Emergency backup plan?

[futurewaves]

I'm a first time customer, and I purchased two beautiful, functioning circuit playgrounds that will be worn on fingerless gloves. My hope was that they would help my brother talk because the board has touch capacitive sensors, and I was soooo excited to give him pre-recorded phrases he could say just by touching conductive fabric sewn on his knuckles! After closer inspection, I realized that I may have made an error because there doesn't appear to be an option to store or playback mp3/wav files, only MIDI musical instruments (or am I wrong in this?). So then I started browsing through chips that have mp3 players and Arduino shields and stuff like that, and they're too big for the gloves (they would scratch him pretty bad and cover the entire front top of the gloves) or would cover the cool LED lights on the circuit playground. What would be a good next direction for me to go in? Is there an add-on component you could suggest that would store and playback voice that WORKS WITH the Circuit Playground? Can the Circuit Playground operate with an mp3 player without an entire Arduino board? Is there any backup plan you can help me with?

The reason this is an emergency is because my brother suffered from a drowning accident and he keeps moaning, and I am trying desperately to give him vocabulary to talk, and most of what he can do is moving his fingers over his knuckles. The lights on the circuit playground are circular and sooo cool and will hold his attention even though he has poor eye sight, and that will keep him engaged, so I don't want to abandon the idea of using it. What can I do to add on to it? Is there any option? Please help. Really, I need some kind of direction because I don't know where to go from here. I made a mistake, and it was no one's fault but mine, and I've spent hours re-evaluating this project however this is what he needs more than anything, so I want to exhaust every effort to make this happen for him.

Pretty please tell me there is still an option!

Sincerely,
Isabella

[adafruit_support_bill]

There are the Fx boards: https://www.adafruit.com/product/1349?q=fx&
And the VS1053 boards: https://www.adafruit.com/product/1349?q=vs1053&

Either of these could work directly with the Circuit Playground - you don't need a separate Arduino.

The Fx boards are designed to play short sound-effect files based on 'triggers'. You could use the capacitive sense pads on his knuckles to trigger the sounds.

The VS1053 has more extensive recording and playback capabilities. But from what you describe, I think the Fx board will be a simpler and better way to go.

[futurewaves]

Thank you sooo much for giving me hope with some direction!!! I love you so much for this. Tomorrow I will get one of the boards and when I can afford it, I'll get two of them so there can be one on each glove. I may have questions later on how to connect the two. Thank you for offering support (which is why I came here because of the massive amounts of tutorials!!!). Thank you for telling me that I can add on without having to start all over!!! Thank you :)

[futurewaves]

The VS1053 codec breakout board arrived, and while I waited for it to ship, I worked on the touch sensors of the gloves by sewing conductive fabric (from Adafruit) on the knuckles with conductive thread (from Adafruit) and then drew on them with electric paint (also from Adafruit). Thank you for working hard to offee these products to us. (See attached photo to see the progress of the gloves.)

I watched old and new Adafruit video tutorials going back 4 years introducing what the codec can do but I didn't see any tutorials on how to set up a connection between the VS1053 and the Circuit Playground. I have both products now, and any instruction on moving forward would be most joyfully appreciated more than my vocabulary could express. Would you please walk me through it or post a video tutorial on the VS1053 product page so we can see how to make them work together? Pretty pretty please!!! I appreciate all your help, and I can't begin to thank you enough for your time and thoughtfulness. Kindest regards!!

[adafruit_support_bill]

As mentioned in my previous post, the Fx board would be a simpler way to go - and a better match for the Circuit Playground. The VS1053 board is more powerful, but requires a lot more connections.
https://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-vs1 ... yer-wiring

The Circuit Playground has a limited number of pins. And by the time you make all the necessary connections to the VS1053, you will not have enough left over for your capacitive touch pins.

[futurewaves]

Thank you for your fast response. I went with the codec because I liked the idea of having more storage rather than simplicity, but since it won't be functional for this project, now I have to arrange a return. I bought one VS1053 here and one at Adafruit's Amazon store. Both were $24.95.

Function questions:
The FX board - does it allow us to upload custom sounds to it (the sound of a male voice saying words)? How many touch sensors would be available after it has been connected to the circuit playground?

Return questions:
May I exchange the two VS1053 codecs for the FX boards if I keep them unopened with the receipt since they are exactly the same price? Or do I need to return each one separately - one to you here and one to you on Amazon? It would be a lot easier if I could package them together in one return for an even exchange.

Thank you again for being patient with me as I learn the ropes on this project. :)

[adafruit_support_bill]

Please contact [email protected] with a link to this thread to arrange the return/exchange. Not sure about the one purchased from Amazon, but our customer service department will tell you if it is possible to return both at once, or if the other has to go back via Amazon.

You can upload custom sounds to the Fx board. When you connect it to your computer USB port, it appears like an external disk drive and you can simply copy files to it.

You can control the Fx board it 2 ways:

There are 11 'trigger' pins that can be used to trigger sounds. https://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-aud ... igger-pins
But you would need one Circuit Playground GPIO pin for each Trigger pin, so that is not the best way to go here.

The other way to control the board uses serial communication and only requires 3 GIO pins from the Circuit Playground, leaving the rest for your capacitive touch pads. https://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-aud ... io-control

[futurewaves]

All right, let's try this again :) It's been about 12 days, and one of the replacements has come in! So now I have the Audio FX soundboard with headphone jack and the Circuit Playground. The tutorial seems to only be setting up the circuit board to an arduino, not the sound board, so I'm trying to read between the lines.

As far as wiring goes, I'm using conductive thread. Here's what I've got set up:
On the soundboard: UG connecting the Circuit Playground Ground; RX connecting to Circuit Playground TX; TX connecting to Circuit Playground RX.
Is this right so far?

[adafruit_support_bill]

Yes. That sounds right so far.

[futurewaves]

Thanks, I can't thank you enough for all your help! :) The rest of the conductive threads, will they all be connecting from the Circuit Playground to the sensors, not the soundboard yes? Is that all the wiring needed besides the JST battery pack? Or does anything need to connect to VBATT?

Once I can get the hardwire down, I'll have questions about the code. Thank you for doing baby steps with me. I really appreciate all the supportive instructions. Adafruit is a really good company to be helping me through this!

[adafruit_support_bill]

The conductive thread from your touch sensor pads will connect the the Circuit Playground. Rx and Tx will be used to talk to the Fx board, so that leaves you with 6 pins to connect touch sensors to.

The battery can just plug into the JST socket. Yo will also need a connection from VBAT on the Circuit Playground to VIN on the Fx board to provide power to the Fx board.

[img]
https://cdn-learn.adafruit.com/assets/a ... 1478912694
[/img]

[futurewaves]

Thank you for helping me set up the hardware! Here is a little 20 second video showing how it looks so far -- as you can see the conductive thread wiring is all together now! I have a dome covering the CP to help prevent my brother from having seizures or from accidentally pressing the reset button. It looks so cool! https://twitter.com/starryneutrons/stat ... 8489457665.

So now that all the hardware is wired up, now it comes down to the code.

I'm a newbie, but a fast learner! I've already got the NeoPixels code figured out thanks to Adafruit's awesome tutorials, and I've already tested midi tones on the CP which all work wonderfully. This helped me learn a bit about libraries and coding a little bit. As you can see in the video, I even played with a light pattern :)

Please share your engineering expertise on how to get the CP recognize the soundboard. I've already downloaded and installed the CP library and Audio library and have them in the code. I also have already placed .ogg files on the soundboard successfully.

Here is the code I have before any of the void functions. Can you please tell me if it is right so far (or should I change the uint "8" to a "6"?)?

#include <Adafruit_CircuitPlayground.h>
#include <SoftwareSerial.h>
#include <Adafruit_Soundboard.h>

#define CAP_THRESHOLD 50

uint8_t pads[] = {3, 2, 12, 6, 9, 10};
uint8_t numberOfPads = sizeof(pads)/sizeof(uint8_t);

#define SFX_TX 1
#define SFX_RX 0

SoftwareSerial ss = SoftwareSerial(SFX_TX, SFX_RX);
Adafruit_Soundboard sfx = Adafruit_Soundboard(&ss, NULL, SFX_RST);

[futurewaves]

Though the message was deleted, thank you to whoever mentioned the Confluent Space resource -- I will definitely be checking them out! I've driven by there before so I know where it is. They don't open again for 3 more days, and each day my brother doesn't have these gloves is another day I'm heartbroken. Here is a 9 second video of my brother's current condition without "talking gloves." http://studiosilverlight.com/abetryingtotalk.mp4 - Pay attention to his right hand. His fingers are pressing on the bottom of my mother's arm as if they are touch sensors, but there aren't any there (which I believe he can do with these gloves being developed). Notice in the video that he is unable to press the green button beneath him - this is because he can't aim the way the rest of us can. I built the device that is in his lap, and it was partially successful in that this video was able to capture what he was REALLY trying to communicate! Now you can see why this is soooo urgent! This is why the gloves are so crucial to his ability to communicate. No one understands him currently, except sometimes me (20% of the time) and sometimes our mom (30% of the time). With these gloves, everyone around him could finally talk with him and he'll be able to answer us with responses! :) I'm so excited for him to have these. I swear I'm going to start crying if the gloves actually work. And I am already so grateful for how far we have come, so when these work and Abe is answering us, I'm going to tout (already touting though) how great Adafruit is for giving my brother the tools we needed to help him communicate.

So far Adafruit's engineers have been answering lightning fast, so maybe it's possible these gloves could be done very very soon. Soooo clooooose!!!!!! I've looked all over the internet for a tutorial on how to connect these two, and I haven't found one single thing. And since Adafruit made these and I saw in a video four years ago that this was first and foremost a tutorial company, this is why I decided to step forward to make the gloves because I KNEW there would be excellent support :)

Confluent space is a nice resource to have, and I will definitely be going there if these gloves aren't done by Wednesday!

Really so close. It's less than a page of code. How hard can this be, really? I have an Arduino book but it isn't very in understanding the code needed to make this FX board play sound and make the light turn on with a CP. This is why I'm here! I'm so convinced this should be easy enough to do that I went ahead and ordered (or friends ordered) enough supplies where I can make my brother touch-music players for his arms that would operate exactly the same way as the gloves would. Once I can get the code on one glove done, I can get the second one done on my own, and the right and left smart armbands done too.

This is literally the last step.

Any code helps. Or a tutorial. Whoever helps me, I will owe you a big one. :)

[CGrover]

Sorry -- I fat-fingered my reply and deleted the post. The electronics group at Confluent is an excellent place to start if you need a quick review of your code or other help and ideas. Tell them the string car person referred you.
Also, the CBC tech club met there recently and is entertaining getting memberships for their club, or so I heard...
Good luck!

P.S. I've built quite a few Arduino compatible projects but none using the CP to serially control the SFX board. The folks in these forums (especially the Adafruit team) have worlds more expertise than I and can likely provide a working solution more quickly -- but I am willing to help if needed. Let's see what the forum offers. If you still need help, then let me know.

[futurewaves]

The only reason I attempted this project was because of my faith in Adafruit engineers. The support team here at Adafruit have been very helpful. If I had a tutorial, I'd be using it :) Thankfully, all the products I'm using were purchased here at Adafruit, and even if I take this to the college or a maker space, I have a feeling people will say, "I've never used those two together before," and I'll end up right back here. I have yet to see a single tutorial online on connecting these two, and I have looked everrryyywhere. I feel like I am yet again living on the edge of the internet, and right now Adafruit engineers seem to be the only ones who can help me figure out how to code these two products together.

Please, Support... are you there?