Building a simple MP3 player (what development board to buy?)

Hey guys, I am currently trying to make my own simple mp3 player and have been following this tutorial:

http://www.teuthis.com/html/mp3.html

At this point, I want to use an SD card (not CF) and a VS1011 mp3 decoder. I was thinking of controlling the the mp3 player using a PIC18F14K22 microcontroller (I can't use a PIC16 because the FAT16 code seems to be designed for the PIC18 and not the PIC16 as shown in the application notes - google AN1045)

Which development board do you think I should start off with? I would like to be able to interface the board with the decoder as well as an SD card adaptor.

Would this one here be appropriate? - Cheaper but without SD card adaptor - Part Number : DM164120-1

http://www.microchipdirect.com/ProductSearch.aspx?keywords=DM164120-1

or maybe this one? - with SD card adaptor - Part Number : DM320001 - PIC32 STARTER KIT

http://www.microchipdirect.com/ProductSearch.aspx?keywords=DM320001

Hope you can help!

I think Futurlec has one.

https://www.futurlec.com/Mini_MP3.shtml

You could also take a look at the following Sparkfun offerings:
https://www.sparkfun.com/products/11029
https://www.sparkfun.com/products/10628

Those kits are little better than buying a commercial device. What is your reason for wanting to build one yourself?

Sceadwian said:

Those kits are little better than buying a commercial device. What is your reason for wanting to build one yourself?

Click to expand...

Well, I think it would be fun to make one, as well as getting all the experience of interfacing chips using SPI interface. I agree with you about the kits posted by languer and flat5. They have already built it all for you. I want to program the microcontroller myself and interface it with the SD card and decoder through SPI. I decided to buy the following prgramming kit and sd card adaptor:

Pickit 2 Kit:

https://www.microchipdirect.com/productsearch.aspx?Keywords=DV164120

SD card adaptor:

https://www.pjrc.com/teensy/sd_adaptor.html


After I am able to read/write to the sd card I will buy the decoder chip (VS1011) and then hopefully be able to play some music.

What do you think?

It's really hard to go wrong, the SD interface is not excessively difficult, though reading the file system is probably the hardest part, that's what C libraries are for though. The decoder chips are again pretty friendly you should be able to whip one up without excessive difficulty. The hardest parts is simply going to be construction, and even that's not too bad.