Animatronics > Animatronic Sound > Arduino

Controlling Audio with Arduino

The open source Arduino microcontroller has good future of the ability to control audio. The price of Arduino and this ability to control certainly raises my eyebrows. Currently, there is development work to be done for these items to become off the shelf components that anyone could insert into an animatronics project. There are a few shields available for controlling audio with the Arduino.

Sparkfun Electronics - MP3 Player Shield (retail $39.95 US)

• MicroSD card slot
• MP3 decoder chip onboard
• 3.5mm stereo headphone jack output
• This shield needs a protection chircuit if connected directly to an amplifier
• Header pins need to be installed to stack with an Arduino board

Rogue Robotics - rMP3 Playback Module (retail $64.99 CAD)

• microSDHC card holder
• MP3 decoder chip onboard
• 1/8" audio out jack
• TTL serial control
• Additional 10 pin control connector
• Header pins need to be installed to stack with an Arduino board

Adafruit - Wave Shield (retail $22.00 US)

• full size SD card slot onboard
• selectable mono speaker out or 1/8" jack output
• 512 maximum audio files, can be as large as SD card
• comes with Arduinio library code
• Not CD quality audio

Since shields are stackable, one of these shields would allow the Arduino microcontroller to control a small animatronics show in conjunction with a servo control shield.