In this step by step tutorial you will learn to:

• Download individual and playlists of movies and audio from movie websites including YouTube, Vimeo, Daily Motion, etc. and convert the files into numerous audio and video formats using youtube-dl.
• Edit audio file clips, adjust volume, and save in different formats, including .m4a needed for iPhone ringtones and songs using Audacity.
• Send audio files to your iPhone using email, save them, import them into GarageBand, and process them into usable ringtones for your iPhone
  (and even delete them when you are done with them).

All off this is done with free software and without iTunes, or connecting your iPhone to the computer!

These PC instructions are for Windows, but all the tools, youtube-dl, Audacity, and FFmpeg are also available for Linux and OS X.

Capturing sound file from YouTube

You will need:

• youtube-dl An awesome tool to download and convert videos and playlists from YouTube and other sites.

Instructions:

1. Find a video you like on YouTube
2. Copy the URL
3. Navigate in Explorer (file browser, not internet browser) to the folder you would like to download the sound file to.
4. Type cmd into the address bar to launch a command prompt
5. Enter youtube-dl –extract-audio –audio-format mp3 -o “%%(title)s-%%(id)s.%%(ext)s” your_url_here
   i.e.
   youtube-dl –extract-audio –audio-format mp3 -o “%%(title)s-%%(id)s.%%(ext)s” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B7MIJP90biM
   * See footnotes for additional options
   

Footnotes:

• You may omit -o “%%(title)s-%%(id)s.%%(ext)s” or replace it with your own filename format string
• If the video is under 30 seconds long and you want to use it without editing, you can save it directly as an .m4a like this:
  youtube-dl –extract-audio –audio-format m4a -o “%%(title)s-%%(id)s.%%(ext)s” your_url_here
  
• You can download entire playlists as audio with numbered tracks as .mp3 files like this:
  youtube-dl –extract-audio –audio-format mp3 -o “%%(playlist_index)s – %%(title)s-%%(id)s.%%(ext)s” https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL3KyodHSvyYL2qAyXGli1CCd5IS0ENfBh
• You can download and convert video files from many sites for watching like this:
  youtube-dl -o “D. Scott Williamson, Expert.%%(ext)s” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B7MIJP90biM

Editing your sound file

You will need:

• Audacity sound editor
• FFmpeg extension for Audacity needed to save .m4a files (Use their download even if you already have FFmpeg)

Instructions:

The sound file must be 30 seconds long or less.
Remember, it will loop; some files benefit from some silence at the end or a long decay.
Audacity is too large a tool to describe in depth here, here are some basic commands that will allow you to select the section of the audio file interesting to you, adjust the volume, and export as an .m4a file.

1. Open the file by either dragging it onto Audacity, Selecting Open… ffrom the File menu, or pressing Ctrl-o.
   When the file opens you will see a waveform display in the center of the Audacity window.
2. Mute | Solo On the left side of your waveform display you will see Mute and Solo buttons.  If you open multiple files, they will behave as multiple tracks in the same project.
   • Mute will silence the track.
   • Solo will mute all other tracks and unmute the current track.
3. Selection Click and drag on the audio waveform display to select a subset of the sound file.  You can carefully click and adjust the start and end of the selection which is useful to refine your selection.
4. Zoom allows you to magnify or shrink the sound file to enable you to work carefully on the section that is important to you
   • Zoom in, Zoom out Magnify or shrink the view of your sound
   • Zoom Selection will zoom so the selection fills the display.  I typically will select a slightly larger section than I want, Zoom Selection to make my selection fill the display, and refine the start and endpoint.
   • Fit Project to width will zoom all the way out so that your (longest) sound file will be fit to the window width.
5. Scroll When zoomed in, you can use the scroll bar at the bottom of your sound window to pan left and right.
6. Play There are a couple ways to play your sound:
   • Click the play button to play your selection, or the entire file if none is selected.
   • Click anywhere in the timeline above the waveform to play from that position to the right edge of the window, useful for quickly locating key points in your sound file.
7. Copy Use this to copy your selection either by clicking the copy button or pressing Ctrl-c.   I find it easiest to copy the portion of the sound I like and paste it into a new Audacity project.  Not only is it less likely to damage the original file, but I think it is fewer steps too.
8. New Create a new sound file by selecting New from the File or pressing Ctrl-n
9. Paste Click the paste button or press Ctrl-v to paste your previously copied selection into the new file.
10. Volume There are a lot of effects you can apply to an audio clip in Audacity, perhaps the most common is adjusting the volume.  Click on Amplitude in the Effects menu, you will see a dialog with the suggested amplification already filled in.  The suggested value will make your sound fill the volume range.  If you would like more amplitude than suggested, be sure to check Allow clipping.  The volume can be reduced too.
11. Undo you can undo any mistake with a click or by pressing Ctrl-z
12. Export as .m4a by selecting Export from the File menu and selecting Export audio file… or by pressing Ctrl-Shift-e.  Navigate to where you’d like to save the file, select save as type “M4A (ACC) Files (FFFmpeg)“, and save your file.
    (The first time you do this, Audacity will ask you to locate avformat-55.dll, it will be where you unzipped ffmpeg-win-2.2.2.zip)

Creating a ringtone

You will need:

• GarageBand app on your phone (made by Apple)
• Access to email from your PC and iPhone
• One or more sound files that must be .m4a (or .m4r) format and 30 seconds long or less.

Instructions:

1. Install GarageBand on your iPhone from the App Store
2. Send your .m4a files to yourself as attachments to an email (be aware of email attachment size limits, you may need to send multiple emails).
3. Open email on your phone and open your email
4. Long press on each attachment to bring up the action menu
5. Select Save To Files
6. Save the file to GarageBand / GarageBand File Transfer
   • Click GarageBand to expand it
   • Click GarageBand File Transfer
   • Click Add in the upper right corner
7. Launch GarageBand
8. Click Create Document
9. Click Tracks at the top of the screen
10. Swipe left or right until you get to the Audio Recorder and click the screen
11. Click the Tracks icon (Third from the left at the top off the screen, looks like a brick wall)
12. Click Loops icon (second from right at the top, looks like a loop, next to the wrench)
13. Click Audio Files at the top center of the window
14. You should now see your file(s) you saved from your email.  Click them to hear them, drag one onto the workspace next to the microphone on the left.
15. Click Save (Down arrow at upper left of the screen)
16. Click My Songs
17. Long click on your saved file to bring up menu
18. Click Share
19. Click Ringtone
20. Type name
21. Click Export in the upper right corner
22. Done!

Now look for your new ringtone in Settings Notifications or Sounds.
This process can also be used to create songs, just select Song instead of Ringtone.

To Delete a ringtone

1. Launch GarageBand
2. Long press in shared folder on any track
3. Click Share
4. Click Ringtone
5. Click Your Ringtones
6. Click Edit
7. Select and delete files as needed
8. Back out of menus or close the app

This was fun!  I hope you were able to follow these directions to get interesting new free ringtones into your iPhone while discovering powerful open source tools along the way.

D. Scott Williamson
Compulsively Creative

I was in Boulder this week and while there I thought I’d check out Solid State Depot, the local Boulder hackerspace (http://boulderhackerspace.com/)… Tuesday is their weekly open house meeting night. It was awesome!

Outside the entrance

This is the entrance, the colored lights flash and cycle, I knew I was in the right place before the Uber driver found a place to park.  The Uber driver’s name was Sam, he earned his masters degree in the arts and started a fine art collaboration and printing company in 2015 which sounded pretty cool.  He didn’t know what a hackerspace was so I explained and invited him to come inside with me to check it out.  We got a tour and while there he got tips where to find laser cutters he can use in town.  Incidentally, while in high school, Sam lived in Glendale Heights, IL, the same Chicago suburb my wife is from.  I thought “wow, small world” but I had no idea… I’ll get back to that later.

Entrance/reception area

This is the entrance area.  It seems like every maker/hackerspace has a coin op cabinet at some point, I think this one may be powered by the Raspberry Pi I spied in the marquis.  They also have free stuff and we all seem to get the same 20″ box fans from the same place.  I felt right at home.  They have a big doocracy poster hanging in the lobby too (not pictured).

The next few pictures are of the main area. The woodshop is off to the right, the CNC area is in back, and the electronics lab and test room are smaller rooms off the entry area.  Ted, in the lower right in the blue sweater, seated in front of the PBR greeted me.  I introduced myself as being from Chicago and a member of Workshop 88 and he showed me around.  He was really nice, I got the feeling they take turns meeting people and giving tours, just like us, which worked well.  Ted told me that a membership costs $65 and gives you the familiar 24 hour full access to the space, equipment, and materials within reason.

They have a large crowd of regulars with deep knowledge of many topics.  Seated high on the right in the green jacket is Sebastian (“Seb”), a contributor/maintainer of Linux CNC.  Paul the left of him in the picture (mostly obscured by Mike M.) is a former NVIDIA employee who wrote the timer ladder for the Linux drivers, he is an expert in GPUs.  On the other side of Seb is Ben in the blue jacket, his recently departed grandfather worked for Tektronics.  Ben had a nice oscilloscope for sale and wanted to offer it to the club at a discount before posting it online which was really nice of him.

They have weekly club meetings at 8:00pm on Tuesdays during the open house.  They open with a call to the meeting and everyone sets aside what they are doing and gathers in the main area.  Alex, this year’s president is starting the meeting in the center of the picture in the black sweater.  Alex briefly mentioned club business which included donations, classes, finances, the need for 6″ duct for the CNC machine, etc.  Brandon, in the red sweatshirt, reported the results of a recent survey: the favorite part of the club is the social aspect, the least liked aspect was that some of the tools are broken.

The last thing they do in the meeting is have everyone introduce themselves, share their interests, and update what they are currently working on.  There were several asks and offers for assistance, it was very cool.  When each person was done they said “Bam” and pointed at the next one  – I don’t  know if that always happens or if it was organic but that type of self organization was really effective.  The meetings are similar to but not as formal as the monthly Chibots meetings if you are familiar with those.

Also pictured above on the left is Ben, or as he jokingly asked to be called “That Bastard Ben”.  On the right with the beard and plaid shirt is John W. who is repairing is repairing and/or enhancing the electric scooter behind him on the right.

John M. is on the left, Nick in the orange shirt works on FPGAs’ and is really sharp.

There was one more really interesting guy I didn’t get a picture of but he suggested members check out the recent hacking/spying wikileaks CIA articles because they point out security flaws and espionage techniques used on common devices anyone could be using.  I want to be clear, he was not suggesting that anyone in the club use the exploits, it was more from the point of view of the security threat.  That was the first I had heard of that news, a day before I heard about it in the news.  He’s a really smart low level guy whose current project was analyzing the voltage/current profile of each pin of a microcontroller to try and find a way to glitch/reboot it into a programmable mode.

Oh, and Andrew…
This is Andrew and yours truly.  Andrew is making an autonomous vehicle with his one spinning single beam LiDAR system and computer vision using an onboard NVIDIA Pascal GPU (~10W GPU running deep nets!!!).  He actually works for the same company I work for, HERE, optimizing deep neural networks for visual segmentation, recognition, and other perception related tasks… and he recognized me as one of the people who interviewed him on the phone several months ago.   He studied Geology (I think) at Wheaton College before getting a degree in Physics.  MAN, SMALL WORLD!  His project is so cool, he had a case full of different single board computers including RPI, BBB, Arduino, ST based Arduino’s and more. We talked work and projects for an hour.  He introduced me to Sebastian and some of the others mentioned above.

The wood shop:

The wood shop was large enough to accommodate big projects, and was well equipped: Combo table saw/routing table, jointer, planer, compound miter saws, lathe, band saw, drill press, scroll saws, sander, and much more. That’s a ShopBot in the background with dust collection.  I also noted that the shop was swept and vacuumed.

The robotics and CNC area:



They are getting their big CNC working with Machine Kit and GeckoDrive G540.  It’s funny because Workshop 88 is going through the same process using Machine Kit and Gecko drives for our mill.  Tom in the red sweater asked what a “Charge Pump” is and I happened to know 🙂

Brandon is about to CNC machine a new aluminum part on the Taig behind him needed by the larger mill to the left.  It’s also using MachineKit, and note the electronics for the mill in the box mounted to the wall behind Plexiglas.  I didn’t find out what the actual part he was machining was.

Robot

This robot was there, I don’t know what if anything it was for but it was cool.  I particularly like the design with most of the motors low in the base and belt drive up and through the joints.

This is their Chinese Laser cutter / engraver.  It was not working at the time I visited.

Those 4 3D printers were donated by LulzBot.  I swear at least some, if not all look to me to be Prusa Mendel or Mendel Max.  Each needed some repair.

This is the electronics lab:
Here are a couple more 3D printers, that look to be in good working order.
Mike S. on the left wearing the hat, Mike W, and Alex working on something, probably Mike W.’s scooter.  In the meeting, Mike S. shared his current project: electronic control of the exhaust fan on his fireplace which he can now remotely monitor and graph the temperature of his fireplace and the running of his fireplace exhaust fan on his phone.

I love a good whiteboard!

Another room with test equipment.

It’s hard to see but the Boy Scout motto: “Leave No Trace” was once written in red marker on the well used bench.
Another friendly clean up reminder.

All in all a great club full of interesting talented people working on fascinating projects.  It was nice to see they face some of the same organizational challenges, and I like they way they incorporate a regular club meeting with introductions and project updates into their open house night.

I’m really glad I made the time to visit and when I go back to Boulder you can bet that I’ll  aim to be there on a Tuesday night to go to another meeting at Solid State Depot.

D. Scott Williamson
Compulsively Creative