Thread: MP3 Player HELP!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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Hey everyone, I've got a really frustrating situation. For my MIB I rigged an mp3 player to play the track I made everytime the PIR is activated. Now that mp3 player is toast so I found the cheapest replacement I could find shown at the bottom of the thread.

The problem I've found is this mp3 player does not have the strictly play/pause button. If you hold the play button (ie. the relay) the player is designed to shut off. I opened it up and found four connections going to the play button and tried every combination I could to see if I could use one set of connections for just a play action, but found that if you short any of the connections for more than 2 seconds the player shuts off.

Has anyone else used one of these players? Is there a way to strictly use connections on the circuit for the "play" function or am I completely screwed?

Thanks in advance for any help you can give.

I don't know anything about your problem but I can suggest a work around. Put you mp3 on loop and have the sound contentiously playing. Use your relay to turn on the speaker.

This assumes you are not able to reprogram your relay to just close for an interval short enough that the mp3 player won't switch to off.

You might be able to use a capacitor (with a high value resistor in parallel) in series with the play button and your relay. The cap will quickly charge and then act as if the circuit is again open.
I'm assuming the mp3 player will start playing each time the button is pressed.
You didn't say anything about how to stop it.

The better you ask your question the better the answers.

Ok here's the full details. With this MP3 player if it is in an off state, you press and hold the play button until the unit comes on. Once the player has come on it will either go to the menu or the music folder depending on what you were doing when you turned the player off. Once you are into the music folder, if you press play for roughly 2 seconds it will play. If you press the play again for the 2 seconds it pauses, but if you hold the play button for about 10 seconds the whole thing shuts off. As I described in the original post if you look around the "play" button when the unit is open it looks like a square housing with a small black button in the middle. Coming off from this housing is four leads.

Sorry I don't have a pic yet. Now if I take my Ohm meter and go across the leads horizontally then I find they are connected and I get 0 ohms. If I go across the leads diagonally then there is a resistance of 19 ohms. If I short out the leads hoizontally (one directly across from the other) then of course no action happens. If I short out the leads diagonally then they will either Play/Pause or turn the unit ON/OFF depending on how long the jumpers are held. I will try to get some pics if I can on here soon because this one still has me stumped.

Ok here is the best picture I can get I hope someone understands it. At the left of the picture is the "play/pause/on/off" button with the four leads I described above.

Ok. From your description it appears there are 2 connections for each switch contact, probably needs 4 mounting points for strength and the extra copy of the connection points are almost free. Call them pins 1,2,3,4 lets say 1&2 are connected (the 0 ohm reading), and 3&4 are connected (assumes also reads 0 ohms across 3&4). To keep this simple we'll just say the switch works by connecting 1 to 3 when pressed. You said 19 ohms was read between 1 and 3 when switched not pressed. 19 is a little lower than I would have guessed, you might even read a different value if the red and black meter leads were reversed. Anyway, you still need to figure out a way to make connection between pins 1 & 3 on demand for a 2 to 3 second duration. I am assuming whatever you have been using to control the old player is not able to be easily reprogrammed to do that. While on the subject of assumptions, I am also assuming you either only need to close the switch for 2 seconds to turn it on so that a 2nd switch closure will start it playing, or that you plan to do this manually when you start the prop. That your current controller can be programmed to add this extra step of turning the unit on before it starts controlling or you will manually turn it on. That you can use your meter to find which side of the switch pin 1 or 3 has the positive voltage on it with respect to the other side of the switch. That you don't have the ability to construct a transistor circuit to place across the switch and will need to use your existing controller's relay. Also that your sound track length or it's fidelity needs make one of the little sound recorder chip devices unsuitable. How am I doing so far with the assumptions ? My plan is to use a capacitor (with a bleed resistor) to make the switch appear to close for the 2 seconds the capacitor takes to charge up, which then makes the switch appear to open. Your existing relay would be used to connect the capacitor to the switch contact when desired.
However even with some measurements you will need to make, there is still a bit of trial and error. For instance until the first capacitor value is tried we likely won't be able to find out exactly at what voltage across the switch your player considers the switch to be open. You will either need to have on hand some capacitors and resistors to try, or be willing to get them. This will take a bit of trial and error to get right, and doing it remotely won't make it quicker. Some trial and error will be required. So consider how much time and money another copy of your m3p player might cost from ebay before you proceed.