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The popular ESP32 controllers are used in thousands of IoT, Smart Home and other remote control projects out there. However, they have also a good I2S interface, which can output and input Audio digitally. Together with a I2S DAC, an I2S ADC and an SD card, many kinds of Audio projects will be possible. In this project we integrate all this, together with a nRF24 for data and audio transmission, on a solder-friendly PCB.

The popular ESP32 controllers are affordable, fast and easy to program, for example with the Arduino IDE. Equipped with Wi-Fi, they are used in thousands of IoT, Smart Home and other remote control projects out there, and we can hardly count the Elektor projects of that kind. However, ESP32 have also built-in a quite good I2S driver. Via this interface, you can output and input Audio streams digitally (see textbox). What you additionally need for playing Audio, is an I2S DAC which takes the I2S data from the ESP32 and transforming it into an analogue signal. For sampling audio, you need an Audio ADC with I2S interface. For this project, we put a powerful ESP32-S3 based module together with an ADC/DAC I2S module on a carrier PCB. We also integrated an option to put on a Nordic nRF24 wireless module, to transmit and receive digital audio streams with a very low latency. An SD card, several extension connectors and different power supply options complete the project.