CIE Components in Electronics
Raspberry Pi owners are now able to use high quality audio capabilities as the inspiration for their latest Pi innovations thanks to the new Wolfson Audio Card available exclusively from element14. The card brings both line-in, line-out headphone and headset support, on-board stereo microphones, and digital audio S/PDIF functionality onto the Raspberry Pi and opens up a wide range of new possibilities such as using the device to create a voice controlled wireless home media network capable of running 24-bit “better than CD quality” music playback.
The Audio Card has been developed by Wolfson Microelectronics and there are hundreds of applications based around four key features that can inspire developers to create and post their ideas on the recently launched Pi Projects resource page:
- Play back High Definition audio files
Stereo line-in and line-out ports to connect to your hi-fi system for sound playback and recording on the Raspberry Pi
- Build a VoIP conference phone for your Raspberry Pi using the Wolfson Audio Card
Connect a boom microphone and headset to make hands-free calls using VoIP telephony
- Record High Definition audio using any of the microphones or line-in ports
Voice activation – onboard stereo digital microphones means that developers can now voice activate projects
- Connect the Raspberry Pi to the cloud and play music anywhere around the house
Develop and play online games that allow in-game audio via a gaming headset
The Wolfson Audio Card is available to buy from Farnell element14 in Europe, CPC in the UK and Ireland, Newark element14 and MCM in North America and element14 in Asia Pacific.
“The Raspberry Pi has been a phenomenal success, bringing affordable computing and software programming to a new generation of innovators. With the Audio Card, Wolfson is able to provide a new accessory that opens up a whole new world of applications to the Pi community,” commented Alistair Banham, Senior VP & GM of Custom Solutions at Wolfson Microelectronics. “Working with element14 has given Wolfson the opportunity to bring more high quality audio to the Raspberry Pi and enable developers, students and hobbyists to experience great audio quality when developing applications.”
According to David Shen, CTO at element14, “the Wolfson Audio Card brings an incredibly exciting audio development capability to the millions of people who already use the Raspberry Pi. With its comprehensive feature set, ease of use and extreme audio quality, designers will have a completely new audio toolset from which to work from”.
At the heart of the Wolfson Audio Card is the WM5102 chip, a highly-integrated Audio Hub which can be found in numerous smartphones, tablets and other portable audio devices today, and which enables high resolution audio playback such as that normally found on high-end audio equipment. The Audio Card also includes Wolfson’s WM8804 high performance consumer mode S/PDIF digital interface transceiver and dual WM7220 Wolfson digital MEMS microphones for high quality audio capture and record.
