Tool:

Greeting Card Sound Player Module
https://amzn.to/2xyGzbF

Related tools mentioned:

EBL 18650 3.7V 3000mAh Li-ion Rechargeable Batteries
https://amzn.to/2HbJ9DS

Charger
https://amzn.to/2IZQhZQ

Holders
https://amzn.to/2JjnmPN

Transcript:

It’s time for another Cool Tool review. This is a greeting card sound module. There are a bunch of dirt cheap ones out there, but this fancy one cost me $9 on Amazon. It’s a straightforward way to add sound to your project. And by picking one up using the link in the description you’re helping to support my videos and the Cool Tools blog.

Sometimes, you’re making a thing, and you want it to make a sound when it’s pressed, or turned or opened. And you’d think that would be an easy thing to do, but it can get surprisingly complicated and expensive to pull off.

One way to keep it simple is this pre-wired sound player module. It comes with a speaker and a button already wired up, plus wires to connect up jack for a 5v power adapter. Or, you can also do what I did and wire up a 3.7 volt rechargeable LiPo battery or 18650 battery to the 3.7v connections here.

Now, there are a lot of cheap, voice recorder modules out there, and I plan on doing a separate video on why those are great, but what I like most about this board is that you have a micro USB connection where you can load up your own MP3 file.

The board shows up on your computer like a thumb drive. Mine came with a little song already loaded on it. Delete the demo file and load up your own, and you now have a button-triggered sound effect that you can fit into your project.

You only get 4MB of room on here, though. So if you want a long sound, like a song, you’ll need to lower the bitrate way down in a program like Audacity. I’ve done it, though, and it works.

Another upshot of the USB port is that you can use it to recharge the battery you have wired up to the 3.7v side. So if you keep this USB port exposed on your project, or extend it to the outside with a panel mount extension cable, you can both recharge your project and reload your sound file.

What I also like about this solution is that it’s easy to hack what’s here. If you want to change the speaker, you just cut the old one off and use the same wires to connect a bigger one. If you want to use an arcade button or tilt switch instead of the included one? Just chop it and replace it. You don’t have to read a schematic or decipher the circuit board labels, just upgrade what’s already wired up.

That said, if you are down for some more intense hacking, a photo on Amazon which I’ll also post on Maker Project Lab, shows all the different modes and options.

You can wire in a photoresistor to make this light sensitive. You can short out some of these resistors over here for different playback modes. You can adjust the volume with this tiny potentiometer. There’s a lot you can do.

My plan is to use this to add a custom horn sound for my go kart, but there are a lot of possibilities here, and I’ll probably order another one up just to have on hand.

That’s a look at this $9 sound module. You can pick one up using the included link. And remember, you can find thousands of reader recommended tools like this at Cool-Tools.org

Find more Cool Tool reviews here:
http://kk.org/cooltools