electronics arduino audio arduino audio mp3 library maker spi sparkfun vs1053

SparkFun MP3 Player Shield Library

September 22, 2012 complete
github ↗

Overview

The SFEMP3Shield library was the first non-blocking, interrupt-driven MP3 playback library for the SparkFun MP3 Player Shield. Built around VLSI’s VS1053 audio decoder chip, it streams audio from a FAT-formatted SD card over SPI while the Arduino remains free to handle other tasks.

This was an early, widely-used library for maker audio projects starting in 2012. It has since been superseded by the more hardware-agnostic VS1053 for SdFat library, which is available directly from the Arduino IDE Library Manager and supports a wider range of VS1053-based shields and breakout boards.

Supported Formats

  • MP3 (primary use case)
  • Ogg Vorbis, AAC, WMA, FLAC, WAV, MIDI (via VS1053 hardware)

Hardware

Designed specifically for the SparkFun MP3 Player Shield (DEV-12660 and earlier revisions) stacked on an ATmega328 Arduino Uno or Duemilanove. The VS1053 chip on the shield offloads all audio decoding from the Arduino CPU.

Migration

All active development, bug fixes, and new features have moved to Arduino_Library-vs1053_for_SdFat. New projects should use that library.