Two-Track ESP8266 MP3 Sound Machine Helps Put the Kid(s) to Bed

Last summer, Zack of Self Hosted Home came up with an ESP8266 MP3 sound machine, with the express purpose of playing his then six-month-old son audio from a “shhing” YouTube video. Now, roughly six months later, requirements have changed, and the project has been updated to support two soothing sounds for his little one.

The new model implements dual buttons to choose between tracks. It uses a DFPlayer Mini to read the MP3s from an SD card, which are played on a small 3W 8 ohm speaker, and a NodeMCU for wireless connectivity. This enables the device to interface with Home Assistant over WiFi to coordinate a “kid nighttime” scene that sets the lights in Zack's house and triggers the sound machine to start playing white noise.

Zack decided to add a better enclosure for the unit, designed with this parametric box maker and 3D-printed. The circuit was also transferred from a breadboard to a more permanent protoboard solution, so if it needs to be modified again, perhaps the next step won’t be quite as easy!

It’s a relatively simple hack, but one that gets used every day in order to help with the bedtime process. Hopefully this will allow Zack's household to get a bit more sleep, maybe giving him some more time to come up with cool gadgets!