Adafruit has been modding with a lot of vintage toys lately, so we were excited to see this Tested Bits to Atoms post on Adding Smoke and Sounds to Toys.

Using an incredible Codename Colossus model from Machination Studio, Sean and Jeremy show you how to add smoke and sound effects to your own projects.

The build features Adafruit’s Adafruit Audio FX Mini Sound Board – WAV/OGG Trigger 16MB Flash board. The board plugs into a computer and appears as a flash drive. Put your sound file on the drive (named a special way depending on how you want the sound to be played) and you are done! The team connected one wire and set the board to repeat an effect in a loop. Connected to a powered speaker, it added extra pizazz and realism to the project.

The build also has a neat “smoke” system using a pump, tubing, and e-cigarettes with a gelatin load. The process can be adapted for a number of “smoking” projects such as trains or their Ghostbusters trap they made earlier shown below.

A step by step on the Ghostbusters build.

See the Tested Atoms to Bits video on how to use their sound and smoke methods.

Do you add more realism to your builds? Let us know how in the comments!