so i jumped on the whole pi-train very late and excitedly picked up two scroll pHats not realizing they required the pHat DAC which is now impossible to find.
Is there any way to get the project to work with a different DAC? the only 40 pin DAC I can find for the pi’s is this one:
But even then, the pins don’t go through to the other side so I don’t think it will work… but I hope I am wrong?
Or that there exists some solution for me to put these scroll pHats to good use.
This is a bit confusing, as the scroll phat doesn’t need any kind of DAC.
The scroll phat is a display, allowing scrolling text to be displayed on it. A DAC is for audio, which is something completely different.
Or do you mean that you have a project in mind which needs both functions?
In such a case then what Alphanumeric above says are good options,
You can check out compatibility with running multiple hats or phats at this site - pHAT Stack Configurator
But there are certainly projects using the Scoll phat which don’t require anything else and are nothing to do with audio (I have a couple in my own set-up).
Sorry, I should have specified. I picked up the scroll pHat in order to use it as a spectral analyzer, as outlined here:
So that’s where I am stuck. I guess I don’t understand exactly what the DAC is doing in the context of this project and how to substitute appropriately for it. My understanding is that the scroll pHat is displaying an analysis of the audio that happens at the digital level on the pi itself, so why is the converter even necessary? But more importantly, how do I determine what other DAC to substitute for the pHat DAC?
OK, just had a quick look. The DAC is there so you can listen to the wave file being analized. So any DAC that doesn’t conflict with the pins used by the Scroll pHat should work. It looks like the scroll phat only uses i2c, and i2c can be shared by more than one device.
thank you so very very much. the instructions on the page I posted had me confused by inadvertently implying the analyzer wouldn’t work without the DAC.
thank you again, and thank you to everyone else that replied!
The hacker can allow two (compatible) hats to be used together with minimal additional space taken up, although it’s best if one is connected using jumper jerky. It’s a smaller variant of the mini black hat hack3r linked above.
The extended headers are taller than a standard one, and can be used to connect two pHats on top of one another in the same way as shown in the project you linked to. But if you’ve already got a header soldered to your phats and/or zero, that may have to be removed first (possible to do, but not so simple without the right kit) depending on how you set it up.