Solved! How to make my own specialized MP3 player

[timpelton99]

My wife likes to listen to Indian Spiritual chanting as she drifts off to sleep. I would like to make for her a sits-on-the-nightstand MP3 player (including volume control, AC cord, and a little speaker) that has a timing mechanism she can set to 5 minutes, 10 minutes, 15 minutes, or untimed. At the end of the specified time, the device slowly fades out and quietly turns itself off. Maybe I'm naive, but this seems like something that could be built from off-the-shelf parts. I'm a cabinet-maker and if needs be I could make an attractive little wooden case for it. Any ideas?

 

[gardenman]

Hi, watch this video: https/www.youtube.com/watch?v=UodfePdNfg8
I looked at the MP3 source code library for the Arduino and it does have volume control in it. I can't help you with this. If you try it and need help, you might want to find some good Arduino forums. This will require some technical knowledge and programming experience.

I'm sure there are other solutions to this too. You could even use a laptop and an AutoHotKey script to control it all. The script could turn the screen off, play the songs, would press the F8 key to lower the volume, maybe once every minute or so, close media player out and put the laptop into sleep mode.

There's 2 possible answers, hopefully you'll get more.

 

[timpelton99]

Hi, watch this video: https/www.youtube.com/watch?v=UodfePdNfg8
I looked at the MP3 source code library for the Arduino and it does have volume control in it. I can't help you with this. If you try it and need help, you might want to find some good Arduino forums. This will require some technical knowledge and programming experience.

I'm sure there are other solutions to this too. You could even use a laptop and an AutoHotKey script to control it all. The script could turn the screen off, play the songs, would press the F8 key to lower the volume, maybe once every minute or so, close media player out and put the laptop into sleep mode.

There's 2 possible answers, hopefully you'll get more.

 

[timpelton99]

Thanks, Gardenman. The Arduino sounds like the basis for my project. Being something of a newbie at this, I've got a lot of research to do but this seems to be a good place to start.