Re: Selection of a microcontroller for Childs Toy...

hypnoplay@xxxxxxxxx wrote: 
Thanks Mike, george, linnix,

I have checked out the links & will investigate them furthur. Actually
my background is in programming so I kind of feel like a fish out of
water on this subject. (Although it may sound like a school project,
its actually for end consumers)

I am familiar with PWM techniques in general. (it sounds like this is
the way to go)

Once I land on a chipset & receive a development kit I think I will
feel more comfortable from there.

Let me elaborate a little more on the project:

* The toy is meant to play musical songs with a digital file running
simaltaneously in the background.
* Fairly high quality sounds are required (for a toy) minimum 8khz 8bit
mono.
* Melodies must play for 2 to 5 minutes in the foreground while digital
sounds can repeat in the background(at least 20 seconds)
* oboard EEPROM for code as well as data is preferred
* However, this is meant to be an upscale item, so a chip/chipset
costing $5 would not be out of the question. (Quality is mandatory)

I am figuring on at least 20 secs of digital sounds (8khz 8bit mono)
without compression off the top of my head probably comes to ~150k.
Plus the 2 minutes of melodies which shouldn't take nearly that much.

At this much memory, any thoughts on hardware decompression, software
decompression or going without decompression?

I do have some background in this field, as I wrote a custom Sound
Blaster Driver years ago. I would prefer a chip capable of 2 seperate
channels(mono) of audio as opposed to mixing the channels into one.

I really appreciate the help in making this selection, I feel a little
overwhelmed with the choices...

Look at the C8051F330P, comes in DIP20, and has a 10 bit DAC, and 25 MIPS core. It also has on chip debug.
For the sound(s) you'll be best with separate SPI Flash, or DataFlash storage - consider using more than one, and probably plugable, if you want to simplify loading them.
Look at some of the storage-cards for cameras, etc.
Your toy is then a relatively simple tune/melody chooser/player.
Another PC centric system is needed to create the sound files.
-jg

.

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