For a while now, I've been wanting to connect a microphone to Bonechop so that I could then use Blather to send commands to the various machines on my local network. After a bit of a quest, I finally found a sweet old CB radio microphone that I could repurpose to fit my needs.
The New Mic
The new microphone is an Electro-Voice 660-D Dynamic Microphone. From what I can tell, this thing is made out of bakelite. Sadly, I don't have a picture of the two-prong plug that needs to be replaced.
Take It Apart!
Ah, the best part of any repurpose: TAKING IT APART!!!
Damn, look at all of those doodads and zipper-zappers. After a bit of snipping and snapping, the old innards were removed.
The New Microphone
A semi-adequate microphone was salvaged from an old touch-tone phone and glued/taped to the bracket that held the original microphone in place.
Finishing Up!
To be honest, I have no idea where the curly cable came from, but it worked wonderfully for this project. After a bit of shenanigans with the wiring, I managed to get the mic soldered to the thumb switch, and a 1/8" microphone plug. sweet!
Oh Bummer
Unfortunately, the USB audio card that I'm using with Bonechop isn't getting any data from the microphone when the audio card is connected to the BeagleBone Black. It works when I plug the sound card into my laptop, so it may just be a driver issue. I blame the ARM architecture.
Now quit reading... and make that staticy sound that old microphones make when you press the "talk" switch.
Oh, if your browser doesn't play .ogg files, you should file a bug report with the creator of your browser.
Kind of like Simon Says: if you start out with "Breaker 1-9!", the audio will start working.