Pi Zero audio output using micro USB headphones

[nouranahmad]

Hi I am building a Text to Speech device using Raspberry Pi zero, this device has to be as small as possible, I dont have a sound card and have no room for it so is there a way to get the audio output through the micro Usb port to a micro Usb earphone?

[drgeoff]

I'd never heard of micro-USB earphones so I did a bit of Googling and found info such as that at https://android.stackexchange.com/quest ... in-android. That says the earphones are just ordinary analogue ones but with a micro-USB plug instead of the more usual 3.5 mm TRS plug. The device they are plugged in to needs to put analogue audio out on the micro-USB socket. The RPi Zero and ZeroW cannot do that. It is a hardware thing and no software or configuration setting can change that.

You can obtain quite small USB sound card dongles which will drive the common earphones with 3.5 mm TRS plug. Or a few capacitors and resistors attached to the GPIO header can give a slightly lower quality (mostly higher background noise) approximation to the circuitry feeding the analogue audio signals to the 3.5mm TRRS socket on the "non Zero" RPis.

[nouranahmad]

I'd never heard of micro-USB earphones so I did a bit of Googling and found info such as that at https://android.stackexchange.com/quest ... in-android. That says the earphones are just ordinary analogue ones but with a micro-USB plug instead of the more usual 3.5 mm TRS plug. The device they are plugged in to needs to put analogue audio out on the micro-USB socket. The RPi Zero and ZeroW cannot do that. It is a hardware thing and no software or configuration setting can change that.

You can obtain quite small USB sound card dongles which will drive the common earphones with 3.5 mm TRS plug. Or a few capacitors and resistors attached to the GPIO header can give a slightly lower quality (mostly higher background noise) approximation to the circuitry feeding the analogue audio signals to the 3.5mm TRRS socket on the "non Zero" RPis.

I see, now I understand.
I guess I will try the USB sound adapter, or I just had this idea of trying bluetooth earphones
Thanks again

[HawaiianPi]

I see, now I understand.
I guess I will try the USB sound adapter, or I just had this idea of trying bluetooth earphones
Thanks again

If it's a Pi Zero W model, then you should be able to do that (the non-W model Pi Zero does not have Bluetooth).

[nouranahmad]

I see, now I understand.
I guess I will try the USB sound adapter, or I just had this idea of trying bluetooth earphones
Thanks again

If it's a Pi Zero W model, then you should be able to do that (the non-W model Pi Zero does not have Bluetooth).

Yes its Zero W and I managed to get a bluetooth headset to pair with it but the pi wont connect, I read that not all bluetooth headsets are compatible with raspberry pi, Im not sure what bluetooth headset brand or model to buy now, do you know any?
Mine is Zoook zb-btx3

[thagrol]

if you're not afraid to get out a soldering iron you can add basic 3.5mm audio out: https://learn.adafruit.com/adding-basic ... o/overview

[Imperf3kt]

I read that not all bluetooth headsets are compatible with raspberry pi, Im not sure what bluetooth headset brand or model to buy now, do you know any?
Mine is Zoook zb-btx3

As far as I am aware, that device supports Bluetooth v3.0, which is for voice communications.
You want a device that supports Bluetooth v4.0 or higher, so it can stream audio.

if you're not afraid to get out a soldering iron you can add basic 3.5mm audio out: https://learn.adafruit.com/adding-basic ... o/overview

I did that to a Pi Zero. Works great when coupled with a PAM8406
https://i.imgur.com/jL1SIvh.jpg

[thagrol]

As far as I am aware, that device supports Bluetooth v3.0, which is for voice communications.
You want a device that supports Bluetooth v4.0 or higher, so it can stream audio.

Rubbish. Bluetooth has always been able to handle audio, what do you think "voice communications" are?

If you mean high(er) quality audio and/or A2DP, that's been around since, I think, v2.

[hippy]

I'd never heard of micro-USB earphones

Oddly enough I came across one of those today, single earpiece to a micro USB plug, and was wondering how that worked. So thanks for the link which has saved me some searching.

[LTolledo]

WiFi and Bluetooth concurrent use don't go very well, with the bluetooth audio suffering skipping.

It still better to extract audio from the GPIO pins and plug a normal headphone with TRS plug to it, as suggested by thagrol.