Raspberry Pi + PAM8302 Mono Amp

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tstoyanov
 
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Raspberry Pi + PAM8302 Mono Amp

Post by tstoyanov »

Hi Everyone,
It's a pleasure to meet you all!
In advance I'm really sorry for the noobish questions. It's my first time dealing with electronics but I'm definitely looking forward to having to deal with it.
I actually have two question. I'm planning on retrofitting an old radio using the Pi and Adafruit's PAM8302 Mono amp.

Question 1 - That's a more general one. What would be the correct speaker to use here? The amp supposedly supports 2.5W at 4Ω and 1.5W at 8Ω..
I have a choice between a 1W, 8Ω and 3W, 4Ω. Based on the small amount of reading that I've done it's dangerous to use the 3W one since it might burn out the amp and speaker. Being as general as possible would be good here since that might help others.

Question 2 - What would be the best way to connect the Amp with the Pi? Power wise I think it's clear, but should I attache a 3.5mm jack to the amp (Via the A-/A+ and plug it in directly to the Pi or is there a "smarter" way of doing it?

Thank you very much for the help. I promise to post my results as soon as my project is done.

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adafruit_support_rick
 
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Re: Raspberry Pi + PAM8302 Mono Amp

Post by adafruit_support_rick »

Question 1: The 3W speaker will work. It will only draw what the amp is capable of producing. It won't overload the map.

Question 2: That will work!

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tstoyanov
 
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Re: Raspberry Pi + PAM8302 Mono Amp

Post by tstoyanov »

Rick, thanks for the help.
I've managed to hook everything up. Here is a WIP Video.
I used a F045 3.5mm audio plug and a 3.5 male-male cable. In the video the audio comes from another device (was easier to hook it up for testing).
I ended up using the factory speaker of the old-school 1965 Bulgarian radio - not sure what the power on it is but it ended up sounding a lot better than the 3W speaker.

If anyone needs help with the mono amp, let me know and I can send you my hookup diagram.
Will post a few updates as things start developing.
The plan now would be to mount a 16x2 LCD for the menu, use a rotary encoder and allow for mp3 and internet radio playback.

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adafruit_support_rick
 
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Re: Raspberry Pi + PAM8302 Mono Amp

Post by adafruit_support_rick »

Cool. Thanks for posting!

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