Meet Pisound Micro - All-in-One Hat for Your Audio Projects

Good day, everyone!

Since the original Pisound was launched, we have been receiving a wide range of configuration requests from people using Pisound for their custom audio hardware projects and small manufacturing runs. Be it changing MIDI DIN-5 ports to 3.5mm jacks, removing Audio IN altogether, a version without potentiometers, and so on. So we decided to create a board that could bend to any build. The result is Pisound Micro - a super-flexible, tiny platform for bringing your custom audio hardware ideas to life!

Main Pisound Micro Features

  • Audio: (Un)Balanced stereo IN & OUT, 24-bit / 96 kHz, ~ 5 ms loopback, > 98 dB SNR
  • MIDI: 1x IN & 1x OUT, 1.4 ms loopback, optional activity LEDs
  • GPIOs: 12x 10-bit analog + 25x digital, 0.5 ms latency
  • Footprint: 56 x 65 x 4 mm, 13 g, draws just 25-35 mA
  • Pin usage: I²S + I²C + only 2 additional SBC GPIO pins
  • Connectors: None pre-soldered - spin it, flip it, panel-mount it, or tuck it under an OLED

You’ll Love Hacking with It!

  • Great low-latency audio: for pocket loopers, noise boxes, or headless guitar pedals.
  • Clock-tight MIDI: keeping your projects in sync!
  • 37 extra GPIOs: read pots, encoders, drive relays or LEDs without stealing Pi pins.
  • Battery-friendly: 25 mA idle keeps mobile builds alive for longer.
  • Open-source software: “libpisoundmicro” library, a physical control configurator/mapper, plus Patchbox OS images tuned for < 3 ms round-trip.

Beta Program & Early-Bird Batch

As with Pimidi, we’re opening the very first run of boards exclusively to the community to gather feedback before the public release.

Also, Pisound Micro docs are live! You’ll find a quick-start guide, wiring diagrams, and code samples to get you rolling. We’ll be expanding docs further, so if you spot something that’s missing or have a clever idea, let us know!

That’s it! We’re super excited to see what you’ll create with this tiny beast - let’s keep building!

Cheers,

Blokas Team! :heart:

P.S. Photo with packaging:

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Checkout my project featuring Pisound Micro smp_groovebox w/ Pisound Micro

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Congratulations Blokas on the new product! I’m definitely thinking this would be a great product to create an “all-in-one” MODEP stomp box! I’ve been thinking about how to do that with the regular PiSound and this just adds a ton of flexibility plus you could easily add footswitches as well.

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This is cool!

For the docs:

Could you explain how to correctly solder and setup an Endless Capacitive Encoder (incremental and touch sensitive)? For example for sending midi CC.

And it would be nice to have a few direct product links to compatible connectors, capacitors, encoders and appropriate electronic parts.

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Waooooo !
As a happy owner of 2 stupendous standard Pisound and one Midihub, i’m so impatient to buy this new tiny and flexible board to customize my guitars.
To the Blokas team, i send you all my best energy from France to keep going on with your smart strategy and the quality of your products : Thanks to you, the eco-system of the Raspberry is now ready to enter professional musicians and multimedia artists live world !!!
I am thankful …

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Just bought one. Might rekindle my interests in Pi-based musicking.

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I’ve just ordered mine, waiting (im)patiently for it to come through in the mail!!!

Quick question, what’s in the box? Can I expect to see headers and audio jacks included or should I try and source those while I wait?

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It’s just Pisound Micro in an antistatic bag. This is by design - you are left with the freedom to pick your own audio jacks, sockets and controls, if any.

We offer a 40 pin header with long pins on our store as an optional accessory, but any 2.54mm pitch 2x20 female header can be used, for mounting Pisound Micro directly on top of the Raspberry Pi. There’s some links on our docs pointing to various parts that could be used.

We’ve tried to provide as much information as possible in our documentation, including physical layout of the PCB, so users can come up with their own PCB designs for routing out connectors and controls, etc…, to be connected to Pisound Micro directly.

If there’s any additional information you’d like to have, let us know!

This is probably a daft request that clued-in users don’t need:

Could we have a pic of a Pisound Micro mounted on an rPi?

Or maybe a thread where early adopters can show their projects (like @Andzelmas above)?
It might just tempt some sufferers of S.A.S (Soldering Anxiety Syndrome) like me :smiley:

Hey, I had this syndrome too - I have never soldered in my life before the Pisound project. If i can do it anyone can: )

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Sure, here’s some pictures of Pisound Micro mounted using the 14.83mm pin header:

The Pisound Micro is lifted a bit above to leave some space for the active cooler underneath, so it’s not entirely touching it, users may decide what height to go with. I soldered it by hand, without any frame or holders, but it might be a good idea to first mount the GPIO header on a Raspberry Pi, screw on some standoffs, and then do the soldering, this way, the alignment would be ideal for the desired height.

Here’s some bonus pictures of an audio connector expander board I made for my internal testing, it’s for an earlier pin incompatible revision of Pisound Micro though:

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A post was split to a new topic: Electronics Soldering Tips

Thanks for that, @Giedrius, and my apologies for diverting this topic!

(I particularly like the “cone” tip. vids may be good but often they don’t tell one what to look for)

I’ve moved it to its own distinct topic, as we might refer to these tips some time in the future too. :slight_smile:

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Hi Blokas Team, congrats for your latest creation.
I am unsure about the number of audio inputs an outs. Reading the docs, i see that is possible to have 4 mono inputs and four mono outputs (or possibly 6 mono outputs). looking at your yellow pcb i see 3 mono inputs jacks, and 2 mono jack outs, 1 stereo minijack out, 1 stereo jack headphone out. Are those inputs and outs independent alsa connections? In pure data can i have adc~ 1234 and dac~ 123456? What are the unpopulated holes in the pcb close to the rev1 label for?
Thanks for your consideration, cheers.

There’s 2 audio channels seen by the OS, so it is a stereo audio card. There are multiple input and output pins on the Codec chip which are routed out to the audio headers. They have some individual ALSA mixer controls, but all get mixed and flow into the left & right audio channels.

To gain more understanding of the internal signal flow, you could take a look at the ADAU1961 datasheet, it has graphs of recording and playback audio signal paths.

Pisound Micro does not have any dedicated method for capacitive sensing - you would have to hook up some external ICs for this purpose.

However, regular infinite encoders can be connected directly: Pisound Micro Mapper - Pisound Micro Documentation

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I see. Thanks for your answer.

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A little update - we have polished the Python wrapper for libpisoundmicro, so it’s more natural to use for Python users, as it now follows the usual Python snake_naming_convention, as well as extended the Python API documentation. :slight_smile: