SparkFun Launches a Sweet-Sounding Audio Bundle with Speakers, Amp, and a RedBoard Artemis Nano
Designed for solderless experimentation with audio, the new bundle includes a Qwiic-based speaker amp, two speakers, and RedBoard.
SparkFun has launched a quickstart kit for anyone looking to play with sound, offering a pair of thin speakers and an amplifier plus a RedBoard Artemis Nano development board — and all usable without any soldering.
"This week, we have a brand new audio-based kit, the Qwiic Speaker Kit," says SparkFun's Chris McCarty of the launch. "This simple box of goodies provides you with just what you need to get started with stereo audio via a simple Qwiic interface! Thanks to the kit being Qwiic-enabled, no soldering is required, either!"
The kit includes two 0.5W thin speakers, measuring 40mm in diameter and 4mm in thickness (around 1.57×0.16") — similar, the company notes, to the type of speaker found in sound-playback greetings cards — plus a compatible amplifier, power supply, and tip-ring-sleeve (TRS) audio cable.
The kit isn't designed to be simply connected to a phone or other audio source, though: it comes complete with the RedBoard Artemis Nano, a compact development board with 48/96MHz processor, 384kB of static RAM (SRAM), 1MB of flash storage, Bluetooth connectivity, and a number of general-purpose input/output (GPIO) pins — plus, handily, an on-board MEMS microphone.
The RedBoard Artemis Nano, programmable in the Arduino IDE, includes a single Qwiic connector with suitable cabling for connection to the amplifier — putting features including volume control, dynamic range compression, and automatic gain control under user control via the I2C bus. Finally, a USB cable provides connectivity to a desktop or laptop for programming.
The bundle is now available on the SparkFun store for $39.95 before volume pricing; additional information on using the amplifier board, including sample code for I2C control, is available in the part's hookup guide.
