Thread: New hackable mp3 player

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Hey guys and ghouls,

I just thought I'd give a heads up to those of you looking for hackable mp3 players. I got this T-shirt from thinkgeek.com as a birthday present. It has a speaker on the front (yes, velcro'd onto the shirt), a small SD-based mp3 player in an inside pocket, and a wired credit card remote. Basically, you push a button (#1-20), and that sound plays instantly.

What's cool about this? It's cheap ($30), and looks like it'd be perfect for hacking. There's no menu to deal with. No sleep mode (that I observed yet, anyway). You just push a numbered button, and that sound launches. If you push another button while the first is playing, the new sound plays instead. The cable that wires the remote to the mp3 player has connectors, so it'll be really easy to make your own interface to your own prop controller.

The only tricky thing is that there's some type of matrix coding for the keypad, that I haven't taken enough time to reverse engineer (23 buttons, but only 10 wires). It might be a little while, but as soon as I figure out the wires, I'll post the deconstruction here.

- Hook

lol,, i seen this shirt on "the big bang theory" tv show,,, very cool

Interesting! Veeeeeerrrrrrry interesting!

Cool! Excellent idea!!...now can we find just the mp3 player from china? and ditch the shirt? I bet that would bring the price down even more.

I had posted this one that I bought from ebay awhile back.




Car MP3 Player Wireless FM Transmitter USB SD Card Jack - eBay (item 180488160433 end time Apr-09-10 18:26:10 PDT)

You can get them for under $10 and that's with the shipping!. It's 12v and has a remote button pad. But I have no idea on how to hack it. It works great. I used it in my car for a long time.

Here's another one around $6 total with shipping that looks promising:

USB MP3 WMA Music Player Micro SD TF Card Reader Blue - eBay (item 370285744014 end time Apr-03-10 21:23:39 PDT)

That blue one looks pretty easy to deal with. The product info implies that it has a rechargable battery in it thats good for ~2 hours; not too bad. If all you wanted to do was trigger a single file playback, it should be fairly easy to do. I wonder if it comes with a SD card?

I don't think it comes with the micro sd card. You can get those pretty cheap on Ebay too. 1gb for under $10.

So, for a 1time trigger. Is this player the better deal out there? If so, I might order one up.

I'd say yes. It does depend on how the playback is started. Some players require that the Play button be held down for a second before the player starts. If this one starts instantly, then it's just a matter of attaching wires to the correct pads on the tactile button and shorting them together. There's lots of ways to do that. The other caveat is, what happens if the Play button is pressed a second time while the file is playing? It may shut off the player or restart the file. There's no info on the eBay page that describes the button functions.

That's the nice thing about the player I posted. You don't have to open the box, there's already control wires coming out of it. You just short two of the wires together, and it plays that sound. If you hit the same one again, before the sound is finished, it just starts it again. If you hit another sound while the first is playing, it stops the first and starts the second one. The point is, there's no worry of having the sound inadvertently 'pause' itself because of hitting the play/pause button while the sound is already playing - because you don't have to use the play/pause button at all.

- Hook

hmmmmm, so you could use this thing on a prop!