Someone:

»Do you speak Chinese?«

You:

»No, but I can count to 10 in Chinese!«

Being able to quantify is essential while learning a new language. Also, it's cool.
Combining visual and auditory sensory input at the push of an arcade style button, learning to count from 0 to 10 in Korean, Japanese, Chinese, Hindi, German and Polish is now easy and fun.

counterculture is a device I invented & built to encourage starting to learn a new language and have some fun with electronics. A project realized during my stay at the National Taiwan University of Technology (NTUT) in Taipei.
Digital Fabrication class by Prof. N. Tai, 2018/19.

• For lasercutting the box with teeth and slots, MDF sheets of 5mm thickness were used. Taking into account the kerf of the laser, the vector path's generated from Sketchup must be offset by around .19mm. However the exact value might vary depending on the speed used for cutting.
• Each audio file must be a in a 16000 Hz mono, unsigned 8-bit PCM WAV format to work with the TMRpcm library. For me, this was the only format that worked perfectly fine.
• The circuit was built around an Arduino Mega board since I had one laying around and a very limited time-frame.
  However, a Teensy with built-in DAC or an Arduino MKR Zero with an I2S bus and compatibility with the Arduino Sound library would make things simpler and be an improvement with regard to audio quality.
  Also, why not just use a MAX08357 I2S Amp Breakout board instead of building an amplifier circuit from scratch.
• While you're at it, add a repeat functionality for the most recent number played.
• Files in the rdworks folder contain files for the laser cutter controlling software »RDWorks«. If you use a different software and a different laser cutter, the settings will vary most likely anyway. Text shapes are being engraved at high speed and low power, while the edges of the box are cut at low speed and high power. For the pieces to come off easily, it might help programming the laser to continue moving a tiny bit beyond the actual end of the line.
• Adobe Illustrator artboards are in A3 size, since A3 sheets of 5mm MDF were used.
• The folder »audio« found inside the folder »sdcard« needs to be placed in the root directory of the FAT32 formatted SD card which is plugged in the slot of the SD card reader module.