As you may have found out by now, we have a new multichannel board, this time in the BelaMini form factor: the Bela Mini Multichannel Expander. The expander has 6 audio in and 6 audio out and when added on top of a BelaMini it gives you a total of 8 in + 8 out high quality audio channels, alongside the Mini's analog inputs for sensors and interaction. The boards are available on our shop as usual.

To anyone receiving a Bela Mini Multichannel Expander this week or in the future: in order to make it work, make sure you update the code on your board to the latest master branch of the Bela repo. If you are flashing an SD card, make sure you get the latest (v0.3.8d or above) Bela image.

To anyone who updated their image or Bela core code before now, my apologies. v0.3.8c had plenty of issues, the new v0.3.8d v0.3.8e should have fixed them all.

2 months later

Sounds great šŸ™‚

Two questions:
Are the added IO's of the same quality as the onboard ?
Are there PGA's on the 6 new inputs ?

Yes, the quality of the 6extra audio I/O is the same as the stereo audio codec on Bela and Bela Mini and input channels come with a per-channel programmable gain amplifier

    giuliomoro Yes! What a dream come true šŸ™‚

    I currently have a very annoying setup with two belas working together just to have 4 channels with 4 PGA's :S

    Order placed šŸ™‚

    Happy New Year !!!

      3 months later

      Hi, just received my bela mini multichannel expander set. I'm a bit confused as the IDE is saying I can only have 4 channels at 44.1, whereas the product page says all 8 io pairs are supported at 44.1. Have I missed something?

        boondlux I'm a bit confused as the IDE is saying I can only have 4 channels at 44.1

        Those are the analog inputs, i e.: the
        eight sensor inputs on the 1x10 header of the BelaMini cape which is accessible through the cutout on the BelaMini Multichannel cape. The number of audio inputs with both capea connected is fixed to 8 and their sampling rate is fixed to 44.1kHz

          4 months later
          giuliomoro unstickied the discussion .
          2 years later

          Hi,
          i'm working a project where i need 10 audio inputs - currently i'm using the big bela with it's old multichannel board but their noisiness unfortunately is causing unwanted behaviour.
          So i was thinking if a soltuion could be to expand a Bela Mini Multichannel even further with a custom hardware board, that is adding one more TLV320AIC3106 to get full 10 inputs ... The Datasheet states at "10.1 Overview" that up to 4 Codecs can be used on one IĀ²C Bus - https://www.ti.com/lit/ds/symlink/tlv320aic3106.pdf
          Would this be possible?
          What changes would i have to make on the software side?
          Thank you very much!

          The best option would be to add a second expander or even a BelaMini cape (which is slightly cheaper) on top and do some rewiring on it by bending out some pins. Then you can leave the audio data lines where they are and jumper the I2C lines across to I2C1. It is going to become complicated to access pins on the boards underneath if you stack it right on top, but you could consider having it sitting next to it and just run some wires across. Software wise, it should be supported almost out of the box, using the I2c_MultiTLVCodec class, as long as you set the codec-mode with the correct set of codecs, i2c busses and addresses.