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Adding some speakers, part 1

I've got speakers, an amplifier, audio transformers, and a KaRadio.
Let's have fun with that !

So in order to connect everything, I took the plugs from the original radio and soldered them along with headers, to connect things easily.



Then I soldered headers on the amp side, easy connection. And I wired them together. I also soldered a USB cable on the power input of the amp board.

On the VS1053 side, I have a Arduino-shaped board, so I took advantage of some unused pins to wire the output speakers to 3 pins. Again, the easier, the better... Except that soldering these 3 little cables was FRIGGING HARD, they kept swinging and moving around, it was hellish. But oh well, it's done now.



Finally, I took 3 wires to link the VS1053 to the amp (it's a PAM8403). The pair ESP8266 + VS1053 has its own power supply (it's a USB battery) while the amplifier has a separate USB power supply.



Aaaaaaand it works very well :)

I tried to put the whole on the same power supply and I get a noisy sound that also bleeps very acutely. I just tried to put an audio transformer between the VS1053 and the amp, that tackles the issue very nicely.

Next part will be re-organizing the layout and adding the audio transformers to get everything working from the same power supply.

And after that, I hope my microcontrollers will be there to develop a little interface with a screen and some buttons. I have tried the screen connection through UART, and I managed to make it work, though the ESP8266 I have in spare is blown up, it can't keep a program on it more than 2 days straight (after 2 days, the ROM, like, erases itself and I have to manually re-transfert the whole program, or the Lua interpretor). I made it principally with the Lua interpretor, but I also succeeded with the Arduino IDE (but Lua is ma favourite).

See you !


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