down through toward the base of the body. Like a bent trumpet horn?
What that'll do is give some acoustic gain, where hopefully the walkie talkie speaker could drive sound into.
https://www.amazon.com/pxton-Earpieces-Rechargeable-Flashlight-Charger (Unsure if this clipped URL will work - the rest of it was heinously long, giant string of random characters)
To handle the distance problem, I'd iterate on the above 4 walkie talkie set for ~$40. One set "to" the puppet, one set "from". Says they work "VOX" so no button to press to make the puppet talk. Picking up audience voices coming back would be harder - probably need to modify the microphone on one set for that. Like, put it inside a horn, which could be pointed at the audience in an unobtrusive way.
Speaking of "horn", is there any way to get such a shape - could be curved or bent - inside the puppets body? So just the mouth of the horn in is in the head, while the length turns 90 deg, then goes down through toward the base of the body. Like a bent trumpet horn?
What that'll do is give some acoustic gain, where hopefully the walkie talkie speaker could drive sound into.