Sound ShieldsImprove your sound quality or make your own music with these shields.
Overview
- What it is: Piezo buzzers, if you haven't noticed, don't produce the best sound. They also don't let you interface with other types of sound files like MP3 or MIDI. These shields can do all that and more.
- What it does: Some of these shields are built to improve sound quality. Others are focused on recording and playing different types of sound files. There's also a shield for voice recognition and one that can talk.
- How to use it: All music is composed of waveforms, which means that controlling most of these shields is more involved than a simple tone(NOTE_C3) command. If you're using the MIDI or MP3 shield, make sure you understand the protocol that you'll need to follow in your software. Otherwise, look for software examples online.
Ajax DJ by Scott Sandars (CC-BY-SA)
Types of Connectivity Shields
Image by Adafruit
Music Maker MP3 Shield:
This shield can read audio from an SD card and play back multiple types of sound files, including MP3, AAC, WAV, and more. You can digitally adjust the sound quality and play it out through the included stereo amp. Sparkfun also has a version of an MP3 shield here, but it doesn't read as many types of files.
Image by Sparkfun (CC-BY-NC-SA
MIDI Shield:
Like the previous shield, this shield allows you to read and control audio files, this time specifically MIDI ones. It also comes with two potentiometers and two MIDI connectors so you can control synthesizers, sequencers, and other musical devices directly from your Arduino. With a MIDI shield and an MP3 shield, you can read pretty much all audio files out there!
Musical Instrument Shield:
The chip on this shield contains a musical instrument database that allows you to play sounds from a piano to a trombone. You can connect to the headphone jack to hear your created symphony. The sound files use a MIDI codec to create great-sounding instruments for your next musical project.
Image by Sparkfun (CC-BY-NC-SA)
Wave Shield:
This shield is geared towards producing high-quality sound output. You can play files from a MicroSD card to connected headphones or speakers. The potentiometer allows you to control volume from the Arduino. This kit comes with the shield, an SD card, and a speaker so you can get started right away.
Image by Adafruit
Image by Arduino
Voicebox Shield:
The Voicebox shield uses the SpeakJet chip to synthesize a robotic voice. You can read out commands from your program to add a voice to your robot, personalize your project, or just freak people out. If you want to know what the voice sounds like, try the "say" command on Mac terminal.
Image by Sparkfun (CC-BY-NC-SA
Voice Recognition Shield:
If you want to be able to talk back to your robot, you'll need this shield. It uses EasyVR to download and parse speaker input for recognizable vocabulary to act on. You can use this in conjunction with the voicebox shield to have a full conversation with your project if you'd like.
Image by Avarty Photos (CC-BY-SA)
Project Ideas
- Sound Mixer: Allow the user to mix together different sound samples, change the volume, and clip at different places to create their own song.
- Song Writer: Use the Serial Display to let users input their own note sequence and chosen instrument, then play it back on the Arduino. Can you play chords or multiple instruments at once?
- Talking Robot: For experienced users - create a robot that can recognize and respond to simple vocabulary, similar to Cleverbot but probably with more limited functionality.\
- Home Speaker System: Use the Arduino to parse sound files so you can play all your favorite music off your Arduino instead of your computer.
