JQ6500 MIDI MP3 Player Module – Part 2

Having played with my JQ6500 a little now, I just wanted to finish the project by building a shield to support the module’s use with an Arduino Uno.

Warning! I strongly recommend using an old or second hand keyboard for your MIDI experiments.  I am not responsible for any damage to expensive instruments!

These are the key Arduino tutorials for the main concepts used in this project:

• JQ6500 MP3 Player Module
• Arduino JQ6500 Serial Library
• Arduino SoftwareSerial
• Arduino MIDI Library

If you are new to Arduino, see the Getting Started pages.

Parts list

• Arduino Uno
• JQ6500 MP3 Player Module (or “JQ6500 Voice Sound Module)
• 3.5mm jack socket (PCB mounted)
• 1x 1kΩ resistor
• 2x 10uF non-polar capacitors
• MIDI In circuit (see Arduino MIDI Interfaces)
• 2x 8 way female headers
• Stacking female headers: 1×6 way, 1×8 way
• 1x 2 way male header
• Breadboard and jumper wires

The Circuit

This is essentially the same circuit as before but now built onto a proto shield.  I’ve also added a jack socket for the audio output.  As the audio output is 0 to 3V I’ve also added coupling capacitors to remove the DC offset and generate a zero-centred signal suitable for an audio line out.

Here are some photos illustrating the build process.  Note that I cut my proto board in half and put all the components for this on the “big half”.  This gives me the possibility of using it with my MIDI In-Out Half-Shield should I so wish.  That is optional – feel free to use the whole shield if you wish!

Notes on the build:

• I’ve bent the capacitors over to lay flat as you can see below.
• The 6-way stacking header actually “sticks out” by 1 pin compared to the board.  this is because I cut the board following the line of holes from the Vin pin across to D7, leaving A0-A5 and D0 to D6 free for other uses.  If  you wanted a neater finish you could cut from D6 across to the gap between Vin and A0.
• I’ve tried to position the jumper wires so that they don’t touch the USB or barrel jack connectors on an Arduino Uno.

The USB port for the JQ6500 goes on the jack-side of the board.

To hook up to a MIDI interface, use GND and 5V from the stacking headers and RX on the main board.  Or alternatively, it should fit quite nicely alongside my MIDI In-Out Half-Shield or stack on top of the USBMIDI to MIDI Shield.

The Code

This simply uses the exact same code as JQ6500 MIDI MP3 Player Module.

Find it on GitHub here.

Closing Thoughts

Now I have a nice re-usable unit, that will probably be the end of the experiments with this module for the time being.

I now have some ideas of how to include some effects in some of my Lo-Fi Orchestra performances.  Watch this space.

Kevin