Adafruit DAC7578 Breakout - 8-Channel 12-bit I2C DAC

Overview

Adafruit DAC7578 Breakout gives you eight independent 12-bit DAC outputs in a single I2C-controlled board, making it a practical choice for waveform generation, bias control, calibration, test setups, and other multi-channel analog output tasks.

The board works with 3.3V or 5V power and logic, so it fits easily into Arduino, Raspberry Pi, Feather, and other microcontroller or single-board computer projects. Its output is ratiometric, where code 0 maps to ground and code 4095 maps to the reference voltage.

By default, the reference voltage is tied to VCC, but you can cut the onboard Vref jumper and feed an external reference up to the supply voltage for more controlled full-scale output. The breakout also includes STEMMA QT / Qwiic-compatible connectors for fast, solderless I2C integration. QT cable is not included.

Specifications

Technical details for the Adafruit DAC7578 Breakout.

Pins and Usage Notes

The main connections are straightforward: VCC for power, VRf for reference voltage, GND for common ground, and SCL/SDA for the I2C bus. Along the board edge, outputs 0 through 7 provide the eight DAC channels.

By default, VRf is connected to VCC. If you cut the Vref jumper, you can apply an external reference anywhere between 0V and VCC. For example, powering the board from 5V and applying 4.095V to VRf gives a 4.095V full-scale output range.

Additional control pins include LDAC and CLR. The board also supports address selection for using multiple units on the same I2C bus, and the DAC family supports broadcast addressing for synchronous write updates. Software support is available from the supplier for Arduino, CircuitPython, and Python.

Note: supplier documentation states that the LDAC pin did not behave as expected during testing and may be affected by a silicon issue in the DACx578 family.