This is going to be sweet. I got my hands on Adafruit’s VS1053 MP3 Breakout Board.



I’ve been wanting to create a talking clock for a long time; pretty much ever since I got my hands on the SpeakJet chip three years ago. I just never got around to it. Although the SpeakJet is a pretty cool chip, I thought playing MP3 files would sound a lot better.

I looked into what it would take to create a talking clock. Specifically, playing MP3s for the sounds, but the VS1053 decoder chip regularly sells for about $20 bucks. It didn’t make sense to roll my own when I could just incorporate Adafruit’s $25 board right into my project.

To test things out, I popped the VS1053 onto my board along with my Arduino, my button breakout, and an audio amplifier.



I loaded an MP3 onto my SD card, modified the sketch, and was playing music in just a few minutes.



Making a talking clock should be pretty easy with this!

See this project from start to finish:
Adafruit's VS1053 MP3 Player Breakout
Talking Clock - Part I
Talking Clock - Part II
Talking Clock - Part III
Talking Clock - Part IV
Talking Clock - Part V
Talking Clock - Part VI