KOOBOOK 2Pcs Voice Playback Module MP3 Trigger Player Board SD/TF Card for Arduino

I was working on a microcontroller project where I wanted to display lots of information on a very small OLED display. Since the project was for use while driving a vehicle, this was problematic, as I didn’t want to distract the driver from watching the road. Problematic, that is, until I saw this voice trigger board on Amazon. Perfect! Now I can have my project just call out the information, and with this voice trigger board, that worked perfectly. I can now have the project ‘speak’ an almost unlimited set of pre-recorded short messages instead of displaying the information on a OLED display.I used the UART mp3 play selection method. This worked perfectly, but note to properly select the right file in the proper order, you should name the files 000000.mp3, 000001.mp3, 000002.mp3 etc, and copy them to the SD card one at a time, and in order(!) starting from 000000.mp3, etc. if you do this, then the right mp3 file will play as expected.The method to properly select a mp3 file using the UART mode is not documented here on Amazon, but it is not difficult to find online. You could also use the other board modes to more easily play a small selection of mp3s, but then you are limited in the number of mp3 selections you can play. With a little internet searching, you can store a huge number of mp3s at your beck and call. As for the other reviews which say this device does not work, I suspect that they just aren’t using it properly.Note that here boards do not come with a micro SD card, you will have to supply your own.As far as recording voice messages for your project, I used one of the many text-to-speech generators online. This worked perfectly to allow me to save many phrases that I needed for my particular use. And they sound very professional. I am very pleased with my results. The audio quality was great and the built in amplifier provided more than enough volume.

Ok, so there's a bunch of these modules around. If you look at the chipset on the board itself, this one is a DY1703a. Google "DY-SV17F manual & Datasheet" and you will find the datasheet for this (yeah I know, the numbers don't match, but it's the same thing). Probably why I had issues finding a proper datasheet.There are several modes that you can use depending on your level of sophistication and need. Also take a look at the images this vendor posted to see the DIP switch positions for a basic setup. I will go into a quick overview of each mode, but you really should read the datasheet, it has many details on file naming and all the different modes this can be configured for.Many will use the simple "trigger this pin to play a sound" method, which is mode 010 or 011 on the DIP switch. This is where you can play up to 8 different sounds. The sounds must be numbered 0000X.mp3 (or wav). You pull a pin to GROUND (NOT HIGH!) to trigger the sound. The difference between 010 or 011 is whether the song keeps playing once the pin is triggered, or only plays WHEN the pin is triggered and stops playing once GND is removed from that pin. The beauty of this mode is that you don't need to write any software to use it, and just need a physical switch in order to trigger a sound.The other mode, which is what you may want if using a microprocessor is the UART mode. This is where you can send serial commands to the device to tell it to do different things, like select a song, play, pause, stop, volume, etc.The benefit of this is that you only need 1 pin to send it commands, or 2 pins if you want to read different statuses from the device, which is pretty cool. You can see if a song is paused, stopped, or still playing, for example. That way you're not using up all your IO ports on your controller in case you want to play more than a couple of songs. In doing this you can play 65535 songs! You can also store files in folders and play by name. ALL file names and folders must be a maximum of 8 characters.The other mode is the "one_line mode". This is where you can bit bang against a pin to send it commands. Not sure why you'd want to use this mode when UART exists, but it is there. I haven't done anything with it as I'd have to write another library to get this going.If you need a library, check out "DyPlayer" by SnijderC. Very simple to set up and use, and it's a pretty mature driver. I ended up writing my own before I found this one.. oh well, it only took a few hours, and with the datasheet it's pretty easy to figure out, but DyPlayer has all the commands you want except the "one_line" mode.Note that I got this working with a Raspberry Pico and PlatformIO, so that's tested OK. With the UART mode, I used pin 0 from the pico to pin 4 on this device, and pin 1 to pin 3 on the sound module.

The module itself works great, once you figure out how to use it. I wish there was more of a guide on how to use these modules. I am an artist and have a specific need for these and had to go to the end of the world and back to figure out how to get it to do what I needed. In the end I got it to work though. Great for the price!Easy to use if you are just using it the basic way and gets more complicated when straying iff the path.

I purchased these little boards for some of my Halloween projects.Using these boards, I can modify some of my animatronics with my own sound bytes.It's very easy to use and easily can connect to Arduino micros.

This mp3 playback module does what it says, with a crystal clear audio. The only problem is that for it to work you need a micro SD card, which (where I live) actually cost more that the module itself. In addition, you need to solder pins (not supplied) on the quite tiny board in order to make connections. The audio at a nominal 5 watts (the board is powered by 5V) is respectable but not earth shattering. So for the price, it's not a bad buy.