In the last few weeks I've been into ... more Dollarama stores than I want to admit to... All seemed to more-or-less have all the items I noted. To explain, all seemed to have at least one type of 3.5 mm male to 3.5 mm male audio cable, but at some shops it was a coiled cable, at some it was a straight cable, the length and color of the cables varied, but none of the shops seem to have all types of audio cable. Likewise I have seen the USB A to USB C adapter in multiple colours, black, gold, or silver, but not all shops with all colours, with the same story for the speaker (not all colours at all stores). On Tue, Apr 8, 2025 at 12:13 AM Karen Lewellen <klewellen@shellworld.net> wrote:
Which location did you visit? Not sure about the speaker, but those cables will come in handy at some point I am sure. Makes me miss Radio shack.
On Mon, 7 Apr 2025, Colin McGregor via talk wrote:
A feature of the original Raspberry Pi from the original on up to the Raspberry Pi 4 was a 3.5 mm audio jack for sound output. I am told by audiophiles that the Pi audio out ... wasn't very good, but to me it sounded fine. With the Raspberry Pi 5 that audio jack was dropped. The loss of that audio jack isn't an issue if you're connecting to a TV via HDMI (use the TV audio), or if you don't need audio, or you use a Bluetooth speaker.
But what if you want things more-or-less the way they were before? A visit to Dollarama might be your answer. At Dollarama I ran across a USB-C to audio cable for use with the likes of mobile phones for a little less than $5. Of course the Raspberry Pi 5 uses USB A for its' USB input/output connectors, but again for a little less than $5 you can get a Dollarama USB A to USB C adapter. Connect the above together and the Raspberry PI will see this as an audio device and be able to pass audio out. Less than $10 (before tax) and you can be back almost to the way things were before (okay granted this way you are down one USB port :-( , still that isn't too bad in most situations). Going beyond the above, Dollarama does sell an audio speaker (available in white red or black) about the size of a beverage can with a 3.5 mm input jack for $5 (plus HST) that can (in my case) run off an old phone charger (I didn't try the Dollarama phone charger, but that could be an option). Add in a Dollarama audio cable and you are good. Now, I am not enough of an audiophile to be able to tell if all of the above is good, but it does sound fine to me.
I thought that getting a complete, if VERY modest, computer audio system at a dollar store is a bit wild and worth sharing. --- Post to this mailing list talk@gtalug.org Unsubscribe from this mailing list https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk