Tucker Romagnoli
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Cornerstone of Engineering 2 · Northeastern University · Spring 2026

Sounds of the Jungle

An interactive animal-sound guessing game for the Boston Children's Museum. Eight engraved animal tiles, eight big buttons, and an SD card → MP3 module → speaker circuit run by Python, all in a painted plywood box designed to take a beating from kids.

My part
Structure and layout in AutoCAD, the soldered circuits, the Python game code, and museum-day testing
Team
4 engineering students
When
Mar – Apr 2026
Shown at
Boston Children's Museum
Inside
SD card, MP3 module, speaker, 8 buttons, laser-cut plywood, Illustrator art
The game set up on a table: a yellow-green box with eight colored buttons and engraved wooden animal tiles, surrounded by leaves and vines, with animal fact cards beside it
The painted box and decorated table, set up for the kids.
8 animalsCicada, toucan, anaconda, parrot, hippo, gorilla, tree frog and elephant
3 metricsRetention, win rate and technical failures, recorded live at the museum
Fixed liveTraced an MP3-module failure during the exhibit and simplified the code to keep it running

How it came together

  1. Design the board and the circuit

    Designed the physical structure and layout in AutoCAD of an interactive animal sound guessing game for the Boston Children's Museum. Soldered circuits for an SD card → MP3 module → speaker setup and coded the game in Python.

    Line drawings of a cicada, toucan, anaconda, parrot, hippo, gorilla, tree frog and elephant, each labeled
    AutoCAD drawing of the finger-jointed box panels, with the top panel's eight button holes, dimensioned 25 by 17.25 by 3
    Final Adobe Illustrator art (top) to raster and cut the animal tiles, and AutoCAD (bottom) to laser cut the board and structural supports.

  2. Cut it, build it, paint it

    Laser cut the board, animal icons and supports out of plywood. Designed the supports to withstand the immense smashing strength of children. Painted the box and decorated the table to create an immersive experience for the kids.

    Time-lapse: the laser engraving the title onto a side panel.
    Laser-cut plywood on a workbench: eight engraved animal tiles, upright support pieces, and a stack of box panels
    Cut pieces: animal tiles, supports and panels.

  3. Run it at the museum

    Recorded real-time data at the museum exhibition on retention, win rate and technical failure. Diagnosed failures in the MP3 module in real time (it was getting too many input requests) and implemented simpler code to keep the game working on museum day.

    Top view of the yellow-green board with eight red, blue, yellow and green buttons, animal pictures beside each, framed by monstera leaves
    The board from above, ready for players.

More photos

The painted yellow-green box with eight domed buttons, sitting on a checkered cloth, the title engraved along its side The board on a table wrapped in ivy and leaves, seen from the front