Sparkfun VS1000 Ogg Vorbis Player Review
09/19/2009 10:56 Filed in: Ogg | Sparkfun VS1000
Summary - This is a review of the Sparkfun VS1000 Ogg Vorbis audio player in the context of using it for a microcontroller sound extension. The review and use of the Sparkfun Ogg Vorbis board is primarily contained in the video piece accompanying this article. Sparkfun released this board the week of September 14th, 2009 and this is an initial review of the device. [Full disclosure: we do business with Sparkun - we’re a reseller and they resell a product of ours, the Chameleon 1.]
Backdrop and Need
I was looking for a sound device I could integrate to provide the start sequence audio for the speed climbing timing system. We found that the officials who ran the race starter console would often give the climbers the verbal “Go!” before they punched the Go button on the starter console which led to false start conditions (the system detected the climber left the ground before the go button was hit.)
After the climbers false started, there was practically no way to call them down - shouting was interpreted as cheering and there was no other indicator to the climber there was a false start. Besides a light indicator, I wanted to add sound to eliminate both problems.
My hope was to be able to create start sequences in the form of commands in MP3 audio files, then use a microprocesser to select the audio to play at the appropriate time. So, the normal sequence for international speed climbing is:
“Ready, Attention...” “Go!” where there is a random pause before “Go!” I would replace “Go!” with some type of tone similar to a swimming race start. If there was a false start, my plan was to play the Start tone over and over for about 3-5 seconds to indicate a false start. There would be different tones for start so that two systems could operate side by side without conflicting tones.
When I saw the Sparkfun VS1000 Ogg Vorbis player, I wanted to try it out and see if it would work for my purposes.
First things First, How to make Ogg files?
The player will not play MP3 files directly - they need to be in an Ogg format. So, how do you make an Ogg file? Oddly, this question took more time to figure out than the rest of the system. I primarily use OS X and none of the standard tools such as ITunes or QuickTime would produce an Ogg file. I tried the “Ogg Drop” utility which can take an .AIF file exported from ITunes and produce an Ogg, but it never worked - the Ogg Drop code would either hang at the start of the conversion or would simply produce “Error” as the status when the encode action was initiated. I eventually dropped Ogg Drop as it turned out to be a waste of time.
What did work well was Audacity, a cross-platform, open source audio/sound editor. Using Audacity, I could load nearly any audio format (non-DRM) and make an Ogg file with it. As it’s cross-platform you can use it on OS X, Windows, or Linux or “unix”. I chose to use the 1.3.9 beta version and it worked fine for making Ogg files.
[update 9/21/09 - @rusekd “@esawdust in the future ffmpeg is a great tool for translating between different audio/video formats, it's commandline based but GUIs exist.”]
The following video’s a little long and is a little Mac OS X centric, so if you want to cut to the chase on the board itself, just skip it and see the Pros and Cons below.
The video is broken into 3 parts. Part 1 is How to make an Ogg Vorbis file using Audacity. Part 2 covers some oddities of the USB flash support and eject protocols of the board on OS X, and Part 3 is a video of me messing with the board on the bench top (monkey button pushing.)
Pros
Cons
Summary
The VS1000 Ogg Vorbis breakout is a great little board for some applications. The control is relatively limited without doing direct VS1000 chip development and writing your own app for it.
Backdrop and Need
I was looking for a sound device I could integrate to provide the start sequence audio for the speed climbing timing system. We found that the officials who ran the race starter console would often give the climbers the verbal “Go!” before they punched the Go button on the starter console which led to false start conditions (the system detected the climber left the ground before the go button was hit.)
After the climbers false started, there was practically no way to call them down - shouting was interpreted as cheering and there was no other indicator to the climber there was a false start. Besides a light indicator, I wanted to add sound to eliminate both problems.
My hope was to be able to create start sequences in the form of commands in MP3 audio files, then use a microprocesser to select the audio to play at the appropriate time. So, the normal sequence for international speed climbing is:
“Ready, Attention...” “Go!” where there is a random pause before “Go!” I would replace “Go!” with some type of tone similar to a swimming race start. If there was a false start, my plan was to play the Start tone over and over for about 3-5 seconds to indicate a false start. There would be different tones for start so that two systems could operate side by side without conflicting tones.
When I saw the Sparkfun VS1000 Ogg Vorbis player, I wanted to try it out and see if it would work for my purposes.
First things First, How to make Ogg files?
The player will not play MP3 files directly - they need to be in an Ogg format. So, how do you make an Ogg file? Oddly, this question took more time to figure out than the rest of the system. I primarily use OS X and none of the standard tools such as ITunes or QuickTime would produce an Ogg file. I tried the “Ogg Drop” utility which can take an .AIF file exported from ITunes and produce an Ogg, but it never worked - the Ogg Drop code would either hang at the start of the conversion or would simply produce “Error” as the status when the encode action was initiated. I eventually dropped Ogg Drop as it turned out to be a waste of time.
What did work well was Audacity, a cross-platform, open source audio/sound editor. Using Audacity, I could load nearly any audio format (non-DRM) and make an Ogg file with it. As it’s cross-platform you can use it on OS X, Windows, or Linux or “unix”. I chose to use the 1.3.9 beta version and it worked fine for making Ogg files.
[update 9/21/09 - @rusekd “@esawdust in the future ffmpeg is a great tool for translating between different audio/video formats, it's commandline based but GUIs exist.”]
The following video’s a little long and is a little Mac OS X centric, so if you want to cut to the chase on the board itself, just skip it and see the Pros and Cons below.
The video is broken into 3 parts. Part 1 is How to make an Ogg Vorbis file using Audacity. Part 2 covers some oddities of the USB flash support and eject protocols of the board on OS X, and Part 3 is a video of me messing with the board on the bench top (monkey button pushing.)
Ogg Vorbis VS1000 - Review and Use of Sparkfun Ogg BOB from Landon Cox on Vimeo.
Pros
- Nice, compact, solid board - well constructed
- Good Ogg support and basic player functionality
- Easy to work with from a prototyping point of view because it has:
- 4-40 Mounting holes on the corners
- All buttons except power/pause are along one side of the board and the control pins are all along the other side - well organized
- Button functionality is broken out on pins for microcontroller use
Cons
- Due to limits of the VS1000, it appears you cannot use a microcontroller to specify a particular track on the device (“play track 12&rdquo
- Pausing for 3-4 minutes will automatically shut off the device. This is pretty much a killer for my application because I need the device to stay on even if I’m not currently playing anything on it (between races or even during a race, it’s not going to be playing.)
- If you have the output jacked into a boom-box or PA, like I would for my application of this board, you’ll get a 60 cycle hum as soon as the player shuts off.
- USB eject doesn’t really work right. After a USB eject, the device keeps coming back online. No way to eject it cleanly.
- Quite possibly, some cons and problems I found are due to PEBCAK. If so, if you know solutions to these issues, please tweet me @esawdust or contact me directly. I’ll fix and correct the review as appropriate.
Summary
The VS1000 Ogg Vorbis breakout is a great little board for some applications. The control is relatively limited without doing direct VS1000 chip development and writing your own app for it.
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