ESP Audio Docks with onboard PSRAM

I spent some time lately playing with Home Assistant. What can I say, it is brilliant. So easy to use with ESPHome integration and so many nice things you can implement with ease.

One of the things I didn't realize, is how easy it is to use ESP Audio docks with Home Assistant. It is a 2-minute job to onboard the device to the system, and then you can use it for playing audio or doing voice announcements.

So far I've implemented

- 'Announce hour' automation that is super helpful in the home office

- For similar reasons 'Cuckoo clock' but also just for fun

- Integrated Google calendar to announce next meeting one minute in advance

Anyway, details are here, if you want to follow my steps

Recently few people contacted me regarding support of squeezelite-esp32. I did some test long ago, and it felt like LMS is a nice piece of software and had few cool features for it's time, but frankly feels out of loop in 2023.

Well, I was wrong. Today it supports both Apple AirPlay and Spotify Connect, not mentioning Bluetooth connectivity. Actually for ESP32 power house that is much more than you'd expect. Especially the Team working on Squeezelite-ESP32 is actually spent some good time working on stability and [using it for a few days] so far I had no crashed or weird behavior.

Long story short, guys confirmed me that it is okay to pre-flash Squeezelite-ESP32 before selling them, as well as simply advertise it's support.

I put step-by-step instruction to help others to setup Squeezelite-ESP32 on the project's github, and welcome everyone to give it a try.

After working with Louder ESP for a while I discover few improvements that I'd like to introduce. 

First, I wanted to add barrel jack, so I can use off the shelf power sources. For testing you can use small 9-12V wall power sources, that you can buy for a few bucks. I decided to keep bolt connector though, as it be more useful for stationary setup.

While I had a chance I also improved labeling on the board, essentially placing all the polarity marks. I should have done that in the first revision really.

Having those changes, Louder ESP is back in stock and available for purchase on Tindie