Visual help with Music Maker, PID: 1381, for a blind guy

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jscuster
 
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Visual help with Music Maker, PID: 1381, for a blind guy

Post by jscuster »

Greetings!

I picked up the Music Maker - PID: 1381, and sweet-talked a friend into soldering up the headers, but now I'm stuck.

I am visually impaired, blind as a bat at the bottom of a caved in coal mine to be precise, and hoping someone will help me with the pinout for this board? My google isn't broken, but all it seems to find are images. The Adafruit tutorial explains how to use it, but doesn't give an exact pinout. I appreciate any help on this.

My board: VS1053 Codec + MicroSD Breakout - MP3/WAV/MIDI/OGG Play + Record - v4 PID: 1381

It would help if you'd use landmarks to explain where pin 1 is. For example, is the top the side with the 2 caps, or the side with the SD socket?

Thank you in advance, you're awesome! If it weren't for such an awesome maker community, I wouldn't be able to do much.

P.S. For the curious among you, my computer talks to me, my phone talks to me, TLDR I hear voices. I get my project set up either on a breadboard or using wire wrapping, and have a friend who will transpose and solder my ideas to a PCB. If I'm really anxious, I'll break out the soldering iron, but that usually only works for bigger targets like the lugs on motors and jacks. Thimbles aren't just for sewers, at least the metal ones!

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tepalia02
 
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Re: Visual help with Music Maker, PID: 1381, for a blind guy

Post by tepalia02 »

Do you want to figure out the physical pin numbers of the board or the digital pin number 1 to 7? The physical pin counting always goes anti-clockwise. To figure out the physical pins, I request you to follow these steps.

#1: Hold the front side of the board vertically in front of you. The SD cardholder has to be upward and the two capacitors must be downward.

#2: Now touch the SD card holder with your hand.

#3 Slowly move your hand to the left. The first pin at the left of the SD card holder is the physical pin#1. Now keep counting from above to below. You'll find all the physical pins serially this way.

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jkcbwpnet
 
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Re: Visual help with Music Maker, PID: 1381, for a blind guy

Post by jkcbwpnet »

Based on the way the silkscreen is printed on the board this would be my instructions:

Hold the board with the two capacitors on top facing you and the sd card holder on the bottom.
We will start from the top left of the board and go down.

There is a hole in the corner. This is a mounting hole and not a pin.
going down, the next hole is the first pin and it is labeled LINE2
the next pin is MIC +
next is MIC -
next is AGND
next is 3V3
next is digital 0
next is digital 1
next is digital 2
next is digital 3
next is digital 4
next is digital 5
next is digital 6
next is digital 7
next is TX
next is RX
The last pin on this side is SD CD
Continuing down you will feel a small bump. It is a chip capacitor.
Below that you are at the bottom left corner. It is another mounting hole.

Moving to the right you will go over the sd card holder to the bottom right corner.
Another mounting hole. There is one on all four corners.

Moving up from there the first pin is labeled XDCS
the next pin is SDCS
next is CS
next is RST
next is SCLK
next is MOSI
next is MISO
next is GND
next is 3V3
next is VCC
next is DREQ
next is GND
next is AGND
next is another AGND
next is LOUT
last pin is ROUT
above that will be the top right mounting hole.

I play Minecraft on the Blindcraft server and sometimes we use Discord to guide people through voice chat or screen sharing etc.

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jscuster
 
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Re: Visual help with Music Maker, PID: 1381, for a blind guy

Post by jscuster »

tepalia02 wrote:Do you want to figure out the physical pin numbers of the board or the digital pin number 1 to 7?
Thank you for asking, and thank you for sending orientation instructions. I understood the numbering scheme, just didn't know each pin's function. The post after yours filled in the blanks. Thank you for responding, I really appreciate it!
jkcbwpnet wrote:I play Minecraft on the Blindcraft server and sometimes we use Discord to guide people through voice chat or screen sharing etc.
It shows! This is exactly what I needed. There's a computer shop not far from me, The owner? solders for me. I got this board and 5 or 6 others soldered for $20, not to bad. Especially considering it's the only shop among over 30 near me that was willing. Having the pins in place helped me, trying to feel those itsy bitsy holes would take some work.

The descriptions in both responses were awesome! If a guide dog could tour a chip, it'd be about like this.

Blindcraft? I never dreamed of playing because it seemed like such a visual game, I'll check it out! Maybe you'll see me there.

Many, many thanks for your help.

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jkcbwpnet
 
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Re: Visual help with Music Maker, PID: 1381, for a blind guy

Post by jkcbwpnet »

I sent a message to fritzing.org to ask if they have any tts accessibility features in their product. If they do or it can be modded, it could be a great resource.

LogicProXGaming is his username. He uploads to Youtube and has even been involved directly with Mojang the creators.

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tepalia02
 
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Re: Visual help with Music Maker, PID: 1381, for a blind guy

Post by tepalia02 »

Good to know that you got what you wanted. Thanks to jkcbwpnet for their detailed answer.

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jscuster
 
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Re: Visual help with Music Maker, PID: 1381, for a blind guy

Post by jscuster »

If Fritzing can be made accessible, either with some kind of TTS, or using some of the accessibility APIs built in to Windows/Mac/Linux, that'd be absolutely fritzing awesome! I haven't had to much success, blind folks are a minority, blind hardware-hacking folks even more so. They're out there though. A big resource I have used is the Smith Kettlewell eye institute. The "SKTF" has explanations of all kinds of hardware-level DIY for blind or visually impaired folks. As descriptions/steps are in plain text, I've learned a lot. It's what inspired me to get in to the maker space.

I really appreciate that you put in the effort to contact them, thank you.

While I'm here, I'm a bit stuck again. I don't know if my board was DOA, if I killed the poor thing somehow, or if I'm just missing something. I came up with a connection map using the Huzzah32 and the feather specification. If you or anyone come across a few minutes you don't know what to do with, I'd appreciate any advice.

I'm using the "feather_player" example, see below, in the Adafruit VS1053 library, I cloned it from Github today to be sure. The example is unmodified, and some connections in the below map are based on the defined pins in this example.

When I run the example, I get: "Couldn't find VS1053." I've wired this thing 3 or 4 times in hopes of eliminating any pebcak errors. Pebcak = Problem Exists Between the Chair and the Keyboard.

Again, any suggestions are appreciated, and thank you for your time.

####Connection table

EDIT: looks like my Markdown table isn't getting translated, sorry for the variable width columns, but if its any consolation, they look perfect to me! :)
EDIT 2: looks like the smiling emoji I tried to put in the first edit failed. You should've seen the error I got!

| Name | Huzzah32 | Music Maker |
| ---- | -------- | ----------- |
| VCC | 2 | 26 |
| GND | 4 | 28 or 24 |
| SCK | 11 | 21 |
| MOSI | 12 | 22 |
| MISO | 13 | 23 |
| sdcs | 19 | 18 |
| cs | 20 | 19 |
| DREQ | 21 | 27 |
| xdcs | 22 | 17 |
| sdcd | any | 16 |
| rst | Any | 20 |
| Ears-AGND | N/a | 3 or 4 or 29 or 30 |
| L-ear | N/a | 31 |
| R-ear | N/a | 32 |

The code:

[The extension ino has been deactivated and can no longer be displayed.]

Many thanks!

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jkcbwpnet
 
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Re: Visual help with Music Maker, PID: 1381, for a blind guy

Post by jkcbwpnet »

The easiest fastest way for us to communicate is real time. Do you video? There are a lot of services. Are you in the Adafruit discord?
Im not sure if they have screen sharing rooms setup or not. I have been wanting to look around. Just busy. There are many platforms. I can do whatever...

I will look up the Smith Kettlewell thing later sounds great!

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jscuster
 
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Re: Visual help with Music Maker, PID: 1381, for a blind guy

Post by jscuster »

Thanks for getting back to me. I do video. I've used several apps, lately Zoom, but I'm open. I'm not on Discord, I've been dealing with a captcha problem. HCAPTCHA says they set an accessibility cookie, but I'm still shown the images to click. Grrr.

I'm at <g>Ma1l, strange characters in hopes of fooling spam bots. It's the goog's service. I'll give you my number or whatever you need over email, just let me know what works.

I've said it before, but you're awesome!

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jkcbwpnet
 
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Re: Visual help with Music Maker, PID: 1381, for a blind guy

Post by jkcbwpnet »

I am not sure what "any" means, for pin location on your Huzzah board for the sdcd or rst in your connection table. I don't see sdcd and it specifically mentions the reset is not used. I would guess those are not connected?

Everything else seems ok in your connection table. I looked over both boards and don't see any problems. Are you able to take a picture or have a picture taken of the wiring?

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jscuster
 
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Re: Visual help with Music Maker, PID: 1381, for a blind guy

Post by jscuster »

jkcbwpnet wrote:I am not sure what "any" means.
"Any" means it can be connected to any available pin on the feather. For example, I read that the SDCD pin, pin 16 on the Music Maker, is shorted to GND when no SD Card is in the socket. Though the reset pin isn't used in this example, I figured I would toss it in the notes in case it's needed later.
jkcbwpnet wrote:I would guess those are not connected?
Thats right, I intended the map to be a long-term note, so tossed them in for future me. Now I think back, I can see how that would be confusing. Sorry about that. Full disclosure: as the sketch has two tests, I didn't connect SDCS either. I figured if the first test worked, I'd add it in. I did connect it just in case, but got the same result.
jkcbwpnet wrote:I looked over both boards and don't see any problems.
Thank you, It's a comfort to know.
jkcbwpnet wrote:Are you able to take a picture?
Yes. My wiring looks like a rat's nest, and the wire colors mean nothing sense all wires look the same color to me.
If a picture is worth a thousand words, how many more is a video? I made a vid instead, yt's on YouTube.
https://youtu.be/ijIhRcYBRo8

Thanks again!

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jkcbwpnet
 
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Re: Visual help with Music Maker, PID: 1381, for a blind guy

Post by jkcbwpnet »

very close. I see two issues I believe. Both are to the Huzzah board.

First the cs, DREQ and xdcs need to each shift one hole to the left. It looks like you have 4 pins exposed on the left and you should only have 3.

The other issue is your MISO and SCK need to swap places. Pretty sure. The center area wasn't as clear.

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jscuster
 
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Re: Visual help with Music Maker, PID: 1381, for a blind guy

Post by jscuster »

jkcbwpnet wrote:the cs, DREQ and xdcs need to each shift one hole to the left.
You're right, I shifted em and the board powered on, at least I heard a few clicks in my headphones.
jkcbwpnet wrote:your MISO and SCK need to swap places.
They seemed ok, but I swapped em to be sure. No joy pre-swap or post-swap. Still getting the same error, "can't find VS1053." I decided to ditch the breadboard for the moment. It's easyer to feel pins than count holes, so I figured the off-by-one error you spotted might be happening in the parts of the board that were less clear. Also, not all the wires seem stable. I'll take a pic of the new arrangement and send it when I'm done, few hours give or take.

Thanks.

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jscuster
 
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Re: Visual help with Music Maker, PID: 1381, for a blind guy

Post by jscuster »

Hi.

Sorry for the delay in responding, I've been out of commission.

For the sake of closure, it turns out I blew up the board. I ordered another, and using the pinout provided here, the new board worked beautifully with my Huzzah32, and with a TinyPICO I had.

Thank you for your help, I hope this post will help the next VIP, Visually Impaired Person, who has this question.

P.S. Ladyada, if you read this, it would be helpful for us blind or visually impaired folks if a textual pinout was included in the Getting Started guide for components, or maybe part of the ALT tag of the graphic. While I'm wishing, I know Adafruit sells some components with headers attached, I wish the items with headers didn't have different product id's, but had an option, like t-shirts have a size or color option. Failing that, it'd be cool to have a filter for searching items with or without headers.
My grandma used to say, "if wishes were fishes, we'd all eat free." I understand this would take some work, but just thought I'd throw it out there.
Many thanks!

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jkcbwpnet
 
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Re: Visual help with Music Maker, PID: 1381, for a blind guy

Post by jkcbwpnet »

Good to hear things worked out.

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