This is a placeholder topic for “Adafruit Voice Bonnet for Raspberry Pi -Two Speakers + Two Mics” comments.
Your Raspberry Pi computer is like an electronic brain - and with the Adafruit Voice Bonnet you can give it a mouth and ears as well! Featuring two microphones and two 1 Watt speaker outputs using a high quality I2S codec, this Pi add-on will work with any Raspberry Pi with a 2x20 connector - from the Pi Zero up to the Pi 4 and beyond
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Appears to be Adafruit’s version of seeed reSpeaker 2-mic HAT but they have rearranged the layout to squeeze the button between left mic and LED (which will make it difficult to make a case with access to all 3).
Seeed seem to have abandoned support for the driver, expecting customers to revert to old linux core from 2018. One customer HinTak has been keeping the driver working with upstream changes.
And finally, several Adafruit Voice Bonnet customer (including myself) have experienced a high-pitched whine on the recordings.
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Hi Donald,
This is definitely distressing to hear! Any chance you can link to forum threads where people are having trouble or finding fixes with these issues?
We’ll do some testing here to make sure we’ve got the appropriate warnings on our site about this issue
-James
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Latest is this post, and this was my post. Unfortunately Adafruit require every faulty product to create a new forum thread, filling their forum with faulty products and making the fault rate feel higher than it probably is. On the plus side, Adafruit were very prompt issuing a refund.
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James, I am adding Rhasspy voice assistant to work with Home Assistant. The reSpeaker 2-mic HAT is mentioned fairly often; and in some cases recommended with RasPi Zero for low cost satellite devices in different rooms around the house.
For my first attempt, the 2-mic HAT was out of stock so I bought the reSpeaker 4-mic HAT - only to discover it is based on a different chip. It is working well now with a RasPi 3B I already had spare, so that’s OK.
For another room I purchased a RasPi Zero WH and - because reSpeaker 2-mic was out of stock again - an Adafruit Voice Bonnet which uses the same chip and respeaker firmware.
For my 3rd attempt I have been looking specifically for a reSpeaker 2-mic HAT in Australia … and have found only one online shop with it listed as a product … and it’s out of stock 
Surprisingly other larger raspberry Pi suppliers including Core-electronics stock the reSpeaker 4-mic HAT. Why do you not sell the 2-mic hat ? Is there a problem with it ? Too high failure rate ? Too many problems from seeed requiring users to use kernel from 2018 when they last supported their driver ?
Or maybe its a commercial issue now that the IQaudio comes under the Raspberry Pi brand ?
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Hi Donald,
We actually used to sell the 2-speaker model, but it’s since been retired (likely due to the headaches you meantioned, but there are a few factors that go into the decision):
Good luck with the project, and let me know if you’ve got more questions!
-James
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The obvious replacement is the Raspberry Pi IQaudio Codec Zero - at least from a hardware spec. point of view.
Almost double the price of the reSpeaker 2-mic HAT - so much for cheap voice assistant satellites around the house - but cheaper than the reSpeaker 4-mic.
My issue though is that IQaudio are obviously focused on playing quality sound - but this is the only microphone in their range. It uses a different chip and a different driver to the reSpeaker - which could be good … but it could also turn out to be a dead end if not well supported.
I have yet to see any indication that anyone has used IQaudio codec zero (or the Adafruit Voice Bonnet) for a voice assistant. For someone like me with limited funds, more limited technical expertise, and who is a danger with a soldering iron … i am looking for a simple plug and play module to make cheap voice assistant satellites.
I note the Download IQaudio Products Guide contains an extensive “Raspberry Pi Audio applications” section, which I’m sure took several years to build up … but ironically leaves me wondering how serious IQaudio are about adding audio input examples to it.
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Hey Donald,
I’d have to do some testing but Kmart had some 50c mic’s going a little while back that could work with the Pi’s: https://www.kmart.com.au/product/mini-usb-microphone/3329316
I was thinking a 3A+ or some Zeros around the house?
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Wow, I have seen little USB mics like that and wondered … but now at $0.25 definitely worth a try. Not many left in stores around the state.
I prefer the Raspberry Pi 3A for Rhasspy voice assistant software. The Zero is nice and small, but a bit underpowered for Rhasspy. Both have only one USB port which could be a limitation.
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