So lets talk about making a sound effects board for the x wing.The X-wing is a great kit, but it would be even better if we had some sound effects too. There is plenty of room inside the x wing to add some electronics.

So I designed a simple sound effects board that uses an RF remote and a cheap mp3 player.


The mp3 player is the Dfplayermini. This is a very low cost sound generating unit.You can add buttons to it to use it as a standalone unit or you can control it with a microcontroller like and Arduino Uno.It needs 5v to power it and a small speaker to output the sound to. The sound clips are stored on a MicroSd card and the player has a Sdcard reader mounted on it.

For our project we cant use buttons because we are mounting the board insde the x wing. So we have to figure out how to replace the buttons with the RF remote.This will involve using transistors as switches.


So lets look at the components we will need to build our x winfg sound effects board.

There are 14 pins on the dfplayer. here is the pinout map.

The VCC is the power input.You can use 3.2-5v.Do not exceed 5v or it will start smoking!!
The GND is the ground for the player.

The TX and RX pins are the serial connection.This allows you to connect a microcontroller like and arduino UNO.The microcontroller sends signals to the dfplayer to tell it which track to play and the dfplayer sends signals back to the microcontroller to tell it when the track has finished.

The SPK_1 and SPK_2 pins are the output to the speaker.You need a speaker of 3W or less.


The ADKEY_1 is an analog input for the dfplayer.This is the pin we will be using to control the dfplayermini.The dfplayer measures the voltage on this pin and then it plays the track according to the value of the voltage read.

Now if we use the circuit above we need buttons.But we dont want to use buttons because we want to be able to trigger the sound effects wihtout toching the x wing. So we need a remote control to connect to the dfplayer.

There are two types of remote commonly used.One uses radiowaves and one uses infrared waves. The infrared is what is used for most tv remotes etc... and radiowaves are used in RC models.

The x-wing comes with an infrared remote.I will be showing a more advanced sound board that actually uses the signal from the x-wings remote to trigger the sound effects.The benefit of this is you can sync the sound effects to the lighting effect, but this require a more complex board.


So we will use the RF remote for our simple DIY project.

Keyfob transmitter

So here is my breadboard set up.Breadboards are a way to quickly make a circuit and check everything works before you break out the soldering iron.

In the picture the dfplay is at the top right.The top left board has the resistor ladder on it and the bottom left board has the rf receiver and the transistors to trigger the dfplayer.

So here is the circuit board design. This will be emailed to a PCB manufacturer to make the physical board.These manufactuers are really cheap.I can get 5 boards made for just $15 shipped to USA.it usually takes about 1 week to get them once the order is placed.

The first components we need are 4 10K resistors. These go in the spaces R1,R4,R3 and R14.SOlder them into to holes.

Next we install the DFPlayermini onto the board. Most of the holes are not connected to the circuit, but I still solder them all to fully secure the player to the board.

Next we are going to add the 4 transistors to the board.The diagram on the board shows which way to install them

the final component os the L7805 voltage regulator.This converts 9V input to 5V output.