Material Choice for Portable Sound Player

Thanks for the comments to my post below. It seems like I wasn't clear about
the needs for the project when I ask for suggestions on component choice.
Instead of continuing the thread below, let me start fresh here.

I'm trying to build a portable, low power sound player that plays the
selected sound clips from user command. Here are the specs:

- Low power
- Small (at the size of a wrist-watch)
- Have 8 GIPO (8-pin input)
- 8-bit audio
- 64~256 short audio clips (2~5 seconds each) at 11kHz
- I have a bunch of free AT49BV162* flash memory to play with
- I have used Atmel once, but if other options are easier to program, I'll
still go with them.
- Needs to download the audio clips from USB
- Hopefully cheap (I don't need extra features)

Can anybody suggest a simple, easy to interface and program microcontroller
for this project? I'm looking at Atmel's choices, but I'm not sure if I
should go for the USB AVRs or ATtiny or Atmega. Ease of design is my first
priority, then compactness and cost.

I'm especially concerned about how to interface the atmel controllers to
AT49BV162* flash memory and how to load the data to it using USB. Should I
use GPIO or there are direct memory mapping pins?

Thanks!

On Jun 1, 3:44*am, "Hoi Wong" <wong...@stanford.edu> wrote:

> I'm trying to build a portable, low power sound player that plays the
> selected sound clips from user command. Here are the specs:

Winbond had some parts meeting your requirements exactly, even the
USB.

"Hoi Wong" <> wrote in message
news:g1tk1j$8as$...
> Thanks for the comments to my post below. It seems like I wasn't clear
> about the needs for the project when I ask for suggestions on component
> choice. Instead of continuing the thread below, let me start fresh here.
>
> I'm trying to build a portable, low power sound player that plays the
> selected sound clips from user command. Here are the specs:
>
> - Low power
> - Small (at the size of a wrist-watch)
> - Have 8 GIPO (8-pin input)
> - 8-bit audio
> - 64~256 short audio clips (2~5 seconds each) at 11kHz
> - I have a bunch of free AT49BV162* flash memory to play with
> - I have used Atmel once, but if other options are easier to program, I'll
> still go with them.
> - Needs to download the audio clips from USB
> - Hopefully cheap (I don't need extra features)
>
> Can anybody suggest a simple, easy to interface and program
> microcontroller for this project? I'm looking at Atmel's choices, but I'm
> not sure if I should go for the USB AVRs or ATtiny or Atmega. Ease of
> design is my first priority, then compactness and cost.
>
> I'm especially concerned about how to interface the atmel controllers to
> AT49BV162* flash memory and how to load the data to it using USB. Should I
> use GPIO or there are direct memory mapping pins?
>
> Thanks!
>
You would be better using atmels serial data flash in an 8 pin package.....

"larwe" <> wrote in message
news:d16bb3e6-11b6-4263-97fd-...
On Jun 1, 3:44 am, "Hoi Wong" <wong...@stanford.edu> wrote:

>> I'm trying to build a portable, low power sound player that plays the
>> selected sound clips from user command. Here are the specs:

>Winbond had some parts meeting your requirements exactly, even the
>USB.

Which parts from Winbond would you recommend? Thanks.

"donald" <> wrote in message
news:-...
> Hoi Wong wrote:
>> Thanks for the comments to my post below. It seems like I wasn't clear
>> about the needs for the project when I ask for suggestions on component
>> choice. Instead of continuing the thread below, let me start fresh here.
>>
>> I'm trying to build a portable, low power sound player that plays the
>> selected sound clips from user command. Here are the specs:
>>
>> - Low power
> Are you going to drive a speaker with this device.
> The speaker driver will take more power then the entire cpu, memory, audio
> output circuits.
I do expect driving the loudspeaker to be the major power
drain. At least I wanted the least power consumption when idle.


>> - Small (at the size of a wrist-watch)
> How big are your wrists ?? ;-)
Very very big. Larger than Dave Letterman's hand


>> - Have 8 GIPO (8-pin input)
>> - 8-bit audio
>> - 64~256 short audio clips (2~5 seconds each) at 11kHz
> (back of napkin worst case calulations)
>
> 256 clips * 5 seconds * 11050 (8bit) samples = 14144000 bytes = 14 MBytes
> So a 16 Mbyte flash device would be required.
>
> At the low end:
> 64 clips * 2 seconds * 11050 samples = 1414400 bytes = 1.4 Mbytes
>
> Average:
> 128 clips * 2.5 seconds * 11050 samples = 3535000 bytes = 3.5 Mbytes
>
>> - I have a bunch of free AT49BV162* flash memory to play with
> This chip has 21 address pins and 16 data pins and 6 control pins.
> 43 pins used to interface to your micro.
> I think a serial device would be better.
Thanks for reminding me about the wiring nightmare!
Any suggestion for 16M serial flash memory chips?


>> - I have used Atmel once, but if other options are easier to program,
>> I'll still go with them.
>> - Needs to download the audio clips from USB
> You will never get the size you want with this feature.
You meant it's big because of the footprint of AT90USB* series
or the size of miniUSB port is too big?


>> - Hopefully cheap (I don't need extra features)
> Too build or buy ??
> Is a pcb layout an extra feature ??
I think it's material costs.
Extra feature means many unnecessary GPIO
ports, USART, etc, i.e. PCB layout is not one of the extras



>> Can anybody suggest a simple, easy to interface and program
>> microcontroller
>
> Google "diy mp3"
> Almost every 8 bit micro has been turned into a diy mp3 player.
>
> Lots of hits of what others have done in the past, some are available to
> purchase.
>
> Lots of code out there as well.
>
> Most mp3 decoder chips can play 8 bit samples.
Thanks for the pointer, I found:
http://teuthis.com/html/mmc_mp3.html
and the size of the unit shown on
http://teuthis.com/assets/images/mmc_sm.jpg
fits the size of my giant wrist

But this one gets me thinking about
whether I should go with USB due to
footprint considerations. Maybe I'll
be better off going with miniSD.
However, I'm not sure what are the challenges,
and for power/footprint considerations,
whether I should use raw wave files
of mp3 (that means a decoder).



>> for this project? I'm looking at Atmel's choices, but I'm not sure if I
>> should go for the USB AVRs or ATtiny or Atmega. Ease of design is my
>> first priority, then compactness and cost.
>>
>> I'm especially concerned about how to interface the atmel controllers to
>> AT49BV162* flash memory and how to load the data to it using USB. Should
>> I use GPIO or there are direct memory mapping pins?
>
> USB will be the hardest part of this type of project.
>
> There are two parts to USB. The PC side and the embedded side.
>
> If this is your first project, be sure to have lots of time.
> Some here may be able to do this project within 3 months,
> you may not be so lucky.
From your comments, I guess microSD is the way to go.
For this project, I don't think I need an operating system
on it, but I have no idea how to deal with file systems in
microcontrollers. Can you give me some references to
get started?


> Good luck, let us know how you get along.
>
> donald
Thanks a lot. I'll keep you updated.

Cheers,
Hoi