I developed this project two months before starting my electrical engineering major at ASU. I learned to program micro controller more than one year before joining college. I am also an electronics hobbyist and self-learner since childhood.
The green board is my experiments board (the old version) and not everything on it is being used in this experiment. The circuit reads a .wav sound file stored in the SD card and plays it. The wav file was converted to a very simple format (8-16 k frame/sec, constant rate, 8-bit frame resolution) and stored in the SD card which was formatted in FAT-16. The micro controller was ATmega16 with 16 KB program memory, 1 KB RAM, and running on 4 MHz clock. IDE used was Atmel Studio.
To finish this learning project, I had to research the web and improve my C language skills for programming the MC, learn FAT-16 file system structure, SD card interfacing protocols, LCD 1602 module interfacing, .wav file format, patience (a lot of it), and few other things.
After about 4 months spent between working for a living and learning the required topics and applying them in spare time, I finally heard Katy Perry through the board speaker, Yah!