In 2001, artist and designer Raphael Abrams went looking for a new challenge. After some long and careful consideration, he came upon the idea of designing and building his own open source mp3 player kit. His criteria? First, it had to be easy to build. Second, it had to be open sourced. Finally, and most importantly, it had to be more than just a handheld device -- it had to connect easily to many interfaces, everything from simple button pushing to parallel ports to very powerful serial modes. You can buy the kit from the MAKE store.

This instructable goes through the construction and software installation for basic operation for the 1.3 version of the Daisy kit. You're free to do whatever cool stuff you can think of with this versatile device! In order to stay with the open source theme, Songbird will be software package described within. Please comment on how this Instructable should be improved. An enclosure how-to will be up soon!

The intro calls this an "easy to build" device, and while it isn't a moon lander, it does require some skill(z). The particular difficulty is with the surface mounting. It's easy if you are careful and know what you're doing. (Having very thin solder and a pencil-like soldering iron tip really helps too!)

To learn the basics of soldering check out this great guide by noahw. Also, here's a good video tutorial from the MAKE blog. You should definitely read the first instructable about surface mounting if you've never done it. It's actually not that difficult.

One Important Detail: the photos are out of logical order. In other words, components that haven't been mentioned yet will appear on the board. When putting this thing together I did it out of the best order (don't ask!). So just follow the notes on the photos and you should be super good!

Step 1: What You Get and What You Need.

With this kit you'll be getting exactly 10,000 parts, which are named below. Luckily though, you won't need to buy much of anything to get it working. The flash memory Daisy uses is Securedigital (SD) or MMC (Multimedia card (??)).

One of the nice things is that this kit comes with a manual, which has pretty good pictures and descriptions of components. You can get a high resolution PDF here.

What you get:
Bent pin holders - huge roll
Vs1011 decoder chip - smaller ic
40 pin DIP socket - for the bigger IC
SD/MMC Socket
1 100 microF low ESP capacitor - "c6"
2 100 microF capacitor - "c_l and c_r"
1 10 microF low ESP capacitor - "c4"
1 PCB
1 headphone jack
12 .1 microF capacitors - "c1, c2, c3, c5, c7, c8, c10, c11, c12, c13, c14, c15" (Not C4)
4 22 pF capacitors - "c3A, c3B, C4a, c4B"
1 slide switch
1 LED
1 PIC18F45j10 IC
3 10K resistor networks - "RN1, RN2, RN3"
2 crystals marked 24.576 (marker marks) and 10.0
2 1K resistors - "r1, r2" (brown, black, red, gold)
1 1M resistor - "r3" (brown, black, green, gold)
2 15ohm resistor - "r8, r9" (brown, green, black, gold)
3 10K resistor - "r4, r6, r7" (brown, black, orange, gold)
1 22K resistors - "r5" (red, red, orange, gold)
1 set of straight pin headers
1 3.3 volt regulator
4 diodes - "D1-D4"
"

What parts you need:
3 AAA batteries
any capacity SD or MMC flash memory
A computer with an SD reader of some sort
Head phones

What tools you need:
Solder
Soldering iron
Wire clippers
Table vice
Pliers (optional, but they're pretty helpful)

Step 2: Surface Mounting Shock!

Do the smaller IC, CS1011, first, because it's hardest. Orient it correctly by the dot in the corner (see the pictures for detail).

Here's a basic description of surface mounting: without putting anything on the board, heat up the contacts with the soldering iron and put a tiny bit of solder on them. Once you've finished put the component down on the contact and one by one, heat up each contact with your iron to bond the solder to the component. Do this carefully taking your time to keep solder from sticking to itself.

It's probably a good idea to do all the surface mounting before any other components. Do the MMC/SD socket and stereo jack.

Step 3: Capacitors.

As per the manual's instructions, do the capacitors now. Those are the yellow tops, dark blue tops, and the big circular things.

NOTE: C4 is not a yellow capacitor. Don't mount one in C4, or it will cause you headaches. C4 is the 10 uF capacitor. You'll need to bend the pins a certain way so it mounts with the negative end to the right. (The white stripe on its body faces up).

See photos for details.

Step 4: Resistors + Resistor Networks

Next up are the resistors and resistor networks, those big yellow things.

This is all pretty straight forward, but be careful to insert the networks properly. There's a little dot printed on each network, which has to match the printed guides on the PCB.

Use the illustration in the manual to make sure you've made no mistakes.

Step 5: IC Socket and Others

This step will be long, since it's the last bits. Now put on the IC socket ,crystals, voltage regulator, switch, diodes and LEDs. And the jumper (see below).

About crystals:
There are two, and one has marker on it. That's the 24Mhz crystal and the other is the 10 Mhz crystal.

About diodes:
They must be oriented following the marks on the PCB. There's a dark line on each, which is the negative end. Bend the wires so it fits, but match up the orientation. (See photo).

About LEDs:
LEDs are polarized, so the orientation matters. Luckily the PCB has guides inked on. LEDs aren't perfectly round, there's a straight part, which is the negative end. Match this straight edge to the drawing on the board. (See photo)

Jumper: You may have noticed a SJ1 contact on the board. You need to cut a little piece of wire long enough to fit on both contacts from one of the components. Surface mount the wire so SJ1 connects. This has been handled differently in previous versions of the board.

Step 6: Header Pins & Finish!

The Daisy MP3 player should be mostly finished now.

There are the jumper pins you need to put on. (See image) Just stick them in with the longer pins up. And solder as usual.

You should solder on the other header pins if you want to use them for something. The 3 you'll need for power are optional, it really depends where you want to put these things. The long header pin array is for controlling the music (stop, volume up, etc.). All that stuff is clearly explained in the manual.

To test it out connect the ground (BLACK) to the GND terminal, and the RED to the +5. The LED's will go on.

Step 7: Software and the SD/MMC

The VS1011 chip will handle all sorts of mp3 files. Check the manual for details on all that. Basically, you put some files on a SD card, and the player will play them. You can change the jumpers (ZYXW) to get different operating modes.

Remember that you need an SD card, but a micro SD with an adapter works fine. Working this with an OpenSource player like Songbird is easy, and you can even hear some new cool music. Get the latest Songbird from its site.

Songbird is sort of like iTunes, but its webbrowser is meant to find all sorts of music. And when it does find music it integrates right into the player. Any music you grab, just copy it onto your SD/MMC card. Stick it in the player and you're set!