Best solution? Small sys plays mp3 on button press

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1

Hi,

I’m trying to make an wedding anniversary gift to my wife (we’re celebrating our first wedding day in september). Playing on an old internal joke I want to make a small box with 1 button on. When pressed, it should play a random mp3 track (voice tracks). She shouldn’t need to start it first, just press the button. After it has played the 1 track, it should turn off automatically. It will be battery powered.

Even though I’m a software guy from the beginning, I’m comfortable with Raspberry pi, arduino, soldering, I’ve made wireless sensors based on XRF that now powers the real time wireless temperature sensors at http://www.vadretpalandet.se/#temperature

Back to my setup. I’m having a hard time simplifying the solution and I was looking for any help or inspiration you might think of. My first idea was to use:

1x Arduino (possibly mini), burn the sketch so it starts quicker (no bootloader, or use optiboot)

1x MP3 Power Shield or something similar

1x Mini speaker

1x Pololu Power Switch (to have the arduino automatically turn off after playing the track)

Hack the power switch so it can be used to power on the Arduino, and the Arduino then turns it off (http://www.instructables.com/id/Using-P … /?ALLSTEPS)

Is there an even simpler solution? Am I missing something? I’m trying to minimize, simplify and streamline everything as much as possible.

Regards,

Niklas

2

How many tracks and how long ? I assume music quality need not be = CDs. I’ve seen short audio tracks loaded and played back from flash using both PICs and AVRs. There’s also this …

https://www.sparkfun.com/products/11125

3

Probably 10-15 tracks, each only 30 seconds each (or less) - so not long at all. Only talking audio (similar to an audio book). The Audio-sound breakout looks really nice. That combined with a simple serial communicator should work. That way I can use the simplest serial connection chip I can find, and use it to “simulate” random by sending NEXT X times, or maybe even wire the buttons to execute PLAY, NEXT signals.

Thank you!

4

niklasbi:
That way I can use the simplest serial connection chip I can find, and use it to “simulate” random by sending NEXT X times, or maybe even wire the buttons to execute PLAY, NEXT signals.

Yes, that’s too much audio to store in the flash of a simple MCU. Given the usage of the above board you might want to check out Adafruits “Trinket” as a controller.

https://www.adafruit.com/products/1501

5

Thank you, that do look very promising!

6

Something to look at…

https://learn.sparkfun.com/tutorials/wa … #operation