ArduiTape/CASDuino/TZXDuino - The cassette player replacements

It's been a while but a new version of the Arduitape is in the process of being designed and built. We have found new (for us) hardware that contains the audio jack, SD card, and also a MP3/Wav decoder that should make the building easier and free up memory in the Nano so that the conversion to Wav is built in. It will mean a software rewrite as well as the hardware changes so it may take some time, however please watch this space.

Hardware Tweak My partner in crime, Andrew Beer, has come up with a slight modification to the Amp board to improve the audio output quality. It does nothing to improve how the computer "hears" the files but it is a lot nicer to the human ears. It's nice and simple. Just remove the Capacitor C1 off the board. (Circled in the picture) Plea To Arduino Programmers. O.k. I have to admit defeat here with improving the programming. I need help from anyone who can either add or tell me how to add LFN support and maybe a basic loading animation and possibly even some sort of display of a countdown as to what's left to play of a file. Later on I will also need your help to see in onboard conversion to wav is possible. Big ask I know but it would be nice to get the project moving forward again.

Adding Long File Name Support After building another Arduino based cassette player replacement ,Tapuino for the C64, and seeing how their interface works we have decided that LFN support would be a good idea for the Arduitape. This requires the usage of a different library. At first we'd hoped it would be a simple update of the SDFat library without a code rewrite but as with most projects the simple answer didn't work. I'm now looking into using Arduino-FatFS by Gallegojm which is based on Petit FatFS by ChaN. It may require a code rewrite though. You can find Arduino-FatFS here. https://github.com/gallegojm/Arduino-FatFs

Arduino Uno based Mark III. In a bid to make the overall dimensions smaller and also easier to build I have built the Mark III which is based on an Arduino Uno board, which is more expensive but a more reliable USB port and a built in DC power in port. The button board is still the same but there is a slight change in the design of the filter board. I may have left off one extra ground pin on the design. Because of how the Uno is built you can connect everything directly to the board using female to male dupont wires. I was lucky enough to have an Uno board with both male and female headers so I had even more flexibility. And heres the final build.  

VOLUME CONTROL Someone who is interested asked about volume control as some 8-bits are sensitive to volume of playback. I had thought about this originally, as I know from experience that the MSX can be tricky, but did nothing more other than to adjust the potentiometer on the amp before I placed the ArduiTape into its housing. However if you are using this on different computers this could be annoying so I've decided to modify the amp. If you want to do this you will need to get a 10k Ohm variable resistor/amp. Logarithmic is the best type for volume control but linear is cheaper. Also try to get a 3 pin mono as they fit best. This is the type I got for testing purposes. Desolder and remove the existing potentiometer, very carefully and add 3 single pins into the holes left behind. Once that is done take 3 dupont wires and remove the connectors off one end and solder the wires to the pins on the new potentiometer. Connect the wire from the middle p...

At the moment ArduiTape can only play .wav files and these .wav files have to be below 20kHz due to limitations of the Arduino Nano. We hope to be able to get the conversions done automatically by the Nano board eventually but development is in an early stage as we've been focusing on getting the boards working first. Arduitape does support sub directories but to move back and forth you need to create a file called ROOT with no extension. This can be done using a text editor like Wordpad. Create a new file, save as ROOT.txt and then rename the file and delete .txt. Put the file in every subdirectory on your SD card. Another thing worth noting when loading 2400 baud wavs is that sometimes the wav will stop playing and it will look like the game hasn't loaded. Just press play and wait 5-10 seconds and the game will start. MSX For the MSX we have adapted a version of CASTools to convert .CAS files into .wav files at the right frequency to work with the ArduiTape. This 14400Hz ...

Optional Extras The reset switch build is simple. Use a 5 hole by 5 hole piece of veroboard, connect the button to the centre, cut the copper strips in the same way you did on the button board, solder two wires and connect one wire to the RST pin and one to the standalone ground pin. The 5v adapter jack is constructed in a similar manner to the 2.5mm jack. Solder a wire to each of the connectors and connect one to the GND and one to the VIN. If when you connect an adaptor nothing happens then switch the wires over. Housing the ArduiTape I bought my project box from Maplins as they have a wide range of project boxes. Always make sure when you do house your project you allow more room than you actually need as the wires do take up a lot of room. My Project boxed.                                 ...