I am looking to output sound using the DAC and op-amp on the wave shield. I do not necessarily want to use the SD card as it will not initialize correctly (I have tried 6 different cards at this point). Is there a tone() function for this board or will that function work on the wave shield as it does with the regular Arduino?
I am using Uno v 0022 and Wave Shield v 1.1.
Any help given would be greatly appreciated. I am really hoping it is just a situation of assigning a frequency to something and then it outputs sound. I know it was built for greater things but I just wanted it for the DAC and for the Op-Amp and then as I learn more and more I may get back to the SD card (despite how finicky they have been).
I think you would have to re right the library files that come with it. The arduino doesn't really have a lot of RAM for dealing with audio data so it might not be that suited. I'm not sure if the connections are even there for you to do what you want. It's set up to stream audio data from the SD card. I have one and have had the odd problem with the SD cards. It's just making sure formatted properly with FAT16. It can be a bit temperamental. I had a card with audio on it and working, wanted to edit the audio. I had created it on a windows platform , put the card in linux to do audio edits and it messes it up some how. Got lot's of clicking and random file initialization. Re-formatted in a pc and new audio put on from there and it was fine.
I've been using the Waveshield for over a year now on a professional basis (I build and program toy prototypes for major toy companies), so I thought I'd share my experiences with the SD card issues, as I've built and used about a dozen of them, on Unos and Megas 2560, and even a Mega 1280 clone.
The first thing that can cause a problem and sometimes permanently damage the SD card, is removing it while the arduino is powered up, especially if a sound file is currently playing. I had to toss out two cards before I realized that. If you need to load new sounds, power down the Arduino, and then remove the card.
Another issue I've found is that I've had no luck getting the really small memory sized ones to work, like 8MB or 16MB. I think the smallest one I got to work was a 32MB. I've never had to format my cards, I've even pulled ones out of my digital camera and it worked fine (maybe even use the camera to format it?)
The last, is not using the correct sound format. Sounds should be 16bit, PCM uncompressed mono WAV files at 22k. Use the waveHC library examples, they have great error codes that will display in the serial monitor. You might get lucky and get other sampling rates to work, but I'll bet it will be unstable.