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Musicbox

Musicbox
Anders Lindqvist (breakin)

I've been meaning to do electronics projects with or for the kids. The first one to be finished was a MP3-player for my 2½ year old. She loves music and sings a lot, but she can't play music herself. She has to ask and then she always asks for the youtube version on the TV. Ideally I would have purchased her a casette deck or a CD-player, or even an old iPod... but whatever I did it had to be quite simple so she could use it.

I wanted to build something myself and I eventually found a cheap (4$) mp3-player chip. It has SD-card, MP3-player and an amplifier. I also bough a small loud speaker and some buttons. My good friend Albert helped me build it all into a nice plastic box. We went with a larger box which to make it more fun to use! And also easier to build. It has three buttons; play next song (volume up if held), play previous song (volume down if held) and a power switch. That is it as far as user interface goes.

Front side with buttons
On/off switch

Albert bullied me into using a larger speaker that I bought by mistake, insisting that everyone needs hifi. But when mounting it we had to crush it with a hammer so I'm not sure if it is hifi anymore. Albert also helped med with test songs on the SD-card which is how I got rickrolled. Thanks!

I put her favorite songs on it. The music box (“musiklådan”) is appreciated and used a lot. Maybe over time it will accumulate some stickers... we will see what happens :)

This was my project but huge thanks to Albert for making it happen this year. The physical box would not been as nice had I do. I sure loved to make a physical box! The mp3 chip has support for a lot more features that I'm not using. Maybe I should make a new project with something even cooler? I'm currently thinking about making a smaller version with a headphone jack or maybe having multiple profiles so we can have a set of songs for each family member... who knows!

Inside photo while mending battery that came loose

Contents

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Details

Here are some details, mostly to help me remember what I ended up with!