Lyd by Dissing Promotes Open Source Wireless Speaker Project

Danish speaker designer Lyd by Dissing announced an original project for its latest development – the Strøm wireless speaker with support for both Bluetooth and Spotify Connect via Wi-Fi. This is one of twelve demonstration projects under the European Union OPENNEXT program, aimed at promoting community-based product design and manufacturing. The Strøm is a fully open source project where both the cabinet construction and software platform are open sourced.

Raspberry Pi has relaunched four IQaudio HATs as official Pi audio add-on boards with lower prices ranging from $20 to $30: the IQaudio DAC+, DAC Pro, DigiAMP+ and Codec Zero. In December 2020, Raspberry Pi Trading announced it had acquired IQAudio and would be relaunching their Raspberry Pi audio HATs at lower prices. Now, IQAudio’s four most popular HATs have been relaunched as official Pi accessories and are available via the usual Pi resellers.

Elk, the Swedish company behind the Elk Audio Operating System for embedded audio products, now announced a new real-time remote music creation and performance platform with its Aloha by Elk service. The platform allows musicians to play, teach and collaborate together live and in sync from different locations. According to Elk, in order to avoid any latency, the new Aloha collaboration service runs on high-speed Internet and over 5G networks "transforming music creation and performance today with a clear path to the future."

Avnet is now offering a single board computer which allows developers to focus more on the software side of their projects. The new MaaXBoard is a low-cost, production-ready qualified platform, based on the NXP i.MX 8M applications processor, ideal for embedded computing and applications that leverage AI at the edge. It supports design engineers and end-users seeking to create automation, multimedia, AI and smart home applications with reduced cost and time-to-market.

HiFiBerry, the Swiss developer of Digital to Analog Converter components for DIY, OEM, and integrators announced a new interesting solution to provide advanced capabilities for speakers, developed in partnership with Bang & Olufsen. HiFiBerry's new BeoCreate board was designed to give a new lease on life to legacy audio speakers, like the popular BeoVox CX50 and CX100, "up-cycling" them to be compatible with the best of today's wireless and Internet-connected technology.

A fresh Raspberry Pi was announced by the Raspberry Pi foundation. The new single board computer brings with it several welcomed improvements, including a dedicated low-noise power supply which effectively improves the audio circuit. The new Raspberry Pi Model B+ also expands GPIO pins and now has 4 USB 2.0 ports.