Small Music Player

My grandson has a great talent for lightening his mood when he hears the appropriate music. His favorites are Blackbird, Here Comes The Sun, and Hey Jude by the Beatles and I saw her standing there by Jerry Garcia band. So I made a box with a button. When he presses it, he will hear one of those four tunes. The hardware part of the operation consists of an Arduino microcontroller, a music player "shield," two small speakers, an arcade button, LiPo battery and a micro SD card.

Arduino is a wonderful invention. It costs about twenty bucks and artists can make things light up, make sounds, move, sense motion and distance without being or hiring an engineer. Invented by teachers at a design school in Italy precisely for the purpose of enabling artists to include interactive elements, named after their favorite bar. The micro SD card holds the music. It could hold thousands more tunes. Putting the hardware together is straightforward. I've made Arduino MP3 players before. The music player software is also straightforward. Getting the software to randomly play one of four tunes when the button is pushed is not so straightforward and requires the mentorship (and face it, I wouldn't be able to do it without him and don't completely understand all the stuff he does) of one of my 'Pataphysical Studios colleagues, Dr. Heatshrink.

The box has a hasp, which I will secure with a small cable tie when I install everything. When I need to swap out the battery for a charged one, I can snip it open. 

Given a box with a button, he will certainly immediately push it. We'll see how he reacts.