Combined Board - Teensy + Audio Shield

[sleitman]

I am wondering if there were technical reasons why a Teensy board was never made with the audio shield components built in.

I learn so much from this forum, and I am so grateful for the Teensy platform. This question is for my own edification, not to provoke or request new boards.

I know that for almost all of the projects I do, a single combined board would mean a more seamless process and simplify many design headaches around form factors and I/O connections. I know the Daisy Seed does something similar, but I use the Teensy in all of my projects, including teaching, because of the strength of this community, this forum, and the incredible work and responsiveness of PJRC.

Again, this isn't a request, and I don't know the sales volume of the boards vs shield or the financial viability of this design or the agreement with Sparkfun. I am just curious about any technical limitations of that kind of board.

 

[KenHahn]

A question for Paul obviously, but certainly one major constraint is simply space. Besides mounting the audio circuit, you also need to have at least one audio connector such as a phono jack. It couldn't be done without physically growing the Teensy in size. Perhaps a Teensy 4.0 grown to 4.1 in footprint with the back half dedicated to audio might work, but then it becomes a matter of whether there is enough of a market to make it worthwhile.

Another possible issue would be having the audio circuit physically too close to some of the other high-speed circuitry potentially creating electrical noise issues.

I have outfitted a couple of university audio labs with the audio adapter stacked on top of the Teensy 4.1. While not as ideal as a fully integrated setup, it at least makes it a single unified robust assembly that is easy to work with in a teaching environment.