• Introducing Loud-ESP32

    andriy.malyshenko • 2 days ago • 0 comments

    Today, I'm ready to introduce the Loud-ESP32 board and its ESP32-S3 counterpart. This is the second generation of the Loud-ESP board and a direct successor of the Loud-ESP Duo dock. 

    Like other boards in the ESP Audio series, it is the same size, so you can use it with the Raspberry Pi 4 case. It has a built-in ESP32 module with PSRAM in case (external chips suddenly become inadequately expensive). 

    Also, I switched to the BGA version of the MAX98357 DAC. It is incredibly small, I had doubts if it can handle the job through those tiny pads. But during testing, no issues were found, it plays as good as the larger-sized QFN16 brother. 

    The key point of the board is to deliver good quality audio as simple as possible. It can use any USB-C charger delivering little above 2A of current (pretty much any modern phone charger), and it is surprisingly loud for the size.

    To chase the low price point I decided to make most of the peripherals optional (like Ethernet or IR reader), so one can add only the things you'd really need.