Hello, I am trying to play music with a sparkfun mp3 player shield and I am wondering what speakers work with this shield. And I also want to know if when I see in the serial monitor it says 'waiting for button press' and when I press a button it says 'playing track one' if this means that the mp3 shield is working and the only problem is the speaker.
(sorry if that was confusing)
It can be used with headphones or an active speaker (a speaker with built in amplifier, like the small ones that you can plug into your PC).
The signal is too small to directly drive a standard speaker. Also it is designed to drive minimum 16 ohm impedance. Normal speakers are 4 or 8 ohm, so those may/will cause damage to your shield.
It needs an amplifier or powered/active speaker, like regular computer speakers that have an amplifier built-in and use a power supply or plug-into the wall.
Oh, it has to be an active speaker, ok, thanks.
You need to actually provide information.
- What speaker are you using?
- How have you wired it?
- Where is your code?
- Is this a cross posting?
If your mp3 player is the one that DVDdoug queried in post #3, then there is a hook up guide on the Sparkfun website. This explains what you are asking about.
I am just using headphones that I have just plugged into the 1/8in audio jack, and I have uploaded the code to the arduino, and when I look at the serial monitor on my computer I see that the arduino is waiting for a button press, I press the play button, the serial monitor then says playing track001 and nothing happens.
I just noticed that the jack on the mp3 has one ring, and my audio jack has 2 rings. I going to guess that these are not compatible?
Maybe, maybe not. I presume your "headphones" also include a microphone and I suspect you do not know what impedance they are.
If the MP3 player is playing an actual stereo recording, you should hear something in the earphones even with the microphone connected to the ground instead of the common. If it is a mono recording you likely will get no sound.
That would be your audio plug (TRRS).
They say that it ships ready for headphone play.
It has, depicted schematically, a 'TRS' jack.
So if it is ready for headphone play and I get no sound through my headphones, that means that I have a faulty board, it isn't ready for headphone play, or I have done something wrong.
According to their notes and schematic, a headphone or speaker should work,
if your plug is one of these --
that is the plug on my headphones, when I press the play button, the serial monitor reads
B_NEXT pressed, Start Playing Next Track #1
(there are 3 files on the sd card labeled track001.mp3, track002.mp3, and track003.mp3)
And Sparkfun is ignoring you ?
Its working now, all I did was take the .mp3 off the names of the files. 
Thanks for your help.
Hi, I don’t know how to hook my speakers up to my MP3 player shield and I need help. My shield and speakers are below.
Speakers
ALMOCN 2PCS 2" 4Ohm 3W DIY Small Full Range Audio Speaker Stereo Woofer Loudspeaker for Arduino and DIY Speaker
Shield
Thanks for the help
You need an amplifier to connect this to a speaker. It is for headphones only without one.
this is how you wire it up.
https://learn.sparkfun.com/tutorials/mp3-player-shield-hookup-guide-v15
I got it, the file that I’m trying to play isn’t an mp3 file
Thanks for the help, I now know I need an amplifier as well.
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