Andriy Malyshenko's Loud ESP Is Built Specifically for Audio — and Video — Projects

Dec 11, 2023

Maker Andriy Malyshenko has designed a development board tailored specifically for working with audio on an Espressif ESP32 microcontroller — and offering an optional color touchscreen display for those who want to throw a little video into the mix, too.

"Loud ESP is an ESP32-powered, rich-audio development board. Available with or without a color touchscreen, Loud ESP has a wealth of peripherals to support a wide range of user interaction," Malyshenko explains. "It is compact, portable, battery-powered, and designed to accommodate a variety of enclosures, all of which make it an ideal platform for the development of wearables and other smart devices."

The board is based on an Espressif ESP32 microcontroller module, giving it a dual-core 32-bit Tensilica Xtensa LX6 processor running at up to 240MHz, 8MB of pseudo-static RAM (PSRAM), and 16MB of flash storage, along with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth radios. To this, Malyshenko has added a Maxim Integrated MAX98537 chip, giving it dual-stereo I2S audio capabilities and a built-in D-class amplifier offering 3W per channel on a four-ohm load.

Elsewhere on the board is a lithium-ion battery charging circuit for portable projects, an RGB LED plus a header for an external RGB LED strip, and both physical reset and flash buttons. For those opting to add the touchscreen, there's a 2.8" 320×240 TFT panel plus infrared receiver, SD Card storage, JTAG debugging header, another header for a rotary encoder or joystick, and a 14500-sized battery holder.

"Loud ESP is well suited for a number of different applications," its creator claims. "To name just a few examples, it can be used as a portable speaker system with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth capability, an internet-radio receiver, a framework for developing wearables and talking gadgets, or a smart speaker connected to the platform of your choice, such as Spotify."

The project's hardware design files, firmware, and usage examples are published to GitHub under the reciprocal GNU General Public License 2; kits are available to purchase on Tindie for $30, or $50 with a bundled touchscreen board. Those picking up the display version, meanwhile, will find it slots nicely into enclosures designed for the Raspberry Pi 4 single-board computer (SBC), Malyshenko says.