EFX-TEK shows the Propeller AP-16 WAV Audio Player at Parallax - wow!

Ken Gracey

Hey all,

Today was a special day at Parallax because it included a visit from Jon Williams (JonnyMac) and John Barrowman of EFX-TEK. They showed us their new AP16 Audio Player based on the Propeller. This product is sooo simple to use - put your WAV files on an SD card and play them back upon software or switch control. The amplifiers are massive 20W and the sound clarity is crystal clear. See their web page for complete details www.efx-tek.com/topics/ap-16.html.

We will be selling the AP-16 for the same price as EFX-TEK ($129.99). I hope to have them in stock within a week.

This is an ideal sound playback controller for robotics, museum displays, haunted houses, etc.

This product consumed the last six months of Jon Williams' life and the effort is truly reflected in the quality of the product.

Thanks John and Jon for bringing us this product. And thanks for redesigning the whole EFX-TEK line around the Propeller.

Below you will see Jon Williams:



And part of the Parallax crew:



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Ken Gracey
Parallax Inc.

Follow me at http://twitter.com/ParallaxKen for some insider news.

Post Edited (Ken Gracey (Parallax)) : 7/13/2010 9:12:21 PM GMT

Oldbitcollector (Jeff)

Awesome! A product bringing the Propeller to the "unwashed masses.", not just the geeks.

Exactly what I hope to see more of in the future! Well done Jon and EFX-TEK!

OBC

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Propeller Feature Projects: PropellerPowered.com
Visit the: PROPELLERPOWERED SIG forum kindly hosted by Savage Circuits.

Cluso99

Great news. Could this be the killer app??? Hope so.

BTW: The italic footnotes for with and without power supply werre a bit confusing at first glance. May I suggest they are above the table with "..." to indicate which one the table refers.

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Links to other interesting threads:

· Home of the MultiBladeProps: TriBlade,·RamBlade,·SixBlade, website
· Single Board Computer:·3 Propeller ICs·and a·TriBladeProp board (ZiCog Z80 Emulator)
· Prop Tools under Development or Completed (Index)
· Emulators: CPUs Z80 etc; Micros Altair etc;· Terminals·VT100 etc; (Index) ZiCog (Z80) , MoCog (6809)·
· Prop OS: SphinxOS·, PropDos , PropCmd··· Search the Propeller forums·(uses advanced Google search)
My cruising website is: ·www.bluemagic.biz·· MultiBlade Props: www.cluso.bluemagic.biz

HollyMinkowski

This is great stuff

The propeller is a perfect fit for a project like this one.

When I tried to play sound with a prop it was pretty noisy though.
How come this is crystal clear? Obviously I did it wrong.
Maybe it was because I was using a dil prop? Perhaps the sm version
with shorter leads works better for this.

Ken Gracey

Holly, Chip gave Jon Williams a key bit of information. I'm not quite sure I understand it myself, but it has to do with running the playback program from COG0 since the leads are shorter between the die and package pins. Once Jon incorporated this change into his code a tremendous weight was lifted from his shoulders. Many days of work and troubleshooting were immediately behind him.

And when I say the audio is very clear - I mean it. No hissing, popping, clicks, etc. Some minor background fuzz but it's barely audible and only relevant if you're comparing this to a commercially-made MP3 player.

It's a solid product.

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Ken Gracey
Parallax Inc.

Follow me at http://twitter.com/ParallaxKen for some insider news.

JonnyMac

@Holly

I've attached a demo to show you how we use Chip's StereoDuty object. In all the other WAV players (my original included [noparse][[/noparse]which was just an update/improvement of Ray's code]), the WAV cog writes the sample data to the DACs (using counters in Duty mode) at the sample rate. Propagation delay and jitter on the pins can manifest as noise; as Ken pointed out I grew a lot of gray hair before I finally picked up the phone and called Chip (who deduced the problem right away).

So... instead of having my WAV driver write to the DACs I simply write the reconstructed samples back to the hub where StereoDuty picks them up, adds white noise, and updates the DACs -- constantly; hundreds of times between samples. In Chip's words this "whitens" the noise on the pin and pushes it up to the point where it can be filtered out by the RC components. It works -- and with 20W amps on each channel we can hear it.

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Jon McPhalen
Hollywood, CA

HollyMinkowski

Thanks Ken and JonnyMac

With his new knowledge I will revisit an old project
that I abandoned as unworkable.

JonnyMac, that is a great looking little board.
I can see so many uses for your project. I think
you will have success with it...Well Done!

mpark

Shouldn't StereoDuty be in obex?

JonnyMac

HollyMinkowski said...
JonnyMac, that is a great looking little board.
I can see so many uses for your project. I think
you will have success with it...Well Done!

Thanks, Holly. So far, the response from our customers has been fantastic.

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Jon McPhalen
Hollywood, CA

Tim-M

Jon or Ken,

I see that the AP-16+ has serial volume control and I don't see the answer to this question in the documentation...
Can the volume be serially adjusted during playback without audio distortion, glitching or quality changes? How about when lower serial baud rates are used, as the case may be when the host controller is a Basic Stamp 2 for example? Some of your competing products have issues like this and I would like to be able to do smooth volume fades by host control if possible.

Thanks,

Tim

Post Edited (Tim-M) : 7/15/2010 4:15:44 PM GMT

WBA Consulting

VERY nice product. Built-in amps make it a very viable product since a WAV player is just a WAV player. But being able to tie it directly to speakers without adding hardware is really nice. I can see a lot of non-special-effects uses for this. The serial control functions are an excellent add-on as well.

I am providing input to a customer that is doing a redesign of a store demo music player (those displays with a bunch of buttons next to pictures of CDs so you can sample the music). It uses a switch matrix of either 32 or 48 switches. An idea for you is a custom firmware set that would allow a small expander board to be plugged into IN1-8 to branch out to a higher number of inputs.

Jonnymac: One comment. The spec on page 11 for supply voltage lists 12-18VDC, but the board image on the same page shows 12-24 in the silkscreen (page 2 also lists 12-24).

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Andrew Williams
WBA Consulting
PowerTwig Dual Output Power Supply Module
My Prop projects: Reverse Geo-Cache Box, Custom Metronome, Micro Plunge Logger

JonnyMac

Tim-M said...
Jon or Ken,

I see that the AP-16+ has serial volume control and I don't see the answer to this question in the documentation...
Can the volume be serially adjusted during playback without audio distortion, glitching or quality changes? How about when lower serial baud rates are used, as the case may be when the host controller is a Basic Stamp 2 for example? Some of your competing products have issues like this and I would like to be able to do smooth volume fades by host control if possible.

Thanks,

Tim

Those products, e.g. the VMUSIC2, have the problems because they can only do one thing at a time -- they're single processor devices. Many MP3 players "glitch" when you send a serial command (especially at low baud rates) because the command processing interrupts the spooling of MP3 data to the decoder. That's not a problem for us because we're using a cog to spool data from the SD card, another cog to read that data and adjust for volume, and a completely separate cog to receive serial commands from the external host.

<EGO ON>This is not one of *those* products; it was designed by two guys who work very closely with their customer base. This is the reason it has a relay output and pre- and post-play delay pots; these were direct requests from customers we work with (museums, haunted houses, etc.) day-in and day-out. Since we design and support our own products, including 24/7 phone support, we would not dare release it with problems that we're been frustrated with by those other products.</EGO OFF>

Rest assured, you can do smooth fading through the serial connection. Now... I'm working on a future update -- that you can install by putting a file onto the SD card -- that will allow you to send one serial command to handle the fade so that you don't have a bunch of serial traffic to do this function.

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Jon McPhalen
Hollywood, CA

Post Edited (JonnyMac) : 7/15/2010 5:45:00 PM GMT

JonnyMac

@WBA -- Thanks for the doc error catch; I'll fix that graphic (copy and past error on my part when creating the graphic). The PCB is correctly marked.

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Jon McPhalen
Hollywood, CA

Tim-M

Thanks for the answers Jon...
Being a Propeller based product I thought this would be the case, but I thought it best to ask. I like your future update idea to reduce serial traffic for fading too... good thinkin'!

Tim

JonnyMac

@WBA,

I made some minor updates to the documentation. The silkscreen image is correct; the place where you're seeing 12-24V is not the power input (which is in the upper-left corner), it's one of the start input options. The board can take a 12-24VDC input from an external device (e.g., show control system) to start the audio.

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Jon McPhalen
Hollywood, CA

WBA Consulting

Thanks for the quick update. I have forwarded the link to this on to their engineer. For their product, they could use your board and just move the MCU to the switch matrix board. The MCU they use could be a very basic one as it would then only need to read the switches and send out a "play such-n-such" file command.

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Andrew Williams
WBA Consulting
PowerTwig Dual Output Power Supply Module
My Prop projects: Reverse Geo-Cache Box, Custom Metronome, Micro Plunge Logger

JonnyMac

Yes, that would be quite easy; if they follow the serial protocol then they can play any number of files and name them as they please.

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Jon McPhalen
Hollywood, CA

$WMc%

JonnyMac
'
Excellent work!!!
'
I have to have one of these AP-16.s
'
40 watts of power,Thats what I'm talking about.

Little-endian

I apologize if this has been asked already, but I didn't see answer. Can the AP-16 play two or more WAV files simultaneously or play a second WAV while one is currently playing?

JonnyMac

Sorry, I missed this question. No, the AP-16+ can only play one file at a time. I have a request in to Chip to write a high-performance SD driver that allows multiple files open at the same time; this would facilitate playing simultaneous files. Some have had a bit of luck with FSRW, but it requires multiple copies and I'm already low on cogs.