3PCS Mini MP3 Player Audio Module with 5PCS Metal Shell Round Internal Magnet Speaker 2W 8Ohm MP3 Voice Decode Board TF Card U Disk IO/Serial Port/AD Board DFPlayer Audio Music Module for Arduino

The most BASIC function: grounding pin IO_1 or IO_2 for play next or previous. Longer ground adjusts volume fine. Haven't tried using a library to program my Arduino and ATtiny85 for specific file play yet, but need to soon. The amp function works great with speaker positive to SPK_1, and negative on SPK_2 pins for mono audio on my 4 ohm 3 amp speaker in project box. MicroSD cards hold snug in slot and haven't popped out. NO discernable/significant heat from amp chip, which was a HUGE problem with the BY8301-16P MP3 Module that these replaced. Only issue is on 1 of the modules the header pins are soldered on somewhat slanted and take some fussing to insert in breadboard, but I'm not penalizing a star for that. Will update if I have problems with the Arduino library when programming for this, but until then, I'm very pleased with this purchase

Putting sound to a fuzzy toy for my granddaughter. No arduino needed for sound. I threw a few Mp3 files onto an sd card and labeled 0001-0005. Power supplied by single Lipo 18650 4.2v battery salvaged from old laptop. Wired four switches in series #1 direct (resistors needed) #2 1k ohm #3 6.2k ohm #4 9.1k ohm and works great. Her toy growls, giggles, hums and farts. Next project is record company radio chatter and place one behind a dispatch desk to drive people nuts. Cheapest part of whole project was the card. Schematics are online or lookup HackMakeMod on YouTube for a short tutorial.

I had an existing project that uses this chip but from a different project, and it always ran fine. When I put these chips into that project, none of them worked at all. Poor quality. Save you money.

I bought it because I would get three for the price of one original DFRobot mp3 player. But this doesn't work with Arduino, I tried everything that I could think of. It works standalone so the circuit is working but I think issue is with the firmware. So, if you are planning to use it with Arduino buy the original one. I learned the lesson after soldering :(. Turns out there was some shorting on my board with the serial terminals. This player was probably ok. So changing to 5 stars.

It took me awhile to get this thing up and running. Unbelievably, most wiring diagrams and test code I found online were wrong! I used this with an Arduino Pro mini 328 (functionally the same as an UNO). I could not get the hardware serial encoding to work, so I had to use software serial encoding. I could only get the software encoding to work with the library AltSoftSerial on pins 8 and 9, with 1Kohm resistors on both RX and TX pins. You also MUST use an external power supply! I could not power up the chip from the arduino USB power for whatever reason. There is a small red LED at the top of the DFPlayer, and it must be illuminated. If its not lit up that's your first problem. The speaker should be hooked up to speaker + and speaker -, not from speaker + to ground. If you want stereo sound you need to use the DAC outputs. Many people say that have to connect both grounds. It worked fine (without any noticeable noise) only using the ground near the speaker terminals, but it is smart to connect both grounds together. The way you organize your MP3 files is extremely important. It read a 32gB card formatted in FAT32 just fine. I converted all my MP3s to constant bit rate (many you download with be variable bit rate) . I don't know if this can read variable bit rate, but I didn't take that chance. If you want to play the files off the root directory, you must name the files with a 4 digit number, for example "0004.mp3". HOWEVER, if you want to use several folders to play different sounds, i.e. 30 files in folder 01, 30 files in folder 02, etc. you must name the sounds with a 3 digit number, i.e. "004.mp3" in folder "03". After getting all that figured out, its a neat little device! Only uses 2 pins and about 10% of memory. You can change the volume and a bunch of other stuff via code. I have about 100 small MP3 files on my SD card and there is no noticeable lag when playing. The sound quality and volume is pretty good for such a small chip, if you have a decent speaker (3w max) hooked up to it. WAY better than using any sort of onboard noise making on the arduino. And once you send the play commands, the DFPlayer plays it stand alone without using up too many Arduino resources. Great for any arduino sound project!

As others have recently noted this unit works fine as a standalone but nothing but issues with serial communication. Tried multiple libraries on Arduino, different arduinos and versions to no avail. Even reached out to a friend who has used hundreds of these (working ones). I ordered a second batch with the same result. Ordered from another seller and those worked with no issues using the latest library from dfrobot. Product images shown on listing do not match what you get. You can see in the attached pictures what to look for. 2 stars because it works fine in stand-alone but hours of frustration trying to get these to work.

I used this device for a music player project. It worked fine for my purposes. Credit to "Richard Makes Escape Rooms" for his tips on using the serial command API. Project source, pictures and video link on my rshorton github music_box project.

First off, these work. And they work quite well at playing MP3 files. However, they deviate from the standard DFPlayerMini spec which might give you some grief. If you're using the ADKEY matrix/button control on this I suspect it should work just fine. I was able to trigger mine just fine via a button connected on ADKEY_1; however I wanted to control it from an Arduino Nano and that was a problem. There were two issues I encountered: the first is that the DFPlayer library (DFRobotDFPlayerMini) simply doesn't work with this device (and I wasted MANY hours trying). Another reviewer (Richard Makes Escape Rooms - https://www.amazon.com/review/R38HBSUUX2VI3Z/ref=cm_cr_srp_d_rdp_perm?ie=UTF8&ASIN=B07Y2YKYRS) posted some EXTREMELY helpful code that manages to communicate with this MP3 player over the UART serial connection. The trick, apparently, is to not send the checksum code; his reviews' code saved my project and enabled me to talk to the device (at least send commands - I never tried receiving a response) from my Arduino successfully. The second challenge I've had is that the BUSY pin seems to get stuck "on". When playing a file, the BUSY pin properly switches to LOW, but then when the file ends, the pin stays stuck at LOW (and the LED light on the player stays on as well). Once in this state, the "Stop" command doesn't seem to reset it -- only playing another track. Ironically, when paused/stopped while playing a track properly switches this pin to HIGH -- so it does work, but not when the track is over. I managed to work around THIS limitation in my Arduino code (by forcing it to play a blank track and stopping it mid-play to fully "stop" the device) but it took a bit of time to figure out this failure mode and code around it. So - depending on your use case this may be an easy fit. Even if you have a complex use case, you CAN make it work (I suspect all of the "knock off" DFPlayer variants here use similar chipsets and have similar limitations).

They work well. It would be nice if they would put the pin out on the board

I paired this with a NodeMCU board to control playback and I found that two of the three modules were very unstable and had to be reset two or three times before they would work. Even with a decent official Raspberry Pi PSU and decoupling caps between VCC and GND, I just couldn't get them to start reliably. I eventually got the third module to work reliably, although once every so often it fails to play and I need to reset the module. Nevertheless, a stock standard DFPlayer board and speakers. Once I got it to work, the official DFPlayer docs explained everything perfectly. The speakers produce a surprisingly good quality sound considering their size and price. The video attached shows the speaker at 50% volume. It's worth mentioning that unfortunately the hardware does not allow the MCU to upload or modify the content of the SD card on the player.