sudomod

So I'm building the Pigrrl 1 kit from Adafruit because I want to build a couple projects before attempting something like the Gameboy Zero. I'm not doing the kit as written. I've already soldered a 3.5 screen to it, eschewing the PiTFT the kit came with. (I'll find a use for it elsewhere.) The kit just uses the audio jack with headphones. I have an audio amplifier with speaker that I wish to use, but I'm not certain which pins I should attach the wires to to get the sound through the speaker so the speaker is cut off when I plug in headphones or if this is even a feature of the socket. Can any tell me which pins to use, or even better, how to test it to find which pins to use?

As is typical of such things, as soon as I posted, I continued to google and found a nice post on another forum that explained this and a link to a datasheet for an audio socket. I'll post what I found for those who may also need help.





So, if I'm reading this correctly, I need to solder the amp and speaker to the two inside pins, which should be 4 and 5 and also to 1, which is the one pin way up by the top.

If I'm doing this wrong, someone please let me know.

My set up, since I'm just hacking it, won't have the amp go to the jack, just the speaker. The jack will have just the straight Pi audio coming out of it so the volume nob on the amp won't be usable for headphones. I want to get the whole thing working before I even get the case 3D printed because I'll have to modify it. Might move the jack so it can use the amp. Not sure yet. Most likely will, though, since changing the Pi volume require a keyboard to get out of that menu, which is annoying.

The amp, incidentally, I found in the clearance section at Wal-Mart. It's a bike speaker so kids can listen to their iPod while they pedal. The amp IC chip is a mono amp, but the speaker it came with is about 5cm wide. I'll see if I can't cram this monster into the case just for the novelty of having such a big speaker in a portable device. Time will tell.