Arduino + PEMENOL Sound or Music Playback Module (MP3 Trigger) Tutorial

[@jmcneely8932]

Thanks for making this video - The docs were really poor, but you covered everything I needed to know!

[@sirskeptic]

That you SO much. I bought a couple of these online and there was NO documentation to be found anywhere. My project now works!

[@donaldjohnson394]

Excellent video!!! No useless loud background music and you get right to the point! Awesome!

[@jimjam623]

Excellent tutorial, many thanks Jeff 🙏😊

[@liverecon769]

Thx for making this one. Watched it one time to learn. Made it simple thx bro

[@MattyMosArcade]

Exactly what I was looking for. Thanks!!

[@toysforboysrc]

… hey that’s cool you’re into old school arcade games. I build rc cars, so I’m stoked to start making these large scale speed cars do some futuristic $#¡+😎🤙

[@audreyflores243]

Thank you for provide great instructions. Have a great weekend.

[@1977Arcademan]

Nice video, I have one of these boards. Do you know how to play the sounds through serial input?

[@toysforboysrc]

I have a question… is it possible to activate those “audio pins” via PWM signal?.. if not, will Arduino help make that possible?.. I certainly do not want an individual relay for each pin, but my application is PWM and I would greatly appreciate it if you could give me any info and point me in the right direction?🙏

[@wherami]

thank you very much. this makes a lot of sense now.

[@paulmajewski8808]

Thanks for the video, I didn't see anywhere what the music files needed to be named and my board uses SD Card only, apparently.

[@mydmcdelorean]

Hey, great video. I need some help.... am using an MP3 trigger board to play a sound to sync with lights from a prop but there always seems to be a 1.5 sec delay for the MP3 to play when triggered (even using a relay). Do you have any tips as to how to make a sound play instantly as soon as a trigger voltage (high 3.3v) is applied so it syncs perfectly with the prop I am using (which triggers instantly). Delaying the prop is not an option in this case unfortunately. Thanks in advance

[@ChefJeffPhD]

I haven’t used this chip in awhile, but I recall that there was very little delay between grounding the pin and the audio playing. Keep in mind that the pins need to be grounded to play (with a common ground to the Arduino), not pulled high to 5V or 3.3V. This may be part of the reason why there is a delay in the sound playing, or there is a blocking delay of some kind in your code. You could test the functionality by manually grounding the trigger pin with a wire by hand to check the triggering and sound delay.

[@mydmcdelorean]

@@ChefJeffPhD thanks for the quick reply. Yes I think you are correct, grounding the pin does work a lot quicker. How could I make the sound trigger this way without having to physically touch the pins or press a switch? I need a digital pulse to ground the pins with no delay to make the sound work

[@larrybud]

Couple of things: First, make sure your sound file doesn't have empty space at the start of the file. If there's a 1 sec gap of no sound at the start of the file, the device will "play" it, but since there's 1 sec of no sound, you won't hear anything for 1 second. Two, relays aren't instant. If you need to trigger this when something goes high instead of low, use a transistor. I see in your other message that you need a digital pulse. Are you using a microprocessor? If so, you would set the digital output to pull up HIGH, and then trigger it by writing LOW to trigger the sound.

[@jasonlipavsky7371]

what board are you selecting in arduino ide?

[@diyoregonnowtexas9202]

Can you make a video showing how to attach a separate momentary switch for each channel.

[@toysforboysrc]

Professor I still have a question, can this board respond to PWM? I know that I can use individual PWM switch boards in order to control each pin via PWM, but is there ANY other playback board like this one that responds to PWM?

[@diyoregonnowtexas9202]

I followed exactly but cant get it to trigger at all. I dont understand high or low. what do you mean? Plus I cant see exactly where the wires are plugged in on your modules. Too blurry.

[@mikelowrey5426]

Thanks for making the video, is it possible to set up one trigger with multiple different sounds that you can skip thru?

[@SciFi.Horror.Thriller.Fantasy]

Great Video! Thanks a lot! Quick question: Can you upgrade storage memory for mp3 somehow? I saw it´s about 8 MB - too small for what I have in mind.

[@ChefJeffPhD]

I don’t think so, but there are other MP3 player models that include an SD card reader for lots of storage.

[@DXaltation]

Can the power source be configured as a battery instead?

[@larrybud]

No UART mode example? Grounding specific pins might be fine for a couple of sounds, but you quickly use up all your GPIOs if you do it this way.

[@howdydoody30204b]

Thanks for the video. I'm not using an arduino, though. How might I trigger this using, say, a "Try me" button? Also, I'm using the DY-HU8F module, and I rashly deleted the files that were on it, but I remember that they were named like "1-whatever.mp3", "2-whatever.mp3", and so on. So, is there flexibility in the naming? As you observed, instructions are minimal.

[@ChefJeffPhD]

I believe the filing naming needs to be “0001.mp3”, “0002.mp3”, etc. the file naming does need a specific format when triggering them directly from the pins. If your using another device or a button, you can give the board 0V and 5V and solder a connection to one or more trigger pins that correspond to the file naming convention. You pull the trigger HIGH (5V) to not trigger the mp3, and pull the trigger pin LOW (0V) when you want to play a song. That should work!

[@Badge124]

Hi. Thanks for the demo. I was wondering if you've played around with the rx/tx serial communication and control?

[@ChefJeffPhD]

I haven’t yet - I’m unsure what serial commands are available for this particular chip.

[@BrassBuilder]

Thanks for this video too. Well explained. I think I can get this to work on a Battlestar Galactica model that I want to add sound to. I'd like to move the sound switch from the board to my case though. May have to unsolder that and find a replacement and run wires to the connectors.....or see what other alternatives there are.

[@retrobombstudios1258]

im asumming this could be connected to a 3.3 v pico too as long as as the voltage is taken care of.i am wondering though,how would i go about attaching leds to this also.Is this possible?

[@ChefJeffPhD]

I believe that this chip is supposed to work on 5V. I’m not sure if 3.3V will provide enough power for the chip and electronics on board, but it could be worth a try. I don’t have this board on hand anymore to check. You could attach LEDs onto the trigger pins to visualize the trigger logic - they will be high by default and low when triggered. It would probably be better to use the microcontroller to attach the LEDs.

[@larrybud]

You need 5v. You generally have 5V going into the pico which you can tap off the VBUS pin of the pico to get your 5v.

[@felipebustamante2665]

means that you need the arduino?

[@rondove9868]

I got this board. It is perfect for what I want to do . I am using a ultrasonic sensor at 2 different thresholds I want to play a sound. It works but when I have it set to return to high after my last threshold. It just repeats the last sound byte . What am I doing wrong?

[@ChefJeffPhD]

I found that it works best if you trigger an adjacent pin with no sound or a short sound to interrupt playing the first sound. It’s a bit of a hacky solution, but it usually works. The pins sometimes play the whole song or sound when triggered with a short press. There may be some timing to the triggering it I’m unaware of. Try triggering an adjacent pin to stop the sound.

[@rondove9868]

@@ChefJeffPhD wow didn't think you was going to reply so fast for being a older video.. I'll give it a shot. I have a couple more things I want to trigger with it. by looking at vague instructions, it says once trigger 7 is done it goes back high. I have 6 things to have triggered and I will make 7 no sound .

[@rondove9868]

@@ChefJeffPhD hey there, after many many attempts to get this to work. I figured it out .. I had to write the code in the void setup to treat the mp3 trigger by receiving a signal from a button. But there is no button.

[@jurgenreinemuth8869]

Can you elaborate on the latency of this module? What is the delay between triggering and actually playing the selected sound file?

[@ChefJeffPhD]

I don’t know exactly, but the trigger time is pretty fast with no obvious delay from a human perspective, so I would guess some number of milliseconds response time (less than 50 ms ish) from triggering to playing.

[@eldjmasterfreddy4366]

Great video presentation thank you for your time

[@sheliabrown9230]

Hi Jeff, great video, have Learnt allot, many thanks. Just on question though: How do you set the MP3 player (via the UNO) to just play a song / sound once only when activated. At the moment the MP3 player repeats the song continuously when activated.

[@toysforboysrc]

…. I know barely much about this topic as I’m still getting my knowledge together but if it’s replaying does that mean the circuit or channel for that command remains closed from the time it’s first initiated? If so, that would just be a matter of having your controller or arduino that is, to perform an open/close/open task rather than stay closed? Because to activate any of the 7 channels on the playback module just requires closing circuit to ground once and doesn’t require it to remain closed during the length of that audio file right? I’m just testing my own knowledge bcs this is how we learn but you probably know 100times more than I know 🧐

[@TheQuietstorm515]

Thank-you

[@uniacke]

my computer doesn't seem to recognize this as a usb storage device, is there a driver or something I need to install?

[@DrexProjects]

It may just be your cable. Some cables are only for charging and do not have the data lines. It's worth a try to change the cable out for one that you know works with data.

[@jasongibson4]

Anyone know how to make this randomly place a selection?

[@toysforboysrc]

… I’ll try to answer.. the playback module just holds onto the audio files and has 7 channels or contact points that activate the assigned audio to that given channel number file to play. So having an arduino or raspberry is just another board added to the equation because those boards perform the action for you.. so instead of you manually triggering the playback module to play an audio file just by you closing the circuit with the ground wire, the arduino or raspberry can do that for you. So now what’s missing is the tool or method you want to use to trigger arduino to trigger the playback module at any of the given 7 channels. The arduino and raspberry can be activated by using a voice detection board, a motion detection board, a vibration detection board, a temperature detection board, and even a hand gesture sensing board. These are small and cheap and most other boards that perform tasks will respond to any of these sensor boards I mentioned. However if you’re wanting the music to repeat or play the next song fully automatically., then you need to tell arduino or raspberry exactly what to do and when to do it, which might just be coding jargon. The least complicated way to avoid coding or just the thought process in general would be to have a board, any board, but one that has a “shuffle” feature or random select feature and let it do all the communicating with the playback module for you. Hope that was helpful I’m still learning, I haven’t even touched one of these things yet, I’m still researching for myself so I can apply the technology to my large scale RC cars🙏👌💯

[@vectorsigma9903]

Very helpful. Thanks!

[@smothclipsers]

You rock! 👍

[@howdydoody30204b]

The sound level is very low. Can hardly hear on my laptop.

[@BumDad]

The day I even consider putting a $70 mouse in my shopping cart…

[@ChefJeffPhD]

Ha I didn’t even notice that! Didn’t end up getting that mouse.