Raspberry Pi Pico MP3 Player using DFPlayer Mini

I've created a MP3 player using a Raspberry Pi Pico and the DFRobot DFPlayer Mini. The player is a tiny PCB board, just a little bigger than the Micro SD Card adapter. It can be controlled by adding external button switches or through using a serial connection via UART. In this case I have connected it to a Raspberry Pi Pico which will provide a way to control the MP3 player using automation or via a WiFi connection from a smart phone.

DFRobot DFPlayerMini MP3 player with Micro SD Card

There is some code available from DFRobot which allows it to be used it with aan Arduino, but not for use with a Raspberry Pi Pico, and the code is in C. Whilst I could have likely updated the C code to run on the Pico I instead decided to created a Python library.

There is limited documentation on the protocol and hardly any comments in the code. Through a process of reading the current documentation, running the Arduino version with extra debugging and reverse engineering the source code I've been able to work out most of how it works. The library I have created is not a full implementation of the protocol, but provides the important commands needed to provide a simple MP3 player that can be controlled by the Raspberry Pi Pico.

Raspberry Pi Pico with DFRobot DFPlayer Mini MP3 Player

Related projects

I eventually intend to use this as part of a model railway layout providing sounds for the station building. See the link below for more details of model railway projects.