Ultimate Homemade E-caller... Give me your recipe

mkf350

mkf350

New member
How would you build yours if your budget was $500. I know I could buy an FX5 for that price but the satisfaction of putting it together myself is the reward. Just wanted to get some ideas from those of you who have. My budget is $300-400. Mind you I already have the mp3 player, actually i'm using my Dell pda. I want a wireless set-up with good range and great sound. I have alot of calls already downloaded, just looking at what other hardware I'm gonna need. Already have read up on some others homebrews, but wanted to know if you would change anything.
Thanks
 
MKF350,

Give these guys a call MINASKA

Ask for Todd or Steve they specialize in making custom callers for hunters, For what you want to invest I'm pretty sure they could hook you up with something, if not they can give you good direction.

Good Luck!

Vaportrail /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grinning-smiley-003.gif
 
Mine is as follows:

Sonic Impact portable T amp- 15X15 watt digital 12 volt amplifier-30 bucks. Made to work on 12 volts dc, and comes with headphone Jack inputs. Damn thing was made to be used in an Ecaller, I tell ya.
Heres a link http://www.partsexpress.com/webpage.cfm?WebPage_ID=3

Nady 351 vr Wireless mic/transmitter, but, I might have been able to get away with the DKW-1. Spent about $100, coulda spent less, if Id known about the DKW1.

The amp is stereo so of course, I HAD to hook two Rockford Fosgate 5 1/4" coaxial speakers to it. Pawn shop with encloser 45 bucks.

MP3 player is a 512 MB Creative cheapy I got from Wally world on clearance for 75 bucks, but is sold now for around 50.

I use a small rechargeable 12 volt battery to power the amp, It will run for a constant 12 hours on a full charge. Since the Nady is 9 volts, I just bought a step down converter for cigarette lighters and gutted it, Took out the stuff I needed and ran it between the battery and the nady reciever. I put the battery, receiver, speakers and converter in a fanny pack, and the transmitter and mp3 player I keep on my person.

As far as in the field- I will put mine up against any, they will lose on every tier except range. This however is skewed. Now, I admit wholeheartedly that I do not have more than 100 yards range, but, where I hunt, its more than adequate. My sound Quality is better, and its louder. BTW I use my caller to play music at cemeteries during committal services as well, if that tells you anything about just how fine this thing sounds. FYI, I use a CD player with CD's on purpose at the cemeteries to avoid any insulting mix ups. Coy-dog Howl would not be taken well by any family other than that of a hardcore biker, Im sure. LMAO.

One other aspect that I will say the store bought callers are good for is sounds. We are pretty limited to what we can find thru Johnny Stewart, and an occasional lohman. We have to buy the whole CD to get a specific track we want. I know at least Foxpro offers a butt load of sounds to buy so that kinda levels the field a bit. But even though I have to make my own, create my own, or buy my own, Id still rather do it my way than buy an over the counter model.

So, there it is- bout 2 bills.
 
Yotenaylor, I found the Partsexpress.com link for your amp broken, and the only hit for Sonic Impact that comes up under amps in a search of their site is the Super-T ...for $139.

Same amp with a price hike? What's it weigh? Audio specs?
 
This is the recipe for my homemade e-caller, using a 60GB video iPod. It isn't wireless, but if you have an mp3 player, it will only cost about $75.00. If your on a tight budget, this is the way to go. Its not wireless, but you can't expect that on a tight budget. Even if you don't have an mp3 player or money for one, you can use a cheap CD player. All of the sounds can be obtained for free.

/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/ooo.gifMaterials:
I bought a outdoor speaker horn for about $25 at Radioshack and a cheap amplifier that works off of a 9 volt battery for about $15. I then bought about 100 ft. of thick gauge speaker wire so that it would do better in the wet and humid weather here in the south. I have a 60GB iPod, which I store my mp3s on. Lastly, I bought a headphone cable (3ft.) with the male end on both sides. This all cost me about $50 to $60, not including the iPod of course. You can even burn the mp3s to a CD and use a cheap CD or buy one at Wal-Mart for $5.00. I'm a college student and found this to be the best solution to fit my budget. It works well. Full directions for assembly can be found at http://www.varmintal.com/ahunt.htm

/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/ooo.gifFree MP3s:
I downloaded the mp3s for free at http://www.western-rivers.com and at http://www.varmintal.com/ahunt.htm Western rivers has sounds for every animal known to man including bobcats, coyote, gray fox, red fox, mouse, cottontail and jackrabbit rabbit in distress, etc... These are all free mp3s and can build up quite a library. I have even combined the files to make larger sequences to play and forget. Longer sequences are really good for inexperienced rookies. Some of the mp3s are of actual coyotes and foxes fighting, while others are recordings of professionals using calls.

They work great, especially when combining the trukey in distress with 'yotes barking and howling. It drives them crazy, especially in the think stuff.

If you have any idea where else to find free mp3s, please post. I am always in search of new sounds. I don't want the 'yotes to become accustomed to the ones I'm using.

Best of luck. Go get 'em.
 
Thanks for the heads up. MKF350 got it right.

Vaportrail, that is the amp.

Lion Ho,
The Super t amp is supposed to be the step up from the t amp. never tried it, but the guys at parts express say it is better. To me it doesnt matter if it is or not. Im completely satisfied with the unsuper t amp.
I cant find the specs on it, but lets just say that listening to it thru my home speakers made me revamp everything but my subwoofer amp in my home stereo. At thirty a pop, Ive got one on my mids, my highs my center and rear fill channels. It does lack the low frequency balls of a good monoblock subwoofer amplifier, but for the price its a good give/take situation.

As far as size and weight, if you,(being lion ho)are as techically inclined as I gather you are, the box/ chasis of the amp can be elimininated and put in another smaller housing. If you were to do this, it would be smaller than a deck of cards and weight about the same.

For the first 6 months I had this setup I was using two 16 ohm 1.5 X 3" speakers I stole out of a computer speaker set. I called in yotes and crows with it, but hardly ever any fox. Since I put the new coaxial 4 ohm car speakers, the output has about doubled. Im seeing more animals, and especially more fox.

I guess Im adding that just so guys dont underestimate the importance of GREAT SPEAKERS in their callers. Sure It can add more cost to the project, but damn if it isnt worth it. Even if Id bought the coaxials new it wouldve only bumped the price up another 25 bucks or so. I just found some on the net for 75 bucks a pair.
 
Last edited:
My ultimate caller would be handsfree (which kinda leaves joystick navigation on a PDA out), capable passing tones to 24kHz, weigh nothing, and cost nothing.

Hey--I've got it!--it's a lipsqueak /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif

Well, there you have it, IMHO. It IS tough to beat a lipsqueak, in many situations, for a variety of reasons. Unfortunately I can't throw my lipsqueak like a ventriloquist without some audio gear.

The ultimate homemade E-caller then, would be handsfree, capable of recording, storing and passing tones like lipsqueaks to 24kHz, weigh nothing and cost nothing. And also have a wireless remote speaker with unlimited range, through boulders and granite-walled box canyons. (Nobody has yet thrown something quite like this together, in their spare time--in the basement-- using scavenged parts from a Speak-and-Spell and an old broken baby monitor, at least not to my knowledge.)

There's a 20kHz bottleneck that's likely to be encountered with the A/D convertor on the headphone output jack of every portable media player out there, my iPod Nano included. Although if someone wants to hack the bitstream on the iPod dock connector (as one stereo equipment manufacturer seems to be doing), 24kHz is within the realm of possibility. Then they'd have to take that digital bitstream and fling it out over WiFi or that new long range Bluetooth, and at the other end decode it with another D/A convertor that goes to 24kHz.

(Well, even I can dream, we are talking ULTIMATE, right?)

Okay, Yotenaylor, now I seem to recall seeing some of the hype on this amp awhile back. But uh-oh, these reviewers said it sounded not nearly so good running off battery power, and that it actually has 10% THD at the rated 15W. Seeing either or both of these mentioned was probably when I let it fall off my radar, previously. Note today that reviewers also mention requires >12VDC+ to be really happy, at a high current rate, just to get to 6W. Which means more complexity and monkeying around to get a 9V Nady wireless mic running off the same battery pack. Still haven't seen any meaningful specs on this amp as far as actual frequency response goes, but recall a few other rather esoteric discussion threads mentioning digital amps using this chip (or similar ones) having a non-linear response and hard clip at 20kHz or possibly even less. (The best analog amps keep going to 50-60kHz, I've also heard it said.) The price is certainly right in the ballpark, however, and I'm open to further convincing about this Sonic Impact amp, especially if somebody can point me to specs that discuss the frequency response.

LionHo
 
Easy Yotenaylor, I certainly didn't mean to insult you, sorry that you took it that way. This Sonic Impact is another route to consider, and the price point is very appealling at $30. Admit I must've gotten carried away with the "Ultimate" bit in the original poster's question. My smarminess was much more in response to the superlatives of the linked reviewers, who were hyping it as being better than $15K amps, without offering much in the way of specs to back it up. In fact what specs they did mention ( at least for our predator purposes, like 10% total harmonic distortion at full-throttle), seem to contradict their claims.

While I'm no electrical engineer, and can't say for sure, the linked TA2024 chip engineering specs also seem to indicate that the amplifier chip is a 20Hz to 20kHz digital amp--with hard clipping filters above and below these thresholds. Which, if true, is not the "ultimate" for calling wildlife. But then neither is my iPod Nano, as I attempted to explain.

For what it may be worth, incidentally, the guys and gals that tool around with hydrophones for whale and dophin research, along with bat researchers, still largely use analog equipment in the ultrasonic 30kHz to 100+kHz range.

LionHo
 
Smarmy... thats the word I was lookin for. LMAO. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif

Its a good amp, it does not clip out that I can discern and its very easy to integrate into a caller. Try one out.

And we can get some of those 30k to 100 k recordings where??? That in itself seems for me to be the biggest hurdle. getting trully good sounds to use. Is that guy still aroung that was selling like 5 for 180 bucks or something like that. Had studio recording of bat farts and the like? Were those any good? I think I heard something that the originals were good, but he remasterd them and the result was sub par? Who knows. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/confused1.gif
 
Last edited:
For a mere thirty bucks, I might just pick one up. The mismatch on voltages between it and my Nady 151 means I'll likely be buying a 12V Nady DKW-1 LT if I like it and want to incorporate it in another caller, however.

Re: ultrasonic sounds, I've found it fairly doable to self-record lipsqueaks and live mice, and then clearly see harmonics/signal above 22 kHz. (Using an older IBM ThinkPad laptop having a very good Yamaha sound card, and just a cheap microphone, GoldWave set up to graph frequencies.)

After almost 20 years of lipsqueaking practice, I'm convinced that bobcats, foxes, coyotes and other mammalian predators are extremely interested in rodent noises populating the audio frequency range between where our hearing falls off (~17kHz in my case) and the point at which such sounds begin to propagate poorly over long enough distances as to make predator calling from afar impractical (a practical limit might be 24kHz).

While I also have no reason to doubt data I've seen suggesting predators can hear up to 50-60 kHz, they likely would have to be standing right over top of their prey to source it or range it at those frequencies. So I think we can safely ignore these. (Bat squeaks are useful mostly to bats, to keep from colliding with one another and walls of the cave.)

LionHo
 
Quote:
For a mere thirty bucks, I might just pick one up. The mismatch on voltages between it and my Nady 151 means I'll likely be buying a 12V Nady DKW-1 LT if I like it and want to incorporate it in another caller, however.

Re: ultrasonic sounds, I've found it fairly doable to self-record lipsqueaks and live mice, and then clearly see harmonics/signal above 22 kHz. (Using an older IBM ThinkPad laptop having a very good Yamaha sound card, and just a cheap microphone, GoldWave set up to graph frequencies.)

After almost 20 years of lipsqueaking practice, I'm convinced that bobcats, foxes, coyotes and other mammalian predators are extremely interested in rodent noises populating the audio frequency range between where our hearing falls off (~17kHz in my case) and the point at which such sounds begin to propagate poorly over long enough distances as to make predator calling from afar impractical (a practical limit might be 24kHz).

While I also have no reason to doubt data I've seen suggesting predators can hear up to 50-60 kHz, they likely would have to be standing right over top of their prey to source it or range it at those frequencies. So I think we can safely ignore these. (Bat squeaks are useful mostly to bats, to keep from colliding with one another and walls of the cave.)

LionHo



Good luck finding one right now. I looked for over an hr last night try to order one.

Thanks for the tip yotenaylor....
 
Try Target online. That is if you care to do business with the french. I remember when buying stuff didnt involve heart felt deliberation of whom you were supporting.

Funny thing was when I first posted the link to parts express they were in stock.

Lion Ho. I can tell you that at age 12 I bought my first calling set up with money earned from a trap line, 23 years later, Im finally satisfied to a point that I dont feel like using the E caller is a sacrifice. I will tell you first hand that I have seen more and more varied animals since the addition of the better speakers. I know why, and you know why. I just wish guys makin these things would realize how important it is.

I just bought the secretary a new computer for the office. Its chock full of media software (purely by accident, maybe) Hopefully the card in it is worth a damn. But, I do have a friend with a studio maybe he'd let me in there for some hot and heavy hand smoochin. Something that also has worked well for me is taking a good quality rabbit distress recording and speeding it up with Nero Wave software. Its amazing how simialr the distress voocals actually are with a little time editing. Darn near spooky.

As far as working with your 151 voltage. just go down to the shack and get a step down dc voltage converter for car cigarette lighter that goes from 12 to 9 volts. Wire it into the 12 volt battery powering the amp and BLAMMO your done. I coulda just wired a sandblock resistor in line, but didnt want to mess with it, would done the same thing, But I thing it woulda ate up a lot of battery life.
 
Well if you want to go as cheap as possible I would just say get yourself a mp3, a radio shack ampo and cone speaker, that unit will cost you very little, and then fit it in a coffee flask or so, it looks quite nice.
/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grinning-smiley-006.gif
 
So far I have:
Dell PDA - mp3 player
Azden WMS-Pro - FM wireless
Radio Shack Horn speaker

Amplifier want something better quaility than RS amp
Better Speaker.
Rechargable battery set-up.

I have an oddball quality stereo speaker that has seperate 5.5" mid and tweeter, would this be a good canidate. I think its poly so it should stand up to a little rain. Or am I better off just purchasing one?
 
Back
Top