Driving Speakers with a HW-627 Motor Controller?

Quite some time ago I was blogging about the hw-627 motor controller.

So I was wondering if I could also use this module as well to play music and drive a small speaker. This would be cool because we could get stereo output since the module supports two output devices.

Here is a simple Arduino sketch which using my Audio Tools Library with an ESP32 Microcontroller:

The Arduino Sketch

#include "AudioTools.h"
#include "AudioCodecs/CodecMP3Helix.h"
#include "BabyElephantWalk60_mp3.h"

using namespace audio_tools;  

MemoryStream mp3(BabyElephantWalk60_mp3, BabyElephantWalk60_mp3_len); // input
AnalogAudioStream out;  // final output 
EncodedAudioStream decoded(out, new MP3DecoderHelix()); // output to decoder
StreamCopy copier(decoded, mp3);    // copy in to out

void setup(){
  Serial.begin(115200);
  AudioLogger::instance().begin(Serial, AudioLogger::Info);  

  // update audio info with info from decoder
  decoded.setNotifyAudioChange(out);

  // begin processing
  auto cfg = out.defaultConfig();
  out.begin(cfg);

  decoded.begin();
}

void loop(){
  if (mp3) {
    copier.copy();
  } else {
    auto info = decoded.decoder().audioInfo();
    LOGI("The audio rate from the mp3 file is %d", info.sample_rate);
    LOGI("The channels from the mp3 file is %d", info.channels);
    out.end();
    stop();
  }
}

The Wiring

After wiring everything up and deploying the sketch I was indeed getting the music playing on both speakers! You can not expect to get HIFI but nevertheless it is good to know about this solution approach…

The Source Code

The full example can be found on Github!