Downloading and playing audio through a Spark Core

Hardware
1

Hi everyone!

I have an idea that I’d like to prototype but am having trouble figuring out what hardware I’ll need. I would like my Spark Core to be able to pull audio clips down from the Internet and play them. These audio clips would be short voice recordings, probably recorded on an iPhone. I’m a developer but unfortunately I don’t have any experience with audio quality nor the hardware required to download, buffer and play sound using the Spark Core.

Can anyone point me in any useful direction? I have a Spark Core but that’s about all. Is this doable? What extra hardware should I buy? Any help would be much appreciated :smile:

Cheers,
Annie

2

How many seconds will the Clips be ?
RAM is very short on the Spark Core. There is not much left for buffering Audio on the CPU. There are two possibilities:

  1. Downloading the Audio and buffer it on an external Flash chip or SD-Card and then Play it back.

  2. Using an external mp3 Decoder like the vs1053.
    There are ready made breakout boards. e.g. http://www.adafruit.com/products/1381

Hope that helps.

Michael