Brown Bear Project

So I just completed this project from make for my daugher. 

http://makeprojects.com/Project/Charlie-s-RFID-Teddy-Bear/1411/1
Fyi - the make website cells a kit for this - I don't think I spent as much as this kit.  But like any homemade thing, it seems you always spend more money on it than you would think.  You might be able to hack an existing toy to do the same thing as this.  But such is the way of the world.
It is an Rfid Tag reader powered by an arduino uno board and an ardunio wave shield.  Basically you record sound files on a SD card and when an rfid tag is brought near the board, it will play a sound file from the SD card that is labeled with the id if the rfid tag.  It works pretty cool.  So now my daughter has her own customized personal bear. 

I have set up the bear currently so it "reads" two books and will play certain things when brought near the door to her room, her crib and a few other locations in the house. 

My only modification to the project was to add an on off switch between the battery box and the board.  I have noticed that if the batteries are low, the board will only play one file and then sort of stop.  Replacingthe batteries seemed to fix this.  Not sure if it was old batteries or if the board draws a lot of power.
The project was pretty fun.  I started it several months ago and have worked on it off and on and just finished most of if this evening with the help of my daughter.

I also had to do a little sewing to get velcro on the undersides of this bear.  A cool neat little project to do.  It probably took me a lot longer than it needed to.  It is a fairly easy and straight forward project, the hardest part is probably finding what to record.

Have fun, drink diet pepsi

Finished Bear - the bear is the Brown Bear sold at Kohl's with the Eric Carle Book "Brown Bear, Brown Bear, what do you see"

"Live" bear reading the Brown Bear book.