Have you ever wanted to add sound effects to your model? If so here is a quick tutorial on making your own sound effects module.This is a very simple project that will play a sound file (.mp3 file) in a continuous loop until you power it off. The mp3 player used in this tutorial can be controlled by an arduino and/or you can add extra buttons to have more options, but for simplicity I am showing just how to set it up to play a sound clip on a loop.I made this module for my Moebius 2001 EVA pod so my module plays selected sound bites from the Movie 2001 A space Odyssey (open the pod bay doors HAl).

The sound is generated by a DFplayer mini.This is a very cheap mp3 player board, but it can actually do quite a lot and it can play quite high quality stereo sound files.


So in best Blue Peter fashion break out your sticky tape, cereal boxes and glue and lets make a sound effects module.

Here are the components you will need.they can all be bought from Amazon and ebay and if you shop around you should be able to build the whole module for less than $20.


1.DFplayer mini.
this is the board that makes the sound.it has an onboard microSD card reader and pins for input and output.If you want to know what each pin does there are manuals describing each pin and wiring diagrams to help you.There are also a ton of youtube videos showing how to connect the dfplayer to an arduino or add buttons.

Here is the datasheet;
http://www.picaxe.com/docs/spe033.pdf

2.MicroSD card.
This is used to store your sound clip. A 16G card will give you hours of storage space.

3. JST 2 pin connectors
these connectors are used to connect the dfplayer to the battery pack and speaker.
you could skip these and solder the wires from the battery holder and the speaker directly to the dfplayer.

4.Speaker
I set up my module to play mono clips so I just needed one speaker.This speaker produces really nice loud sound.you can use another speaker if you wish, but it should by 3watt 8 ohm speaker. I got mine form Amazon

https://www.amazon.com/g...title?ie=UTF8&psc=1


5.Battery holder.
I used a 3 AAA battery holder with a switch.The dfplayer needs 4.5-5V dc power.Anything over 5 v will damage the board.
If you need to put the sound module in a place where it cant be accessed you can put a switch between the battery holder and dflplayer and mount the switch somewhere accessible.

6.Box.
I made a box to put the dfplayer in.thee is a lot of room inside the EVA pod that I made this for so I 3d printed a box to keep the dfplayer from getting dusty.

For my player I used a box for the mp3 player.So the first step was to glue the 3 jst connectors to the box. I labelled the side of the box with one side for the power input and one side for the speakers.Make sure you label the wires coming out of your box .If you plug the power supply into the speaker wires you will burn out the dfplayer.

next I connected the wires from the wires labelled speaker to the last pin in the right and the third pin from the right.

Now you can put your recording on to the microSD . There are tons of free sound editing programs you can use to record your sounds.I used Audacity.

The file needs to be stored as a mono .mp3 file. If you use a 16GB microSD that will store hours of sounds.

Once you have your sound file store in on the MicroSD card.It doesnt matter what filename you use as long as it is the only file on the card the dfplayer will play it.


Once the SD card is installed you can close the box and voila it is done.