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For people who are thinking about getting into electronics: that project is very complex for what it does. Nothing wrong with it as long as your goal is to learn advanced fabrication techniques, but most people don't need any of this stuff for one-off, home projects with no strict low price / small size requirements.

The main culprit is that "custom ESP32-S3 board" - in this application, it is equivalent to a combination of a random off-the-shelf ESP32 board and a separate battery charger/protector. Half of the equipment on the list (hot air, hot plate, microscope, logic analyzer, etc...) is only needed for this board.

Weirdly enough, the rest of the device is a solid design, suitable for someone with "a few months" of electronic experience: lots of pre-made modules, and designing a carrier PCB for them. This means large and easy to solder 2.54mm hole spacing, regular soldering iron, no microscope, etc.. It's a really weird contrast for me....

I had grand plans to build something like this when my kids were small, but ended up building this https://github.com/dmd/nkplay/ instead.

It's just a rpi plugged into a standalone numeric keypad, acting as a jukebox. Playlists are numbered.

By the time my kids were about three, they could enter the numbers on their own, and by four they had memorized the playlists so well they didn't look at the printed catalog any more.

I recently built something[1] similar, though with far less effort and sophistication than the author. The goal was to have a plug-and-play audiobook player for an elderly family member with impaired vision. In retrospect, it would have been better to adapt an old phone or tablet with a macropad rather than build this on top of an espmuse speaker[2].

I keep thinking that a cassette player would be the ideal interface for something like this. The controls are as obvious and as tactile as it gets and the whole analog-mechanical experience is familiar to folks from that generation. If only tapes could hold more than two hours of audio ...

[1]: https://www.printables.com/model/1269288-audiobook-player

[2]: https://raspiaudio.com/product/esp-muse-luxe/

Does anyone have suggestions for an simple audiobook/music player like this for the elderly and or those mild dementia? It should have large, tactile buttons, simple play/pause interface, volume control (ideally knob), and be able to read from sdcard or usb/

- I've used the Relish 'dementia radio' [1] before. Its a radio with support for reading from usb, but has no memory so useless for audiobooks. Very overpriced.

- The 'National Library Service for the Blind and Print Disabled' has excellent cassette type players [2], but they only take their cartridges. Ideally something this format but supporting usb/sd card

- Another comment [3] here suggests a smartphone with a macropad. this could work. they also built a custom solution.

[1] https://relish-life.com/en-us/products/relish-radio [2] https://blog.library.in.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/isl-t... [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43818639

Besides being a great project, this device reminds me a lot of the Technifant (https://technifant.de) which, under the hood, is similarly simple. The "hats" that you put on the Technifant contain a cheap USB thumb drive with the contacts soldered to a magnetic connector. All the audio is stored locally on the hat itself, and you can even add your own MP3 files with a cable provided by the manufacturer.

This is brilliant. Great design and great work. I love that the cartridges actually hold the content and aren't just NFC tags.

For lazy parents like myself: check out a Yoto player. It's web-connected, has limited internal storage, and the cards are just NFC cards -- but it is easy.

Great post, thank you.

I had a similar experience a while ago and believe me that building such a thing is a SERIOUS investment in time - especially as a parent. While admiring the effort and the result, I can't recommend anyone to go for such a self-made device, if it is not for the learning experience and the fun of the project.

I've built a "Phoniebox"[1] and a "Tonuino"[2] and both were used pretty heavily by my kids. The biggest issue I experienced is the "creation" of media. While this should be an easy task, it just takes it's time. Creating the cartridge, printing the image, copying the file, etc...

As my daughter was getting older (>4) it was so much easier to just buy a CD Player and used CDs. In the meantime we use an old Smartphone (offline) as spare device with Audiobookshelf to sync the media locally and VLC Media Player to play them.

1: https://github.com/MiczFlor/RPi-Jukebox-RFID

2: https://github.com/tonuino/TonUINO-TNG

When 3D-printing toys for young children, are there any safety tips to know?

(I'm wondering things like material toxicity, microplastics, teething hazards, swallow hazards, fracturing to sharp pieces, rounded corners, etc.)

Fantastic article! But when I read “inspired by the Gameboy form factor”, I thought the cartridge would insert much deeper, like a Gameboy (maybe not all the way so that the picture on the cartridge is still visible) . That way it cannot be accidentally yanked out. It’s probably a dust trap but it’s more robust and compact.

Definitely NOT going to build that. I haven't touched a soldering iron in 30-35 years, and don't plan to do so again. Perhaps after retirement (and with some massive magnifying lens) I was thinking to buy and make some cool 'ready-to-built-kits' with silly stuff I don't really _need_.

But I do miss those days that I would blow a fuse because I made a mistake in the soldering.. heh.. good/fun days!

Cool! I'm working on something comparable, but with the audio stored on a single SD and playback triggered using an RFID tag that we can than stick on wooden figures made by my GF (or anything 3D printed).

I'm still iterating over hardware, realising Pi Zero is a bit of overkill, using too many NiMH batteries in series may actually break those batteries, that ESP8266 has much less GPIO's available than the module design suggests, among other lessons learned.

My current approach is Pi Pico (ESP32 was the alternative) with a DfPlayer Mini and a 32GB SD card.

The DfPlayer isn't too keen on running on 3v3 from cheaper LDO's (which are on the modules I'm using) so my current approach uses a small power bank. That just offloads the hard part (for me) of battery management to the professionals. This weekend I added a few resistors and a transistor to draw extra power (0.5secs every 20 seconds) to keep the power bank awake.

But I have different LDO's and an ESP32 coming in, so it's not fully decided yet. Will for sure scan this thread and OP's article for more ideas!

>I also need an IC to convert the I2S signal (currently sent to the MAX98357A) to a headphone output. I haven't researched options yet. The motherboard will need additional routing to send the I2S signal from the ESP32-S3 to both the MAX98357A and this new IC. Suggestions welcome!

isn't a headphone just a high impedance speaker? you just grab the same output that goes to the speakers and reroute it through a big resistor to the headphones.

did a little searching, here you go (the extra resistance isn't that great)

https://samtechpro.blogspot.com/2014/03/how-to-use-speaker-o...

i suggest put efforts into stereo for speaker and headphones, more pleasing, and wouldn't stereo set the stage for truer brain development?

While this is a neat project, the design is very strange. Most of the complexity seems to be a result of using the wrong components for the job.

Having a huge PCB for an SD card is completely unnecessary. Also using enig for mechanically stressed contacts seems to come from a wrong understanding of why one would use enig. enig is for corrosion resistance, not mechanical resistance.

Just use an rfid tag to read out the cartridge put into the console

My kids were little back when the original iPod came out. They were unable to use it because they couldn't read yet, and the early iPods had a text-only interface.

But they were very capable using cassette players. The could identify different tapes by the images on the labels and cases, and were able to manipulate the tapes and controls easily. Also, cassette players are cheap and robust.

So as cool as this project is, it's overkill. An old cassette player and a bunch of tapes would have worked just as well.

(and when they get older they can graduate to CDs or vinyl !)

This device reminds me of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HitClips (also worth reading: https://hackaday.com/2022/01/10/hitclips-custom-cartridge-ha... )

It's unfortunate that "always offline" needs to be added, as that would be the norm 15-20 years ago when portable media players were at the peak of their popularity. You can still buy SD/TF/microSD players at a very, very low price today.

I just went with a Tonie Box and hacked it with the help of [teddycloud](https://github.com/toniebox-reverse-engineering/teddycloud/)

So there is no more need to buy expensive Tonie figurines. Instead I can use cheap RFID chips and pair them with any content.

This project is very impressive though!

We needed this device and satisfied that need with a Sony Walkman:

https://electronics.sony.com/audio/walkman-digital-recorders...

Very simple. Shows up as a USB drive and I copy mp3 files to it.

My son likes to listen to audiobooks so we purchase them at the maximum price possible and then download them from bittorrent.

This is pretty awesome. Although disheartening that you ended up spending much more than just buying a Yoto player or Toniebox. But I'm sure the learning and accomplishment have been worth the expense.

Always offline is an underrated feature.

Eg. my kindle is always offline, has been working great for the last 5+ years, I see no ads, upgrade prompts, UX changes, or slowdowns.

This is really cool! I don't remotely have the skills to pull this off, so I am in awe of what you achieved here. The explanations were pretty clear even for someone such as myself, but I was confused by one thing. If the device is powered by NiMH AAA batteries, why include the charging circuit, rather than just removing the batteries when needed to put into a dedicated charger?

Your "cartridge" could just as easily be a sheet of paper with a barcode/QR code printed on it.

I would love to do a project like this, but having toddlers around, how did he find the time to actually do this? These seems like hours and hours of learning and working (which I would love), but one of the things I miss most after having kids is having time for hobbies like this.

We bought our 2YO a second-hand kiddie CD player, with 2 built-in karaoke microphones, and she loved it. Three years later, she still plays with it sometimes.

William of Ockham had much to teach the 21st century “maker” community.

I was wondering how cartridges are designed and I think it’s a very simple and elegant design — just wire the standard microSD card. Otherwise, I love such cozy projects. Even if they are not that efficient, they solve the problem and bring joy into someone’s life, both author’s and a small user (in this case).

Great idea, so many proprietary and DRM locked solutions exist, all incompatible with each other.

For power wouldn't an internally routed trace on the cartridge function better than the switch on a stick? the gold contact fingers could have been offset so it doesn't power up till fully inserted.

I really like this, it looks great!

Did you investigate using a MiniDisc player at any point? I could see a minidisc player with some kind of shell and a DIY inline remote working with relatively little. Never actually used one enough to know how much they'd withstand a kid though!

Any suggestions for someone who wants to get started on a similar but less ambitious project, ideally without any soldering? Ie, more software and breadboard-style wiring.

If anyone wants this product but lacks these skills, I’ve been happy with the Hörbert. Expensive but very high quality.

> It's his daily driver, be it at the breakfast table or when going for stroll in his buggy.

This sounds so strange to me, but then I am not a native English speaker.

this is very cool

i am also working with esp32 s3 but only write rust code

https://youtu.be/y2Hi9ThKcy8?si=yV8onefVb9o7MdHC

My goal is to send midi wirelessly.

I'm curious why you chose the ESP32? Because if you're working offline, the cost for its most well-known features - BLE and WiFi - would be unnecessary.

When he's older, you should blow his mind by putting DOOM back on it.

Could be simplified a lot by making SD cards as cartridges.

This is so cool, thanks so much for sharing this. Wow.

This is potentially a sell-able product

His wife, chose wisely.

It's amazing what you can accomplish when abusing adhd meds.