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The SparkFun Surface Transducer Kit gives you everything you need to turn almost any surface into a speaker. A surface transducer is essentially just a speaker except instead of a cone, the coil is attached to a pad that conducts the vibration into whatever you press it against. Hook it up to the included MP3 player and press it against the nearest table, wall or cardboard box. You can even put it against your head and play music directly into your skull (the ultimate surround sound).
With the included SparkFun Qwiic MP3 Trigger all you need to do is send a simple I2C command and listen to whatever is on your microSD card.
When a USB-C cable is connected to the Qwiic MP3 Trigger the contents of the microSD card appears as a jump drive. Simply plug in the Qwiic MP3 Trigger and you'll be transferring MP3s, no need for drivers and no need for WAV or Vorbis conversion! Sound output is provided via a 3.5mm headphone jack or poke-home connector allowing an external speaker to be connected without soldering. Your supplied speaker is boosted by a Class-D mono amplifier capable of outputting up to 1.4W making it capable of being incredibly loud! Volume is software selectable between 32 levels while equalization can be tuned to be sure your classical hits sound different from your jazz dance routines. If you don't want to deal with any programming, there are four trigger pins. When pin 3 is pulled low the T003.mp3 file will immediately be played. This allows you to start playing sound effects with the touch of a button! By pulling multiple pins down simultaneously the four triggers can play up to ten tracks: T001 to T010. Up to 255 tracks can be loaded onto the SD card and triggered via the I2C interface.
All settings including volume, EQ, and I2C address are stored in NVM and loaded at each power up. The I2C address of the Qwiic MP3 Trigger can be modified via a solder jumper or be assigned using a software command. Multiple Qwiic MP3 Triggers can be chained together on a single bus allowing for simultaneous track mixing and triggering.
The SparkFun Qwiic Connect System is an ecosystem of I2C sensors, actuators, shields and cables that make prototyping faster and less prone to error. All Qwiic-enabled boards use a common 1mm pitch, 4-pin JST connector. This reduces the amount of required PCB space, and polarized connections mean you can’t hook it up wrong.
Surface Transducer:
MP3 Player:
We welcome your comments and suggestions below. However, if you are looking for solutions to technical questions please see our Technical Assistance page.
Based on 1 ratings:
I was very pleasantly surprised by how good the sound was coming from this surface transducer! I'm planning to use it in a custom alarm clock project, so admittedly my standards aren't the highest, but placing the transducer on the headboard or our bed the sound was as least as good as our existing alarm clock radio. I was also concerned about the possibility of a lot of extra vibration (weird buzzing sounds or something like that), but haven't noticed any to speak of.
Oh, and the Qwiic MP3 Trigger is as easy to use as the description implies. I don't expect it will be part of my eventual project, but it was a great way to quickly try out the transducer, and I'll be looking for another opportunity to put it to use.