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Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh has a wonderful O-scale train layout that represents scenes from the Harry Potter movies. There is a large castle at one end of the layout and I wanted to add an animation to the castle that would flash bright LEDs in concert with an audio track of claps of thunder. I have a good deal of experience with micro-controller controlled MP3 players including the VMUSIC2 and the DFPlayer. I opted to use the DFPlayer for this project as it works very well with an Arduino and is quite inexpensive. More importantly it is easy to control and can power a speaker without an additional amplifier. This project can be built on a piece of prototype board with point to point wiring. Add a bright LED bulb or three and a speaker to the Arduino and DFPlayer and you are ready to go!”

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