As a creative adaptation to the fifth “tone output” lab I attempted to get a speaker to play a preloaded wav file of “The Price is Right” theme song. My hope was that I could use 3 buttons to operate as rewind, play/pause, and fast forward commands for my song. Though this project was not successful, I found the process of attempting to troubleshoot my circuit and code incredibly valuable.
This was my first attempt at assembling a circuit with an Arduino Uno, and it was a wakeup call for me to better understand C++ programming in the Arduino application. I was able to reach a point of comfort where I could test feedback from the components in my circuit. This was helpful in realizing that one of my buttons was broken, but that my other buttons worked and my SD card reader was transmitting information to my Uno.
I believe my failure came from my circuit building, and when I attempt this project again I will rectify two elements. First, I will try to build my circuit with different buttons, as I found these components hard to plug in and a source of frustration in my initial stages. Second, I was not using a “standard issue” speaker, instead, I used a cheap tweeter which I had purchased at Tinkersphere. I had checked this component, with a potentiometer, and while it “worked” I believe I should have soldered the comparatively frayed wire ends of the speaker to the more solid, easily pluggable wires.