14. Technical Tutorial #1 Cytron EasyMP3 Shield

Cytron is a company based in Malaysia that has been pretty great so far with their offerings. Having used their Cytron MP3 Shield in the past (loaned from TOA), I decided to purchase their new Cytron Easy MP3 Shield. The reason I got the shield is in order to not fully rely on Unity for my output, especially audio since my team experienced some trouble with our tissue box game project back in Level 5. I'm hoping the new shield will have fixed some of the buzzing and audio quality issues faced with the first MP3 shield while it was used for the Musical Journey project.

What is an MP3 shield? 
The Cytron Easy MP3 shield is an Arduino-compatible shield used to to decode and play MP3 audio files directly from its microSD card slot. It can be attached to Arduino UNO, Arduino Duemilanove, Arduino Mega, Arduino Leonardo, CT ARM (Cytron's board), and other boards with similar board layouts.
A closer look at the components of the Easy MP3 Shield 

My new Easy MP3 Shield attached to my Cytron CT-UNO

Getting Started:
User Manual
There's a useful getting started guide for the shield as a part of their user's manual. I realise this post is beginning to sound like a review or ad for Cytron but it isn't haha. Anyhow, the guide helps show how to store files (either in a micro sd card or a usb), and handle file naming so the shield can identify it.

After setup, the instructions say to upload an empty sketch onto the board, and load up an sd card or usb drive with audio files (mp3 or wav), and just press the "play" button on the shield. I was very pleasantly surprised to find that it worked straight away. I had it plugged into my headphones since I don't currently own a wired speaker, and the sound was pretty loud and clear. I noticed that the document doesn't seem to have placed a maximum limit on the audio file's bitrate, unlike the old shield. It's a huge improvement and I'm really quite happy with it. Essentially, as long as I have a power source, this mp3 shield can function as an mp3 player.

Another thing I learned about this new shield is that I can access and edit files in the micro SD card by connecting the shield directly to the PC. When I was using the last shield, I had to constantly remove and re-attach the sd card to a reader just to change something in the file. This saves me a lot of time, and is a really welcome change.

All in all, I'm glad I got this shield for the project, I think it will be helpful in getting a quick feedback between input and audio output for my installation



Bibliography:
Aliah. (2016) MP3 Shield vs. Easy MP3 Shield [online] Cytron Technologies. Available at: https://tutorial.cytron.io/2016/12/01/mp3-shield-vs-easy-mp3-shield/ [Accessed 25 Dec. 2018]

Cytron Technologies (2016) EasyMP3 Shield SHIELD-EZMP3 User's Manual [online] Available at: https://docs.google.com/document/d/101Qs505IN7JQJY7b37-N_AsBFobXRuo6P5pLzN-WvWk/view [Accessed 25 Dec. 2018]


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