I have built a jurassic park jeep replica and i want to play mp3s of dinosaurs for the horn. I would mount a amp inside and a speaker somewhere under the hood but how do i send the sound? Choosing one mp3 to play would be cool but can i do different sounds at my choice? For example could i build a board that would play a mp3 after receiving a single pulse but would play a different mp3 if it received a double pulse, triple pulse and so on. If i wanted to scare someone with the T-Rex mp3 i could hit the button once but if i wanted a velociraptor sound i would hit the button twice like a double click on a mouse. There are so many options with these boards i dont know where to start.
I had good luck with the Sparkfun MP3 Player Shield. It took a few tries to get it working, but once I got it working it worked quite well.
It looks like there is only one mp3 shield produced. That makes my choice easy but what about the choice of the main board? Also the mp3 board looks pretty bare how do i load the mp3s on?
Ratrace427:
It looks like there is only one mp3 shield produced. That makes my choice easy but what about the choice of the main board? Also the mp3 board looks pretty bare how do i load the mp3s on?
You load the MP3s onto a microSD card, then plug that into the shield. The shield uses quite a few pins, I think theres only 10 free pins remaining (including the analog pins), so if you need more than that you might want to look into the mega or shift registers. The Uno works fine otherwise.
Ok so i will need the uno,mp3 shield, and a micro sd card. The free pins you are talking about would be used for what? Two of them would need to be used for the speaker out but those are on the shield and you are talking about the free pins on the uno? I think 10 extra pins would be fine. The shield stacks on top of the uno with headers that i have to buy extra then there are about 10 pins left open? Do i need to buy the headers or are they included with the uno? These extra pins would be used for speaker out -2, power and ground -2, and the signal wire used to determine which track it needs to play which is only -1. That is only a total of 5 pins. Do i have a clue on what im talking about? How easy is the programming, do i need C++ knowledge or something like that? The only programming knowledge that i have is that i know there is one. Once i have it built does it use a USB for the programming? Will all my questions be answered with a provided book with the uno?
Ratrace427:
Ok so i will need the uno,mp3 shield, and a micro sd card. The free pins you are talking about would be used for what? Two of them would need to be used for the speaker out but those are on the shield and you are talking about the free pins on the uno? I think 10 extra pins would be fine. The shield stacks on top of the uno with headers that i have to buy extra then there are about 10 pins left open? Do i need to buy the headers or are they included with the uno? These extra pins would be used for speaker out -2, power and ground -2, and the signal wire used to determine which track it needs to play which is only -1. That is only a total of 5 pins. Do i have a clue on what im talking about? How easy is the programming, do i need C++ knowledge or something like that? The only programming knowledge that i have is that i know there is one. Once i have it built does it use a USB for the programming? Will all my questions be answered with a provided book with the uno?
Yes, 10 free pins on the arduino. You don't need any pins for the speaker, since there is a built in 2.5mm audio jack on the shield. I believe the headers are included. That question should be directed to Sparkfun though. Power pins are also not included in the 10, since you can connect multiple things to the same power pins.
Getting an arduino to play MP3s is not a good beginner project. While the shield and library make it pretty easy, you will want to have a firm grasp on the basics first. In this case, the Arduino really isn't doing any of the MP3 Player work. It is just sending signals to a chip on the shield that handles the decoding and playback. You will want to follow some of the tutorials in the playground prior to starting this project.