Analog MEMS Microphone (VM2020) Hookup Guide

Contributors: QCPete, bboyho

Hardware Hookup

Now that we're familiar with the microphone breakout, let's connect it to a microcontroller and monitor some sound!

Microphone Breakout Connections

For a permanent connection, we recommend soldering four wires (or headers) to the PTHs on the breakout. We opted for soldering header pins and using jumper wires. Of course, you could also solder wires to the breakout board as well. For a temporary connection during prototyping, you can use IC hooks like these.

We recommend soldering right angle headers. Right angle headers will provide a low height profile. This is more versatile as users can angle the microphone or add M/F jumper wires between the board and breadboard. The microphone will also sit up and away from the board.

Note: You can use any connection as explained above to connect. If you decide to solder straight header pins, we recommend inserting the straight header pin's tail from the top of the board so that the audio input for the microphone is facing away from a surface. This can also be a low profile as the board is flush with the breadboard.

Straight header pins being soldered to MEMS microphone.

However, depending on your application, you can also solder wires to the board. We recommend using the following colors of wire to easily distinguish the signals but you can always select a different color if you prefer (or do not have the colors used available).

Right angle header pins being soldered to MEMS microphone.

• Green (or some other color not Red or Black) for Output−
• Blue (or some other color not Red or Black) for Output+
• Red for VCC
• Black for GND

Connecting to a Microcontroller and Audio Codec WM8960

Next up we'll connect the breakout to an audio codec to amplify and read the signal. Then we will connect the boards to a microcontroller to monitor the audio signal output. For this tutorial, we used the MEMS microphone with the audio codec WM8960 and SparkFun IoT RedBoard - ESP32. The ESP32 module has I²S support and is recommended in this setup with the WM8960. Make the following connections between the breakout and IoT RedBoard - ESP32 (or whichever ESP32 variant that you choose).

The completed circuit should look something like the photo below: