In general, larger speakers will sound better than small ones, so use the
largest ones that your project will accommodate. Don’t worry that the
speaker is marked “20 watts” or higher; that is just the maximum power that
the speaker is designed to handle. We’ve had great results with recycled
automotive and PC speakers, and even large cabinet speakers.
If your project requires a small speaker, remember that any small speaker
will sound much better if it has an enclosed cavity behind it. You can do this
with a project enclosure, recycled food containers, etc. Use your
imagination!
Some important things to know:
• Always turn the LilyPad MP3 Player off before inserting or removing
the micro-SD card. This will prevent corruption of the data on the
card.
• The 5V FTDI port is provided to charge an attached Lipo battery, and
provide a way to reprogram the board. It will power the board if no
audio is playing, but will not provide enough power to drive the
speakers (the board will reset while playing). In general, the best way
to power the LilyPad MP3 Player is with a Lipo battery. If you’d like to
use an external supply, see the instructions here, and if you really
want to run the board from FTDI power you can hack it to do so.
• To recharge an attached Lipo battery, plug a 5V FTDI Basic or cable
into the 6-pin FTDI connector. Match up the direction of your FTDI
board or cable with the “GRN” and “BLK” markings on either side of
the connector. The yellow “Charge” light will turn on while the battery
is charging and turn off when it’s fully charged. It’s normal for the
charge light to turn on if no battery is attached. The charge rate is set
to 500mA, which means that a 1000mAh battery will charge in about
two hours. If you’d like to change the charge rate, see the
instructions here.
• The LilyPad MP3 Player’s headphone jack is safe for headphones,
but don’t connect it to an external amplifier unless you’re using a
battery to power the LilyPad. (The fine print is that if the audio ground
is shorted to the power ground, the audio decoder chip will be
damaged).
• The VS1053B chip understands a large variety of audio file formats,
but we’ll occasionally run into one it can’t play back (it will quietly skip
it). See the list of formats and bitrates it understands here. If you do
run into a file it has problems with, you can often fix the problem by
translating the file into a different format using the audio software of
your choice.
• The LilyPad MP3 Player is washable, but because conductive thread
connections can be fragile, we recommend washing your project as
little as possible. Please hand-wash, and be sure to remove the Lipo
battery and micro-SD card before washing. Because water can get
into lots of little crevices, allow everything to air-dry for several days
before powering it up again.
With that out of the way, let’s start playing audio!
Getting Started with the Default
"Trigger" Sketch
The LilyPad MP3 Player comes with a preinstalled sketch (Arduino
programs are called sketches) called “Trigger”. This sketch will wait for
one of the five trigger inputs to be grounded and will then play the
corresponding audio file from the micro-SD card. You can sew the LilyPad
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