Design And Construction Of A Mini MP3 Player

1.0 INTRODUCTION
The MP3 player can be described as an introduction of technology within the society to provide excitement, comfort, well-being and reduce depression to its listeners according Agerkvist F. T. & Fenger L. M. (2004). There has been a significant increase in the MP3 player in recent years due to higher affordability and advancement in Smartphones and tablets which allows vast connectivity according to Painter T. & Spanias A. (2000). The research and implementation of MP3 player are getting more popular. Much of the research attention has been given in academia. Various wireless technologies that can support some form of remote data transfer, sensing, and control such as Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, RFID, and cellular networks have been utilized to embed various levels of intelligence in the society [Knott A, 2009]. These studies have presented a Bluetooth based MP3 player using Android Smartphones without the Internet controllability.
As technology races forward and digital toys and gadgets flood the market, the MP3 player is the most widely used technology nowadays which made it possible to compress music files that take up a 12th of the disk space compared to what normal audio files consume. Although portable music players have been around for a while their storage capacities are very limited. Adding a mass storage device will allow people to carry their own personal jukebox that would provide the soundtrack to their everyday lives [Ballard M. & John T, 2014]. An example of a related work for MP3 players that only controls using hard controls buttons is found in [Ballard M. & John T, 2014]. This study described the design and implementation of MP3 player that can be operated using manual controls buttons. The controlling of the MP3 player is done through wired controls system connected to the whole system (microcontroller) feature present in it. In the song selector mode, the user will be able to punch in a number, which represents the device number. The player will then start playing it. After playing the current song, it plays the next one after that and so on. User Interaction/Control User inputs are necessary for controlling the MP3 player. The inputs will consist of 14 pushbuttons and 1 knob. The knob will control the volume. There will be 0-9 numbers, play/select, skip/next, previous, and power push buttons [Ballard M. & John T, 2014].
Due to the active acquisition of large volume of information carried out in our daily life, it was observed that there have been problems and difficulty in controlling the MP3 player using control buttons and some other features in the day to day activities and this has caused a lot of delay in carrying out task [Somersmith M. 2002]. Some of the problems characterizing the current MP3 player include the fact that it does not use an external memory card. Also, it uses inbuilt memory with less capacity of 10mb (megabyte). Moreover, there is difficulty in pressing buttons to control the MP3 player for elderly and sick patients who might need to listen to music for relaxation and encouragement. The MP3 player control buttons are not durable and so can easily get spoilt. Furthermore, the current MP3 player consumes more electricity and does not have battery storage.
The intention of this study is to design and construct an MP3 Player which can be controlled to play music using Smartphone (Android Device) via the Bluetooth interface module. So that people will find it very easy to control the MP3 player without having any difficulties. To achieve our aim, we built an MP3 player that can be easily controlled through an Android smartphone. We designed an Android software code of a controller that communicates with the system through Bluetooth module to play, pause, next, reverse songs, and to increase or decrease volume. We also simulate the circuit designed using Proteus. In summary, our aim is to develop Arduino base MP3 player that is cost-effective and easy to use and is made use of the following components that has effective operation and usage.
This study is beneficial to the society because of the Android technology very popular and can be used to interact with the embedded system. Our proposed system can be operated using an Android mobile phone. The controlling of the MP3 player is done wirelessly through the Android smartphone (application) via the Bluetooth features. The MP3 player is interfaced with the ATMEGA328 Arduino microcontroller using some relay drivers which can drive the MP3 player to play, pause, forward, rewind, songs, and carry out some other operations.

1.1 PROBLEM STATEMENT
Conventional music player is only limited in playing music only. The invention of mp3 music player came to overcome this limitation in that mp3 player has the capacity of storing music in memory car and also accept data through Bluetooth connection from mobile devices. It can be used to easily control the MP3 player via Smartphone without controlling through hard control buttons. It helps to eliminate the stress associated with having to press hard buttons to control the MP3 player. Also, it can aid learning as a student can listen to audio books and recorded lectures. The MP3 player has a facility which helps to block noise from our surrounding. Our proposed system can be operated using an Android mobile phone.

1.2 AIMS AND OBJECTIVES
The main aim of this study is to build a portable consumer electronic device that allows you to store and plays music files in MP3 format. MP3 players are small handheld devices and often use flash memory for storing MP3 files. At the end of this work the following objectives shall be achieved:
i. An MP3 player was design and constructed.
ii. The proposed system was controlled by a smartphone via Bluetooth Modules within a certain range.
iii. The proposed system was confirmed to be working according to specifications.
iv. We shall be able to control audio level from our android phone without touching the button

1.3 SIGNIFICANT OF THE STUDY
This study has exposed me to the knowledge about MP3 and it advantages such as: this technology allows for music to be compressed with minimal loss of sound quality. The MP3 player has had a dramatic impact on the way the world listens to music. It’s portable, durable and can hold a music lover’s entire collection.

1.4 METHODOLOGY
To achieve the aim and objectives of this work, the following are the steps involved:
i. Study of the previous work on the project so as to improve it efficiency.
ii. Draw a block diagram.
iii. Test for continuity of components and devices,
iv. Design of the device was carried out.
v. Studying of various component used in circuit.
vi. Construction of the circuit was carried out. The construction of this project includes the placing of components on Vero boards, soldering and connection of components,
vii. Finally, the whole device was cased and final test was carried out.

1.5 SCOPE
The proposed system is to build a portable mp3 player. The heart of this mp3 player project is the Microcontroller Atmega328p module. This module has a SD card slot in which we can insert an SD card with MP3 songs, and when we power the module it will start playing those songs. The module has four holes namely Battery Positive, Ground, Speaker positive and Speaker negative. It also has provision for three buttons which can be used to Play/Pause songs, Change track and Increase/decrease volume.