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pHAT BEAT
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The ultimate audio add-on for your Pi! pHAT BEAT gives you high-quality, digital, amplified, stereo audio and 16 beautiful little RGB LEDs, in two rows of...
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The ultimate audio add-on for your Pi! 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.
We've taken the I2S mono DAC and amplifier that we used on Speaker pHAT and Picade HAT and... added a second one for stereo goodness. 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 we've suggested 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!
Features
- dual I2S DAC/amplifiers for stereo audio (MAX98357A)
- 3W per channel
- 2x push fit speaker terminals
- DIP switch to select blended mono or stereo modes
- 16 RGB LED pixels (APA102) in 2 rows of 8
- 6 edge-mounted push buttons
- pHAT BEAT pinout
- Compatible with Raspberry Pi 3B+, 3, 2, B+, A+, Zero, Zero W
- Software installer and ALSA VU meter plugin
- Python library
- Female header requires soldering
Software
We've created a nifty one-line installer to get your pHAT BEAT set up in the blink of an eye. It'll reconfigure your ALSA audio to route it out through pHAT BEAT and install our VU meter plugin to display the volume levels in real time (although you can disable this and code the LEDs yourself).
Our software does not support Raspbian Wheezy.
Notes
The dimensions of pHAT BEAT are 65x30x7.5mm.
Jargon buster
Plain-language definitions for the technical terms used above.
- DAC
- A digital-to-analogue converter turns numbers from the microcontroller into a real analogue voltage. It matters if you want to generate simple waveforms, audio-style signals, or variable control voltages rather than just on/off outputs.
- DIP switch
- A DIP switch is a small set of physical on/off switches used to configure hardware settings without software. It matters because changing features such as auto power-on or charging limits may require moving these tiny switches correctly.
- GPIO
- General-purpose input/output pins are microcontroller pins you can set in software to read signals, switch devices on and off, or connect to peripherals. The number of GPIO pins matters because it limits how many buttons, LEDs, sensors, and other parts you can wire directly to the board.
- I2S
- I2S is a digital audio interface used to send sound data between chips, such as from a microcontroller to an audio amplifier or DAC. It matters if your project needs cleaner digital audio output than a basic buzzer or PWM signal can provide.
- LED
- A light-emitting diode is a small electronic component that lights up when current flows through it in the correct direction. In this kit, LEDs create the flashing effect, so polarity and correct soldering matter for the project to work.
- pHAT
- A smaller add-on board format for Raspberry Pi, similar in idea to a HAT but usually not full-sized. It matters because pHAT compatibility can affect how neatly a board stacks or fits into a Raspberry Pi project.
- RGB
- Short for red, green and blue, usually referring to an LED that can mix those three colours. It matters because controlling an RGB LED teaches how separate outputs combine to create different colours.
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