pi-top PULSE: smart speaker + lights for Raspberry Pi

by Denis Meyer | 23 January, 2018

Experimenting, coding and building electronics around the Raspberry Pi can be simple, affordable and fun thanks to the pi-top ecosystem. pi-topPULSE is a cool accessory in the form of a HAT compatible device. It includes a 7x7 RGB LED grid, a 2 W-speaker and a microphone. Ambient lights reflect the state of the LED array. With pi-topPULSE, you'll code your own games, create music and lightshows, and get answers to any questions with Amazon Alexa.

In the pi-top ecosystem, experimenting, coding and building electronics around the Raspberry Pi are simple, affordable and fun.
pi-topPULSE is a cool sound & light accessory in the form of a HAT (hardware-on-top) compatible device. It includes a:

a 7x7 RGB LED grid,
a 2 W-speaker and
a microphone.

Ambient lights reflect the state of the LED array, four around the speaker, and three on the underside.
The microphone has 200 Hz to 11 kHz response and automatic gain control (AGC).
pi-topPULSE uses a variety of interfaces to communicate with the Raspberry Pi: the speaker uses I2S, and the LEDs and microphone use serial (UART), Tx and Rx respectively.