power the LilyPad MP3 Player is with a Lipo battery. If you'd like to use an external supply,
see the instructions
want to run the board from FTDI power
To recharge an attached Lipo battery, plug a
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
.
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
. 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 MP3 Player into
your project and use "soft switches" to trigger any sound you want. Best of all, since this sketch
comes preinstalled on every LilyPad MP3 Player, you can use it right out of the box, with no
programming necessary. Let's get started!
Required Materials
single-cell (3.7V) Lipo battery
(500mAh or above recommended. You can use smaller ones
if you reduce the charge rate, see the instructions
).
(to recharge the battery and reprogram the board if desired).
, or headphones with a 1/8" stereo jack.
If you want to connect the LilyPad MP3 Player to an amplifier, see this
.
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