Modules for playing Mp3 from trigger?
T Chap
Posts: 4,223
I need to find a way to trigger an mp3. Someone wants to play an mp3 of a certain length audio file and I can output 3v3 from my Prop board to trigger it straight off a pin. Once upon a time I had my own mp3 modules but they are all gone. Cost is not a concern, I'd like a nice quality stereo output but even nicer if it has a built in stereo amp ready for some 8 ohm speakers to connect straight to it.
Any suggestions?
Any suggestions?
Comments
We have now reached the level where audio compression is no longer needed.
http://www.npr.org/sections/therecord/2017/05/11/527829909/the-mp3-is-officially-dead-according-to-its-creators
Escape room prop:
http://www.halloweenfxprops.com/audio-props/
http://www.ebay.com/itm/room-escape-prop-takagism-prop-Audio-sound-player-human-detect-/122659799540?_trksid=p2141725.m3641.l6368
Stereo out:
https://www.adafruit.com/product/2133
Built-in amp:
https://www.adafruit.com/product/2210
A few also play MIDI, and there's probably one in the mix that can do MP3s, if you really mist have that format.
Sparkfun has similar products. They have an MP3 trigger that is standalone. Price is $49. Just load the files onto a flash card following a certain filename format, plug the flash card in, and go.
Your Prop can play WAVs using only software and a couple of cogs.
"German research institution that bankrolled the MP3's development in the late '80s, recently announced that its "licensing program for certain MP3 related patents and software of Technicolor and Fraunhofer IIS has been terminated."
The reason the patents were terminated has much more to do with their having expired. For several years MP3 is patent-free in the EU, and the last significant patents expired in the US this year.
There's more to storage alone whether a format like MP3 is still valid. Who wants to download 600 MB of a CD (which is mostly raw PCM) when you can download 50MB of MP3. On a mobile device not on Wi-Fi it matters. Probably now more than ever people need and want compressed media. AAC may be the new format, but like how MP3 was, AAC is patented, and it costs to provide codecs. This drives up the costs. So we're back to square one and the main reason they developed formats like OGG in the first place.
Jon's Player is very easy to use, (WAV files)
And it's Propeller based!
http://www.efx-tek.com/topics/ap-16.html
600MB is nothing,
I rented Titalfall2 for xbox one, it needed a 22GB update before I could play.
As our ears have pretty low data requirements, I would say we have gone past where audio should be compressed for storage or transmission.
Our eyses on the other hand, 4K display data still needs heavy compression for storage, hdmi itself sends the data raw.
http://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/FTDI/VMUSIC3/?qs=Mbo4m7TrsANgTlmYqrKHgQ==
http://forums.parallax.com/discussion/162526/serial-output-is-there-a-better-way-to-do-this
600 MB is a lot when you're on monthly bandwidth cap, as many mobile device users are. I'm not sure what an Xbox game update has to do with it.
Pandora (AAC) and Spotify (OGG) won't stay in business very long pumping out uncompressed audio. Bandwidth isn't free. Especially when the music is listened to through ear buds, few can even tell the difference.
So once you accept you only need an SD card then all you need after that is a simple RC and I even use 220R there for low impedance out. Wave files are also very easy to seek to a position or time in the file unlike any compressed file. You can literally align to a word boundary anywhere and start playing. I use this method all the time because it is simple and it works.
Only way to get the update is through the internet, unless I unplugged the xbox's Ethernet cord it just started to download, it toke about an hour to finish.
Downloading 600MB a day if you did buy a 1hour worth of CD music every day is still not much data.
The no-loss compression cuts the data in half, if someone really tries to save bandwidth.
But streaming Netflix uses way more data.
The built-in amplifier on the Efx-Tec is the one you want if you need lots of volume. As I'm sure you've surmised, boards like VMusic and Catalex won't give you trigger inputs. These require a serial interface from a processor.
I wanted to clarify for the others I'm in agreement that for this project uncompressed WAV is perfectly fine. I just found the article that Tony linked to as one of those ill-informed ramblings -- since the MP3 patents have expired, it's no wonder its backers have stepped away from it. Fraunhofer would much prefer everyone go to their other technology, AAC, as those patents are still in force. In any case, MP3 isn't going anywhere, and is still the mostly widely supported audio compression format on the planet.
For general info: you'll need a hardware decompressor for any audio type that is compressed. The most common is a single-chip solution from VLSI, and their modules routinely work with either MP3 and OGG, or just OGG. They will also process WAV, so one board can theoretically handle WAV, MP3, and OGG (or for that matter MIDI, but that's not your use case). For your application, the choice of format becomes one of convenience, but keep in mind that if you choose a compressed format you won't be able to readily process that in a Prop alone. The Adafruit boards I noted use the lowest-cost VLSI chips produced before the MP3 patent expiration (OEM price less due to not paying a royalty), so they don't handle MP3. For these, you can use WAV or OGG. It's very easy to produce OGG files from Audacity, with is free.
Since you've used MP3 modules in the past, I'm sure you're aware how it works, but I thought I'd summarize for others not familiar with this type of board. Since you are looking to trigger your recorded sounds via a switch closure on a pin, you need only specify which sound file goes to which pin. The setup is simple, on the order of file0.mp3 for pin 0, file1.mp3 for pin 1, and so on. The Adafruit boards have some interesting filename variations to add special effects, without the use of reprogramming the board.