[Grissini] hasn’t had the best of luck when it comes to personal audio players. He estimates that he’s gone through about half a dozen iProducts/iKnockoffs over the years, which ultimately adds up to a lot of money poured right down the drain. Rather than lay down his cold hard cash for yet another music player that would succumb to a dead battery or cracked screen, [Grissini] decided that he would be better off if he built one himself.
His Orange mePod isn’t exactly the most attractive or sleekest music player out there, but [Grissini] says it works like a charm. An Arduino Uno powers the device, and he uses an Adafruit Wave Shield to handle the audio playback. Power is supplied via 4AA batteries which keep the tunes going for a reasonable amount of time, and afford him the ability to swap them out for recharging without much fuss.
The player was encased with some leftover cardboard and wrapped in bright orange duct tape, before being mounted on [Grissini’s] belt. He says he gets plenty of looks when he’s out and about, which you would expect from such a unique design.
Stick around to see a quick video of the audio player in action.
[vimeo http://vimeo.com/32241824 w=470]
Probably more worth it to just buy an old Sansa player, or Ipod and install Rockbox on it.
Altoids tin! He should have built this in an altoids tin. Ok, might have been hard to squeeze the arduino and such in it.
it look more a fireworrk pice or bom whit a usb port in it. i naam it the Ibrick its not a player that you can put in your pocket its way to big for it.
you must make it smoll and not a case made of ducktape.
While I applaud the effort, I don’t see how this is less fragile than a normal MP3 player
Ah, but it’s more reparable for sure
I love the black-box-look on this thing, very hacky indeed
whoops, that was supposed to go top-level
one more time i dont see where its hacky to spend 50$ for preassembled 5$ stuff and use it with template code.
im tired of these arduino+shield “hacks”.
well hack is a bit of a stretch here, it’s more construction of something which is actually the bulk of the projects posted here. There aren’t that many “hacks” where they took something made it do something it wasn’t intended to.
If it doesn’t suit your fancy, skip the article.
It’s nice to have projects for all skill levels.
thats a point, maybe i was hoping to find something different here today and therefore a little disappointed.
I just hope he’s never in an plane crash with this thing, the NTSB woudl be completly confused.
I need to build a vacuum-tube version of this item, something of which I’ve been dreaming for quite some time. Mmmm…warm, tubey goodness…and it’ll even keep ya warm in the winter. :)
the sticker on top says “building beats buying” lol everything here was just bought and wrapped in bright tape
I don’t get it; I’ve never been particularly careful with it, but my iPod’s lasted six years and still works great. And it’s not for a lack of use. What does he do, throw them at brick walls for fun?
If all that matters is the audio, why are you using the adafruit wave shield? The best quality it produces is 22KHz, 12 bits. At least put a real MP3 decoder in there!
I can understand building your own even if off the shelf products are cheaper – since when it breaks you have the ability to repair it.
Stop being so picky and support creativity, guys.