This performative object is a mask that interrupts anyone who speaks with loud and rude phrases clipped from Trump's speeches. Should the wearer of the mask try to muffle the sounds coming from their own mouth, Trump's exclamations only become louder.

It uses an Arduino topped with an Adafruit Wave Shield (for audio playback), with two sensors: a microphone (Adafruit Microphone Amplifier Breakout), and a QRD1114 IR emitter to detect proximity of the wearer's hand.

The sketch on the Arduino detects microphone input to trigger WAV playback from the SD card in the Wave shield, while simultaneously monitoring input from an IR proximity sensor to manipulating WAV playback volume based on this analog input. The sketch draws from the daphc and softVolume examples included in the WaveHC library for the Adafruit Arduino Waveshield, as well as the adavoice sketch for the Adafruit Microphone Amplifier Breakout.

Hardware requirements:
* – Arduino Uno, Duemilanove or Diecimila (not Mega or Leonardo compatible).
* – Adafruit Wave Shield
* – Speaker attached to Wave Shield output
* – Battery for portable use
* – Adafruit Microphone Breakout
* – SD card
* – QRD1114 IR emitter / Phototransistor
* – Donald Trump halloween mask
* – Baseball cap to hide components

Software requirements:
* – WaveHC library for Arduino
* – WAV files on FAT-formatted SD card
* – my Arduino sketch (see https://github.com/michaelwvogel/trumpmask for this and the WAV files)

I considered doing Darth-Vader-style voice modification using the microphone, but I couldn’t find any permutation that seemed to offer anything interesting or salient for the use-case of Trump’s mask. I had also wanted to a weird suggestive thing involving stroking or pinching different parts of Trump’s face, but decided against it.

Fritzing doesn’t contain a Wave Shield, so I’ll use this illustration for my schematic (just ignore the numberpad — not needed). In addition, here’s the setup for the IR proximity sensor, which can be set up in parallel to the other stuff (though it requires 5V).

For future versions, I’ll improve the speakers. Without an amplifier, the small speaker that I got doesn’t play audio loud enough to simulate a voice, so I had no choice but to plug in a heavy-duty speaker by 3.5mm audio jack, which is a significant tether weighing down what would otherwise be a very light and mobile wearable.

This project is indebted to these tutorials:
https://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-wave-shield-audio-shield-for-arduino
https://learn.adafruit.com/wave-shield-voice-changer/building-it
http://bildr.org/2011/03/various-proximity-sensors-arduino/