Circuit to emulate 2/3 button presses

Question

I am attempting to build a simple circuit to to control sound on my Android phone. All the controls are accomplished by tying a control pin to ground, so all I do in between is just about resistance and pulses.

1 button press=play/pause 2 presses=skip forward 3 presses=skip back

obviously play pause is easy, I just need a switch, but for the others I want a separate switch I can just press once, meaning in pressing it, it should close the circuit, open it, close it, and open it again in order to skip forward. the durration is not critical, it just has to happen withing a couple seconds and the pulses must be probably 100 milliseconds apart or so.

SO, how might I go about this? the circuit needs to be small, so avoiding IC's would be good, but I feel like I am at least going to need a timer.

Answer 1

IMHO, any circuit that avoids using an IC to do this will be bigger and more expensive than using an IC. The easiest and most simple approach would be a small 6-pin microcontroller like one of the ATtiny or PIC. However, this assumes that you have the ability to program one and a minimal understanding of programming. A 555-timer could also do the job, but it will take one timer per action and a few other components beyond that. The ATtiny requires very little beyond it's own chip and an appropriate voltage source.