I’m new to the forum and to Sparkfun in general. I ordered the WAV trigger as a sound solution for my Darth Vader Cosplay. After struggling with an Arduino wave shield for weeks, i decided to go the dark way.
The WAV trigger should be connected to two 8 ohm speakers with 8 watts each. I’ve already tried Google and the forum search here to connect an amplifier to the WAV trigger, but haven’t found anything really useful. Therefore my questions:
How do I connect an external amplifier to the WAV trigger?
The power supply of the WAV trigger and the amplifier should be provided by a 3S LiIon battery. Can I wire the two on the battery in parallel, depending on the amplifier with an intermediate voltage converter to 5 volts?
Do you have any recommendations for an amplifier that meets the criteria mentioned (2x 8 watts @ 8 ohms, power supply preferably approx. 12 volts)
You’re going to need an external amplifier, the on board amp on the WAV Trigger isn’t powerful enough to drive your speakers. We don’t carry an amp large enough but something like [one of these should work for you.
To connect the amp you just need to run a cable between the headphone jack on the WAV Trigger over to the audio input sockets on the amp. Depending on the amp you use it could be a 3.5mm jack to RCA plug cable or a 3.5mm to 3.5mm cable if your amp has that connector.
5 to 9 volts is the preferred power supply for the WAV Trigger, you could probably get away with using a 3S lipo but the board might run a bit warm. If you have a 2S lipo, that would be better and you could run just the WAV Trigger from that.](Amazon.com)
the suggested AMP is a bit to powerful, but i found one. I’m just a little confused about the supply voltage now. The Robertson WAV-Trigger website states: “The allowable input voltage range is 6 to 12VDC”. In the Hookup Guide, however: “Either way, any input voltage between 6V and 15V will work.”
There’s two different voltage rails on the board, one for the on board amp and that runs at 5 volts and the other is for the rest of the electronics and that runs at 3.3 volts. Robersonics recommendation of 6-12 volts is best for all cases but if you’re not using the onboard amp, you can go as low as 5 volts. While the board will work at 15 volts, the voltage regulators will run pretty hot without the amp running and will probably overheat and shut down with the amp on.
If you’re looking for the absolute best possible voltage to run the board at, go with 6 volts. It’s high enough to provide full power to the amp and low enough to keep the board running cool.
Related question. If we are not using the amp do we have to set up the ini file to tell speaker 0 ? I have a 5 volt supply, and my amp chip is getting VERY hot, like instant blister on my finger tip hot.
