A DIY MP3 Player for Toddlers

Young children seem to love to make noise, so what would make a better present than an MP3 player that they can operate? As an excellent gift, creator DerThes made just such a thing. This was inspired by a similar hörbert player seen at a friend’s house, plus the desire to not pay $400 for it. The price tag was instead about $100 for the new “Stoerbert” device, and the not-insignificant cost of 50 hours in build time.

The unit is powered by an Arduino Uno board with an Adafruit Music Maker MP3 Shield to play songs stored on an SD card. An array of 12 brightly-colored buttons adorn the front for song selection, along with a potentiometer for volume control. Each button plays a different album in “toddler mode,” though a special combination allows playback of up to 99 albums when parents want to listen to something more their style.

Buttons are mounted to a custom-etched PCB and a pair of shift registers enable the Uno to handle these inputs with only 3 GPIO pins. The PCB turned out well, though a few wires are used on the top in place of what would be a second layer on a commercially-produced board.

The project's housing was constructed out of oak and black walnut, and dowels are cleverly installed on the corners to reduce potential damage when in-use. Schematics for the build and more details can be found on GitHub.

[h/t: Reddit]