Our pirate friends at Pimoroni have taken the I2S mono DAC and amplifier that they used on Speaker pHAT and Picade HAT and added a second one for stereo goodness. pHAT BEAT gives you high-quality, digital, amplified, stereo audio and 16 beautiful little RGB LEDs, in two rows of 8, that are ideal as a VU meter, and 6 buttons to control your audio. There’s a nifty little DIP switch on the bottom of the board that lets you select either mono (left and right are blended through both channels) or stereo playback. The clip-in terminals make it super-simple to wire in your speakers.
The two rows of 8 APA102 RGB LEDs make the perfect VU meter, but can be coded to do whatever you wish, like displaying the steps on a step sequencer Drum HAT or Piano HAT, or just pulsing in time with the beat.
The six buttons on the edges of pHAT BEAT are linked direct to GPIO, and can be used for whatever you wish, although Pimoroni suggests some uses on the board, like rewind, play/pause, fast-forward, volume up and down, and power.
Use pHAT BEAT to create a gorgeous little radio for your desk, to stream music from iPhone with Airplay, or turn it into a collaborative Slack-controlled Spotify player for your office! You also might recognize pHAT BEAT from Pimoroni’s Pirate Radio Project Kit.
Features
Dual I2S DAC/amplifiers for stereo audio (MAX98357A)
Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell is every Wednesday at 7pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat – we’ll post the link there.
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