Pimoroni Pirate Audio: Dual Mic for Raspberry Pi

This Raspberry Pi mini HAT is perfect for recording stereo audio clips at the click of a button. You could use it as a mini dictaphone for recording important notes, shopping lists, melodies, or prophetic dreams, or if you wanted to take it a step further you could use it to capture sounds to analyze with machine learning or even hook it up to Google Assistant or Alexa APIs.

Pirate Audio is a range of all-in-one audio boards for Raspberry Pi, with high-quality digital audio, beautifully-crisp IPS displays, tactile buttons for software control, and custom Pirate Audio software.

Features

• 2x SPH0645LM4H-B microphones (datasheet)
• High-performance SiSonic™ acoustic sensor
• High Signal to Noise ratio of 65dB
• Inbuilt Analog to Digital Converter
• I2S interface
• 1.3" IPS colour LCD (240x240px) (ST7789 driver)
• Four tactile buttons
• Mini HAT-format board
• Fully-assembled
• Compatible with all 40-pin header Raspberry Pi models
• Pirate Audio software
• Dimensions: 31mm x 65mm x 9mm (approx, including screen and header)

Software

Pimoroni have put together a clip recorder example application to show you how to record audio files and play them back, as well as a convenient installer!

Here's how to get started:

1. Set an SD card up with the latest version of Raspberry Pi OS.
2. Connect to Wi-Fi or a wired network.
3. Open a terminal and type the following:

git clone https://github.com/pimoroni/pirate-audio
cd pirate-audio/clip-recorder
sudo ./install.sh

4. Reboot your Pi

(There's more info about what the installer does, what audio plugins Pimoroni has used and how to install them manually on Github).

Notes

• The buttons are active low and connected to pins BCM 5, 6, 16, and 24.
• Unlike the other Pirate Audio boards, Dual Mic doesn't have any chunky components on the underside so it will work fine with a Pibow Coupé case without a booster header.
• Please note that Pirate Audio: Dual Mic doesn't have any audio output itself, so if you want to be able to listen back to what you've recorded you'll need to use a full-size Raspberry Pi with an audio jack, or some alternative audio arrangement, like a Bluetooth speaker or audio over HDMI. You could potentially also use one of our other Pirate Audio boards for audio output, via something like a HAT Hacker HAT).