Adafruit Audio fx User manual

Adafruit Audio FX Sound Board

Created by lady ada

Last updated on 2018-08-22 03:44:12 PM UTC

Guide Contents

Overview

Amplifier or Headphone out

Trigger Effects

Tour

Headphone Output Type

Stereo Amplifier Type

Pinouts

Power Pins

UART Pins

Volume Trigger pins

Audio Outputs

Trigger Pins

Other Pins

Copying Audio Files

Powering it

USB power pack

Powering with Amplifer

Wiring a battery pack to the Vin + GND pins

Using Vin JST Connector

Using a Lipoly Backpack

Triggering Audio

How many triggers are there?

How long does it take for audio to play once I've triggered the pin?

Trigger Types

Basic trigger - Tnn.WAV or Tnn.OGG

Hold Looping Trigger - TnnHOLDL.WAV or TnnHOLDL.OGG

Latching Loop Trigger - TnnLATCH.WAV or TnnLATCH.OGG

Play Next Trigger - TnnNEXT#.WAV or TnnNEXT#.OGG

Play Random Trigger- TnnRAND#.WAV or TnnRAND#.OGG

Wire up Buttons

Serial Audio Control

Arduino Library

Load Demo Sketch

General Usage

Commands

IDLE mode commands

List Files

Volume up and down

Play track by Number

Play track by name

PLAY mode commands

Pause & Unpause

Stopping Playback

Current playback time

File size and remaining

Advanced Triggering

Trigger Order

Basic foreground & background

Advanced Background/Foreground

Creating Audio Files

How Much Music?

Compressed or No?

Stereo or Mono

Bit Rates / Sample Rates

Some examples

Uncompressed WAV

Compressed Ogg Vorbis

Troubleshooting

Doesn't show up as a drive on my computer

I can't get audio to play when I trigger the pins

Downloads

Disk Images

Datasheets & Files

Schematic and Fabrication Print

Headphone Out version

Amplifier Version

F.A.Q.

How come 'looping tracks' like TO1LATCH.WAV dont loop in UART mode?

I am having difficultly triggering GPIO #9 and #10

If I hold down a button in 'play once' Tnn.WAV mode, it will repeat!

I don't have short delays between loops, whats up with that?

Overview

Would you like to add audio/sound effects to your next project, without an Arduino+Shield? Or maybe you don't even

know how to use microcontrollers, you just want to make a sound play whenever you press a button. What about

something that has to be small and portable? You are probably feeling a little frustrated: it's been very hard to find a

simple, low cost audio effects trigger that is easy to use and does not require any programming

UNTIL NOW!

Don't get me wrong, I love the MP3 Music Maker shield, and our Wave Shield is a dependable classic. But you still

need to get an Arduino involved. There's all sorts of tricks with ISD chips or recordable greeting cards, but they never

sound any good. So after a lot of engineering and tinkering we've come out with the Adafruit Sound Board, the easiest

way ever to add audio effects to a project!

The Sound Board has a lot of amazing features that make it the easiest thing ever:

No Arduino or other microcontroller required! It is completely stand-alone, just needs a 3 to 5.5VDC battery

Small - only 1.9" x 0.85"

Built in storage - yep! you don't even need an SD card, there's 2MB or 16MB of storage on the board itself, so

you can store up to 15 minutes of quality compressed audio. Double that if you go with mono instead of stereo

Built in Mass Storage USB - Plug any micro USB cable into the Sound Board and your computer, you can drag

and drop your files right on as if it were a USB key

Compressed or Uncompressed audio - Go with compressed Ogg Vorbis files for longer audio files, or

uncompressed WAV files

High Quality Sound - You want 44.1KHz 16 bit stereo? Not a problem! The decoding hardware can handle any

bit/sample rate and mono or stereo

11 Triggers - Connect up to 11 buttons or switches, each one can trigger audio files to play

Stereo line out - There's a breakout for both left and right channels, at line level, so you can always hook up to

any kind of stereo or powered speaker

Five different trigger effects - by changing the name of the files, you can create five different types of triggers

which will cover a large range of projects

without

any programming

Amplifier or Headphone out

We have two versions, one with a headphone jack so you can connect to a stereo or powered speaker set

And a version with built in class D stereo amplifier, you can have 2 x 2.2W of output audio power, driving 4 or 8 ohm

speakers

Trigger Effects

What do we mean by trigger effects? Well, depending on your project you may need to have audio play in different

ways. We thought of the five most common needs and built it into the Sound Board so you just rename the file to get

the effect you want.

1. Basic Trigger - name the file Tnn.WAV or Tnn.OGG to have the audio file play when the matching trigger pin nn

is connected to ground momentarily

2. Hold Looping Trigger - name the file TnnHOLDL.WAV or .OGG to have the audio play only when the trigger pin

is held low, it will loop until the pin is released

3. Latching Loop Trigger - name the file TnnLATCH.WAV or .OGG to have the audio start playing when the button

is pressed momentarily, and repeats until the button is pressed again

4. Play Next Trigger - have up to 10 files play one after the other by naming them TnnNEXT0.WAV thru

TnnNEXT9.OGG. Will start with #0 and each one on every momentary button press until it gets through all of

them, then go back to #0

5. Play Random Trigger - just like the Play Next trigger, but will play up to 10 files in random order (TnnRAND0.OGG

thru TnnRAND9.OGG) every time the button is pressed momentarily

The sound board is designed to be simple: it does not have polyphonic ability, can't play MP3's, isn't reprogrammable

or scriptable, and you can't have any other kind of trigger type. However, there's a good chance the project you want

to make will work great.

We designed this board specifically for people who wanted to make props, costumes, toys, and other small portable

projects. Check out the tutorial for all the powering options, you can power from 3-5VDC so a 3xAAA battery

pack (https://adafru.it/dcG) or a LiPoly battery will work well. You can even use our LiPoly backpack to fit on top for an

all-in-one rechargeable effects board (https://adafru.it/e0A)

Tour

We'll go over each pin on the board in the next page, right now let's look at the basic elements of the Sound Board so

you have an idea of what each piece does.

Starting from the left is the micro USB jack. You'll need a standard MicroUSB cable to connect this to your computer.

You do need a computer (any will do) in order to save files onto the Sound Board flash storage

This big chip is the audio decoding engine. It has OGG and WAV decoding capability and can listen to the trigger pins

to know when to play each file. It has great audio quality, much better than trying to have a microcontroller generate

the audio on its own.

It cannot decode MP3 files - but that makes it a lot less expensive since MP3 decoding requires a patent license where

as OGG and WAV are free for any kind of use.

This is the onboard flash chip. It's basically like a little SD card, but soldered directly onto the PCB. These chips can

store a few megabytes. This doesn't seem like much but for most audio effects, you don't need hours of music. You

can store a couple minute's worth of compressed OGG on a 2M flash chip.

Headphone Output Type

All the way to the right is the headphone jack. This is for connecting to a pair of headphones or into a powered

speaker. It cannot drive an 8 ohm or 4 ohm speaker. Instead, an amplifier will have to be used (basically, just like your

phone or pocket MP3 player needs an external powered/amplified speaker)

The outputs are 'live level' (about 1Vpp) and have DC blocking capacitors so it can be connected to any kind of

amplifier.

Stereo Amplifier Type

All the way to the right is the Class D stereo amplifier. This is for connecting to a pair of speaker! The outputs are

bridge-tied-load (BTL) so do not connect R+ to L+ and R- to L- to get more power, it could damage the chip. If you only

need one speaker, simply connect the channel you want.

The amplifier can drive 8 ohm or 4 ohm speaker, up to 2.8W (10% distortion, 4 ohm) and 2.2W (1% distortion, 4 ohm)

4 ohm speakers will be louder than 8 ohm

Powering from 5V will be louder than 3V, so if you need more oomph, you can power from 4 x AA rechargeable

batteries, or 3 x AA Alkaline, or a USB battery pack. It's pretty damn loud tho!

Pinouts

The top and bottom pin sets are the same for the headphone and amplifier out version of the sound board, we just use

the headphone version for the photos below

The Sound Board has a lot of pins, but we can group them into chunks, lets go through each kind of group in order to

understand all the stuff you can do.

Power Pins

There's a couple power pins in the top. This is what you'll use to power the Sound Board in your project.

Vin - This is the primary 'battery' power input pin. Power with 3-5.5 VDC

GND - there's a couple ground pins but we suggest this one for power input. The others can be used for signal

grounds

BUS - this is the 5V that comes from the USB connector. We break this out in case you want to use it to say

charge a LiPoly battery (See the Powering It page!)

PB - this is the 'Power Button' pin, which we use for testing. Just leave it disconnected for use.

In general, you'll only want to power through the Vin and GND pins. The Vin input pin is polarity protected and can use

3V-5.5V DC input. If you want to use a larger voltage, you'll need another regulator that can bring the voltage down to

3-5V DC

UART Pins

If you want to control the Sound Board over UART Serial, you can do so by using the TX, RX and UG pins.

TX - this is the serial OUT from the board. 3.3V logic

RX - this is the serial INTO the board. We add some level shifting so you can use 3-5V logic.

UG - the UART/GPIO selector pin. Pulled high for default GPIO trigger mode. Tie to ground and reset the board

for UART mode.

Volume Trigger pins

These are two extra inputs that can be used to adjust the volume in GPIO trigger mode only. Connect buttons that go

from each pin to ground, when the button is pressed, the volume will decrease or increase

The volume is not stored during power cycling or resets, so it will have to be re-applied after restarts.

Audio Outputs

If you don't want to use the headphone jack, connect your amplifier to the Right, Left and Ground pins. These are line

level outputs for headphones of about 30 ohms, not for big speakers! There are output DC blocking capacitors so you

can safely connect directly to any kind of amplifier

Trigger Pins

Finally, we're at the trigger pins! These are the 11 inputs that can be used to trigger audio playing. We'll go over how to

set the file for each pin in a later page.

Each pin has a pullup resistor, use a button/switch to connect to ground when pressed in order to 'trigger' it. The board

has debouncing logic built in.

Other Pins

We have a few other pins you may be curious about

Rst - this is the reset pin, you probably don't need to use this pin but when tied to ground it resets the board.

Act - this is the Activity pin, which goes low when an audio file is played

CS - this is the chip select line for the onboard flash chip, do not connect anything to it! We use it for

programming the chip during manufacture!

Copying Audio Files

We'll start by copying some audio files over to the Sound Board. To make it really easy, we have a pack of files ready

for you. They're not terribly interesting (just spoken words) but will help you test the triggers.

Download the zip file here and uncompress it on your computer:

https://adafru.it/e0s

Now plug in the sound board into your computer, it will show up as a new USB key. No drivers are required!

There may already be a file on there, that's from our testing procedure. You can delete or overwrite it.

Copy over all the new files into the new disk drive

Then eject the disk properly to make sure the data was completely written

Powering it

You won't be able to play audio while the board is connected to USB, so to actually trigger audio you'll need to unplug

the USB cable and power it another way. There's many ways to power the Sound Board, you'll have to go with

whatever it easiest for you.

USB power pack

This is by far the simplest way to power and doesn't even require any soldering! Simply connect the board micro USB

to a USB power pack. Since there's no data lines on a battery pack, it wont try to start up as a USB key. Just connect

with any microUSB cable. These are large but it will power the Sound board + amplifier for a looooong time

The down-side of using these is that some power packs automatically turn off when they don't detect a lot of current

draw immediately. Its impossible to tell ahead of time whether your power pack will work without testing, but if your

project doesn't make music sounds almost immediately, it can be an issue

Powering with Amplifer

The 2x2W amplifier version of the Sound Board is a pretty beefy 2x2W amplifier. If you are using 2 x 4 ohm speakers,

that means you could be seeing as much as 2 Amp spikes of current. (In reality, assume spikes of 1A since audio isn't a

DC load). Power with good charged batteries like AA's or even AAA's. For lipoly batteries, a 500mAh battery is

minimal! Go for 1200mAh or more if you plan on playing it loud

Wiring a battery pack to the Vin + GND pins

You can use a AA or AAA battery pack and wire it up directly to the Vin an GND pins. We recommend 3xAA or 3xAAA

alkaline or rechargeable as ideal. You can use 4xAA or 4xAAA but in that case, make sure you've got rechargeable

batteries, as the higher voltage alkalines may be a bit much for the board.

For most battery packs the red wire is the positive wire,

connect that to Vin. The black wire is ground, connect

that to GND.

Solder both wires securely. You cannot just twist the

wires into place!

The nicer battery packs have switches, or you can just

remove the batteries when not in use. If the green light

is lit, it's powered up!

Using Vin JST Connector

If you don't want to solder wires directly, you can solder on a JST PH 2-pin connector (http://adafru.it/1769) to the back.

We don't include this on the board because its a bit bulky and if the JST is in place you can snap a battery in or out

easily. The connector is the same as the Vin/GND pins on the side so use one or the other!

All our Lipoly batteries come with a JST (https://adafru.it/e0v), and our 3xAAA on/off pack also

does (https://adafru.it/dYF).

Or, connect your custom battery with a JST cable (http://adafru.it/261)

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