Loud-ESP development board

Loud-ESP development board
- Loud-ESP Features
Hardware
Firmware

Loud-ESP Kits is a set of development boards designed to make audio development for the ESP platform easy and feature-rich.

Key properties of this kit

It uses ESP chips as an MCU core, which has huge community support and adaptation
It delivers 2-channel amplified high-quality audio ready to be connected to speakers of choice - no need to have an external amplifier. Therefore it is all you need to complete your audio projects
It has low power consumption and built-in Li-Ion battery management - therefore it is a good choice for any sort of portable and wearable audio projects.
It has a rich UX peripheral, most obviously a TFT screen with touch, but also an IR receiver, and header for physical controls, like a rotary encoder or joystick. Therefore it is a good choice for standalone user-facing audio projects.

Loud-ESP Features

MCU Core

ESP32 Dual Core 32-bit LX6 microprocessor running at 240 MHz
16MB of flash storage
8MB of PSRAM
CP2102 Serial communication/ Flashing chip

Battery management

Li-Ion battery charging with charge status indication
Battery overcharge and over-discharge protection
Battery overcurrent protection
Onboard 14500 battery holder or 2-pin connector for external battery (except Mini version)
Battery voltage reading using built-in DAC
Onboard power switch

Audio capabilities

Dual I2S stereo DAC (MAX98537) with built-in D-Class amp
3W per channel on 4 Ohm load
Up to 92% efficiency
Onboard 5V boost converter

Peripheral

2.8'' 320x240 TFT Screen with Touch sensor (except Mini version)
Wifi and BT
IR reader (except the Mini version)
RGB led, RGB LED strip header
SDCard socket (except Mini version)
JTAG header (except the Mini version)
Rotary encoder/Joystick header (except the Mini version)

Other

RESET and GPIO0 (FLASH) buttons
Raspberry Pi 4 case mechanical compatibility
Software samples for every piece of onboard peripheral

Hardware

Please find more information in the hardware section

Firmware

Software samples

Please find more information in the firmware section

Platformio IDE

All samples are provided as Plarformio IDE projects. After installing it, open the sample project. Select the proper environment based on your dock. Run the Build and Upload commands to install necessary tools and libraries, and build and upload the project to the board. Communication and proper upload method selection will be handled by IDE automatically.

Arduino IDE

Follow the ESP8266Audio library guide. Default settings will work out of the box with ESP8266 and ESP32 boards. For ESP32C3 and ESP32S2 board please adjust pinout according to the above section

ESPHome and Home Assistant

Being an ESP32-based device, you can easily integrate it into your Home Assistant using ESPHome. Start with esphome web installer, which will give you ESPHome base install and WiFi configuration in minutes.

Next, navigate to your Home Assistant (assuming you have your ESPHome integration installed), and adopt the newly created node

ESPHome will give you ESPHome configs for both the mini and full versions of the board.

Loud ESP Mini and Full version

The loud-esp-mini config enables common board peripheral

media_player publishes the media player into the Home assistant, so you can use it together with the native player or Music Assistant. You have a volume knob in the HA as well.
Volume set up to 50% on player start. You can change that
light component exposes onboard RGB LED for use in integrations. In this example, it light a LED depending on the media_player state
psram enabled for all devices to smooth out playback

Loud ESP Full version only

The loud-esp config enables all the board peripheral

remote_receiver exposes the IR reader. Example configures SAMSUNG TV remote to control volume using volume buttons.
display component configures the onboard display
touchscreen component configures the onboard touchscreen and dumps touches to the console

Project example - Mopidy monitor

The loud-esp-mopidy-monitor config is a project that I did myself for HA Mopidy media center integration

media_player can be used for voice announcements
display shows the current Mopidy playing item, Artist, and title.
three playback buttons allow Play/Pause track and move back and forward along the playlist via touchscreen controls
on the top of display there is a volume indicator with two buttons to change it
the progress bar shows the current progress of the track
display also shows playlist progress on the bottom with the current item highlighted

Currently, there is no component that can display track images, but it seems like it will be added soon

Bonus - automation example

The true power of the native speaker in the eHA is the use of automation. One example that I find useful. This simple automation will be pronounced every hour between 8 AM and 9 PM. Another one is used to pronounce bedtime, you get the point...

Squeezelite-ESP32

Squeezelite-ESP32 is a multimedia software suite, that started as a renderer (or player) of LMS (Logitech Media Server). Now it is extended with

Spotify over-the-air player using SpotifyConnect (thanks to cspot)
AirPlay controller (iPhone, iTunes ...) and enjoy synchronization multiroom as well (although it's AirPlay 1 only)
Traditional Bluetooth device (iPhone, Android)

And LMS itself

Streams your local music and connects to all major online music providers (Spotify, Deezer, Tidal, Qobuz) using Logitech Media Server - a.k.a LMS with multi-room audio synchronization.
LMS can be extended by numerous plugins and can be controlled using a Web browser or dedicated applications (iPhone, Android).
It can also send audio to UPnP, Sonos, Chromecast, and AirPlay speakers/devices.

All ESP32-based boards are tested with Squeezelite-ESP32 software, which can be flashed using nothing but web browser. You can use Squeezelite-ESP32 installer for that purpose.

How to flash and configure

Use Installer for ESP Audio Dock to flash firmware first. It has been preconfigured to work with ESP Audio boards and will configure all hardware automatically.


Select the correct device first
Connect the device to the USB port and select it from the list
Press `Flash` and wait around 2 minutes
(Optional) You may enter the serial console to get more information
Device is in recovery mode. Connect to `squeezelite-299fac` wifi network with `squeezelite` password (your network name suffix will be different)
When redirected to the captive portal let the device scan wifi network and provide valid credentials
You can use provided IP address (http://192.168.1.99/ on the screenshot) to access settings page
(Optional) You may change device names to something close to your heart
Exit recovery