Extremely simple "turn on led lights and play sound once" project

Projects General Guidance
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Hi there, sorry, I'm new to Arduino and wiring electronics in general. I think Arduino might be a little bit overkill for what I'm trying to do, every time I search for a similar project its always magnitudes more complex with synchronizing lights to music and stuff; but I can't seem to find any guidance accomplishing it non-arduino either.

Basically all I want to do is have a button that when pressed, turns on some led lights and plays anaudio clip from a recorder/usb mp3 module once.

Is Arduino overkill for that? If so, any direction as to what else I could do would be great; most of the audio playback modules I can find have the play button right on the board for some reason.

1 Like
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Is Arduino overkill for that?

No. It's perfectly suitable.

and plays anaudio clip from a recorder/usb mp3 module once.

You want an mp3 shield.

most of the audio playback modules I can find have the play button right on the board for some reason.

Links?

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Thanks for the response, Paul.

I was referring particularly to this thing at radioshack:

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Try some of the simple MP3 playback modules here

Use a button to trigger a 555 timer to drive the LEDs for a set time, and trigger sound playback.

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If your MP3 player runs without the Arduino, yes a microcontroller is overkill.

You'd need to find out how the play-button works... You'd need to know that if you are controlling it with the Arduino too... Most likely, it just "pulls down" a control line to ground.

For the LED there is a famous* chip called the [u]555[/u]. The 555 can be used as an oscillator, where for example it could turn the LED on for one second, off for 2 seconds, and repeat. Or for what you want it can be configured as a "one-shot", where for example when you push the button it would come on for 10 seconds and then shut-off 'till you push the button again.

You should be able to use the same button to trigger the sound and the 555.

Depending on the logic, you may also need an inverter chip. I don't know if the audio player is triggered by a negative-going (ground) pulse, or a positive-going (5V) pulse, and I don't remember what kind of trigger the 555 one-shot takes either. The [u]74LS04[/u] is another famous chip. It has 6 inverters, and you only need to use one (you just need 4 connections to the chip... power & ground and input & output to one of the inverters).

  • Both of these chips have been around for more than 30 years (maybe more than 40 years) and are under $1 USD each.
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DVDdoug:
If your MP3 player runs without the Arduino, yes a microcontroller is overkill.

You'd need to find out how the play-button works... You'd need to know that if you are controlling it with the Arduino too... Most likely, it just "pulls down" a control line to ground.

For the LED there is a famous* chip called the [u]555[/u]. The 555 can be used as an oscillator, where for example it could turn the LED on for one second, off for 2 seconds, and repeat. Or for what you want it can be configured as a "one-shot", where for example when you push the button it would come on for 10 seconds and then shut-off 'till you push the button again.

You should be able to use the same button to trigger the sound and the 555.

Thanks! I really just want the lights to turn on until the button is pushed again, though, and the audio to play one shot.

http://store.bigdawgspromo.com/product_info.php?cPath=492&products_id=12955

I like the simplicity of this one and the fact that I don't have to hack the button off the board to make a remote button, but I'm concerned about the batteries being right on there.