Hi,

I made a thread a few weeks back about an optical communications system, and i'm now further into this project.

I'm at a stage were i'm looking to play mp3 files from a media player/smart phone to a speaker, through an optical fibre. I will be building the reciever/transmitter myself.

To send the data from the MP3 player i can either use an ADC to convert the 3.5mm headphone jack analogue output into digital form, or i could send the digital file data directly from the MP3 player. I was wondering how i could directly transmit the digital data, instead of that from the headphone jack? Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks.

 

The Mp3 players available these days, mobile phones/mp3 boards have the decoder and DAC on a single chip which would be a bit disappointing for you. If you really want to get Digital output, consider building a mp3 player too by yourself using a chip like STA013 MP3 Decoder chip along with a PIC16F microcontroller. It has Serial PCM outputs suitable for your purpose. http://www.ladyada.net/make/minty/hardware.html But when summing up the complexity and time for this setup, it seems, you would be better off with an ADC chip to do the conversion from the 3.5mm Jack! Just my 2 cents!

 

Thank you for the reply. Do you know if it is possible to transfer the digital audio using the port that is used for syncing the MP3 player/smart phone to a computer? (ie. the port found on the bottom of an iphone)

I know this port varies between manufacturers, but could the USB cable provided with MP3 players/smart phones (for connecting to a computer) be used in anyway?