7

FIELD TEST

ven though the audio quality of the

Speaker pHat by Pimoroni isn’t up to

snuff with the audiophile community,

the retro-fantastic look is hard to

beat. There are many times, as we say,

when the beep, boop, beep of a piezo

speaker just isn’t good enough. There are also times

when you just don’t need full HD audio either. That’s

when the Speaker pHAT really shines.

Pimoroni was able to cram a I^2 S DAC, mono

amplifier, 8 Ω 2 W speaker, and a 10 LED bar graph

all onto the incredibly small pHAT form factor. It’s

a clever system that makes a beautiful little audio

sandwich and adds a lot of capabilities to your

he Teensy Prop Shield is a perfect

tool for anyone familiar with the

Teensy platform and who wants to

create projects with sound effects

and interactive light displays. The

shield features 10 degrees of freedom

sensing by implementing a FXOS8700CQ 6-axis

linear accelerometer, a magnetometer, a 3-axis

digital angular rate gyroscope, and a precision

pressure/altitude and temperature gauge.

Also included in the shield is a 2 W audio amplifier

capable of driving external speakers, and it’s capable

of controlling Dotstar or APA102 type LEDs. In

addition to all those features, you also get 8MB of

on-board flash memory where you can store sound

clips and log data. That is a lot of power packed into

such a tiny shield!

The Teensy is a great audio platform as it’s got

quite a bit more processing grunt than most hobbyist

microcontrollers, and this is a particular boon when

working with audio signals. If you want to go geeky,

this is a great platform to work with, but if you don’t

then it’s also easy enough to use without worrying

about the low-level details.

Raspberry Pi. And

even though its form

factor works best when

coupled with a Pi Zero or

Zero W, it will also work with a

Raspberry Pi A+, B+, 3, or 3B+.

Pimoroni has made it really easy to use the

Speaker pHAT by developing a simple one-line

installer that takes care of everything you need to get

it up and running. The installer configures ALSA to

output sound through the DAC on the Speaker pHAT,

and it installs a custom plug-in that will display the

sound level on on-board LED bar graph. You can

download all the instructions from the GitHub repo.

E

T

Speaker pHAT

Teensy Prop Shield

with motion sensors

PIMORONI £13.50 shop.pimoroni.com

SPARKFUN $19.95 sparkfun.com

A great

way to add

functionality

to your

Teensy project

VERDICT

8 / 10

All-in-one

audio for your

Raspberry

Pi Zero

VERDICT

8 / 10

Keeping everything tiny

Combining light and sound

Left

If you already know

and love the Teensy

platform, this shield

is for you

Credit

SparkFun Electronics

CC BY 2.0

Right

Practical and 1980s

retro. What’s not

to love?

Credit

Pimoroni LTD