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Raspberry Pi & DIY - Page 2

post #16 of 65
7/5/12 at 3:53pm
Thread Starter 

It's a TI PCM2902E. Behringer UCA202. It didn't work right out of the box. I guess I could put the virgin install on the new card and try again, because I've modified quite a bit, but I only started into that because it didn't work. 

 

I been talking to it using puTTY, but that doesn't give me any reassurance about the mouse behaviour. I know it's not a multi-core Intel x86 powerhouse, but I didn't expect it to need to go off every couple of minutes to think about whether it was going to move the mouse pointer.

 

Anyway, they told me it would display HD video, so I don't want to be just talking to it in a terminal window on a Windows box. Maybe the new PSU will fix things.

 

w

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post #17 of 65
7/5/12 at 7:39pm
Thread Starter 

Things just took a turn for the better, I started to set up the new SD card. I found a set of instructions for expanding the partitions that included fixing up the swap file:- http://elsmorian.com/post/23366148056/basic-raspberry-pi-setup. The instructions I was following previously omitted the instructions for creating a new swap file. I thought at the time that this was a bit odd, but the page I was following seemed authoritative enough. Now I have 13.5G of free space and the computer (esp. the mouse) is acting quite normally, not fast, but quite acceptable. 

 

There's an excellent and straightforward set of instructions for making the Pi serve music, either from onboard or streamed @ http://www.piggott.me.uk/blog/

 

w

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post #18 of 65
7/5/12 at 7:44pm

Hi,

 

I'm very interested in this Raspberry Pi, but I've read that there is a huge backorder.  Could you advise me where is the best place to place an order for one?

 

Wachara C.

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post #19 of 65
7/5/12 at 8:20pm
Thread Starter 

I live in the UK. I have a friend who wants one, so looked on uk.farnell.com. They said that they would soon be accepting regular orders (you had to register and wait previously). You may be able to order direct with a credit card or get someone in the UK to buy one and send it to you.

 

I see they have a Thai site (Element 14) that you can access from the UK site by clicking 'Change Country' in the top righthand corner.

 

w

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post #20 of 65
7/6/12 at 7:48am
Thanks a lot for the info. I'll try that.

Wachara C.
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post #21 of 65
7/6/12 at 10:47am

Excellent, glad to hear you're making good progress with it now. Thanks for the link, looks useful.

 

The power supply has done the trick for my problems - my Pi has been up for over an hour now and I'm logged into it remotely.
 

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post #22 of 65
7/6/12 at 10:56am

Also, it seems to have detected my Epiphany Acoustics E-Dac when I just plumbed it in:

 

[ 3593.200449] usb 1-1.3: new full speed USB device number 4 using dwc_otg
[ 3593.364089] usb 1-1.3: New USB device found, idVendor=1852, idProduct=7022
[ 3593.364128] usb 1-1.3: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=0
[ 3593.364149] usb 1-1.3: Product: UAC1 DAC
[ 3593.364177] usb 1-1.3: Manufacturer: Binary Audio
[ 3593.386741] input: Binary Audio UAC1 DAC as /devices/platform/bcm2708_usb/usb1/1-1/1-1.3/1-1.3:1.0/input/input0
[ 3593.386884] generic-usb 0003:1852:7022.0001: input: USB HID v1.00 Device [Binary Audio UAC1 DAC] on usb-bcm2708_usb-1.3/input0
[ 3593.892579] usbcore: registered new interface driver snd-usb-audio

 

Wish I had time to actually try playing some audio to it now to see if it's working :-(

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post #23 of 65
7/15/12 at 11:56am

Update: I've now got my Raspberry Pi working as a Squeezebox streamer with squeezeslave and my E-DAC. I had a problem in that squeezeslave couldn't see any sound devices when I ran 'squeezeslave -L'. After some Googling, I determined that I had to add my login ID to the 'audio' group of users in order to have access to the soundcard, i.e.

 

sudo adduser <username> audio

 

Logging in and logging out resulted in 'squeezeslave -L' giving the following output:

 

Output devices:
  0: (ALSA) UAC1 DAC: USB Audio (hw:0,0) (11/46)
  1: (ALSA) front (11/46)
  2: (ALSA) surround40 (11/46)
  3: (ALSA) iec958 (11/46)
  4: (ALSA) spdif (11/46)
* 5: (ALSA) default (42/46)
  6: (ALSA) dmix (42/42)

And then when I ran 'squeezeslave -D -F', it detected my squeezeserver and it worked :-)

 

Sound quality is good, though I've not had chance for a proper listen. I've certainly had no glitches, gaps, or jumps yet.

 

This was easier to setup than I expected.

 

 

edit: I've observed that it's only using 15% of the Raspberry Pi's CPU, so there's more than enough processor power:
 

Ras-Pi running squeezeslave.png


Edited by Threeek - 7/15/12 at 12:44pm
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post #24 of 65
7/16/12 at 11:53am
Thread Starter 

I did manage to get a few seconds of sound out of the USB DAC before it fell over and started popping up error messages. I think the problem may be the powered USB hub I've been using (I bought a second power supply from the eLinux list). I have got another hub here but it's a bit awkward physically to unplug it from the existing system and rewire it so it comes on simultaneously with the rpi.

 

I'm finding the whole thing pretty unrewarding, I've got a lot of other stuff here I can work on and get results. I've got at least 20 hours in the rpi with nothing but flaky behaviour to show for it plus I've bought 2 PSUs, a USB hub, various cables, keyboard, mouse, a new monitor and 2 SD cards. The more time goes by with nothing to show, the less likely I am to bother switching it on...

 

w

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post #25 of 65
7/16/12 at 12:27pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by wakibaki View Post

I did manage to get a few seconds of sound out of the USB DAC before it fell over and started popping up error messages. I think the problem may be the powered USB hub I've been using (I bought a second power supply from the eLinux list). I have got another hub here but it's a bit awkward physically to unplug it from the existing system and rewire it so it comes on simultaneously with the rpi.

 

I'm finding the whole thing pretty unrewarding, I've got a lot of other stuff here I can work on and get results. I've got at least 20 hours in the rpi with nothing but flaky behaviour to show for it plus I've bought 2 PSUs, a USB hub, various cables, keyboard, mouse, a new monitor and 2 SD cards. The more time goes by with nothing to show, the less likely I am to bother switching it on...

 

w

 

Is this in regard to the raspberry pi in general, or simply for it's use as a music source?

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post #26 of 65
7/16/12 at 4:36pm
Thread Starter 

I'm taking the problems involved in getting it up as a music server as representative of it as a whole. 

 

I was hoping maybe to use it to run my USB oscilloscope and signal generator and maybe as a silent recorder, my desktop's fan is really noisy. I don't need it for playback, there are numerous sources across 4 different rooms here all with hardwired ethernet.

 

I wrote my first program 45 years ago, it's not as though I don't know what I'm doing. I just don't have the energy to spend hours on a scattergun technique of trying every possible variation of setup until eventually it springs into life. I don't need some Linux guru telling me I haven't applied myself, I just want some straightforward instructions and then it works. I don't need to be re-inventing the wheel.

 

I was given to understand it had enough processing power to support HD video and gaming. I'm spending too much time just waiting to get back control of the mouse. Talking to it on the command line from another computer just isn't fun for me, it's work. I threw out an old Intel box with Linux I used to use as a gateway and webserver when I bought a modem router.

 

It could be I've got some hardware problems but I've already spent 4 or 5 times what the rpi cost on ancillaries and my appetite for spending more is diminishing rapidly

 

I don't really see it exciting the explosion of interest in programming the developers are hoping for. If it turns out that a new USB hub or maybe even power cable fixes things maybe I'll change my opinion. Maybe.

 

w

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post #27 of 65
7/16/12 at 5:29pm
Has anyone tried using this little guy as a video player? Someone told me it could handle 1080p content easily...
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post #28 of 65
7/20/12 at 3:23am

Well here is something I found, and since this is the D.I.Y.'ers area, I thought it might be of interest for those that have Pi's.

 

http://www.electronics-lab.com/blog/?tag=smps go to the centre of the page :-) and follow the link. It seems an interesting read and mod. The direct link is here: http://www.bitwizard.nl/wiki/index.php?title=Reducing_power_consumption_of_a_raspberry_Pi

 

and for interesting enclosures, here is another link:

http://forum.stmlabs.com/archive/index.php?thread-719-1.html
 

Let me know guys what you think :-)

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post #29 of 65
7/20/12 at 10:40am
Thread Starter 

Yesterday I downloaded Debian 'Wheezy' and loaded it onto my SD card. It's a big improvement over Squeeze, having a menu with a number of options on first boot. These include auto-resizing of partitions, disabling overscan to allow the desktop to fully occupy 1900*1080, locale selection, timezone setting and a few others. It also seems to run quicker all round, in my limited experience.

 

There are no music players in this distro, so I installed Audacity which I'm familiar with.

 

The DAC was detected and installed automatically, and I plugged in a USB stick with some MP3s on it.

 

The first problem was that the USB stick kept connecting and disconnecting. This caused the OS to pup up one window after another asking if I wanted to mount the drive on the filesystem. I managed to get a track onto the SD card and loaded it into Audacity. When I tried to play it I just got a gravelly sound with the track faintly in the background. Eventually I gave up and created a test tone to see if that got me any further. It played for about 2 seconds then the program hung solid. The light on the DAC keeps going on and off at irregular intervals.

 

This morning a new USB A to Micro B cable arrived. I tried booting with this in place but there was no improvement. The Ethernet port will not fire up unless one of the 2 USB hubs I have got is plugged in. The other hub just fires up into kernel panic.

 

I've now tried 2 different USB cables (one from the ModMyPi shop), 2 different PSUs (one from the eLinux verified hardware list), 2 different powered USB hubs and a wired mouse and keyboard and a wireless desktop.

 

I think I've done my due diligence, this afternoon I returned the rpi to RS marked as faulty for replacement.

 

More when I get the new one.

 

w

 

The low power mod looks interesting. smile.gif

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post #30 of 65
7/20/12 at 5:47pm

Hi wakibaki,

I have a suggestion for you, if you would like to try it out.

Once you get your new one in, if you have an old PSU lying around, then that is perfect.

Here are the steps, this is to make sure that everything will work ok.

Make two simple linear - only because they are easier on BOM, then you can make your own swithing or buy off eBay.

 

The 5v to be at least 2Amp or 3Amp, or for convinience, use the TO220 1.5A the L7805, not LM unless that is what you have, then it will be good for 1 Amp. That should be enough anyway for the usb ports, just...

Each USB channel needs at least 500mAh, as per spec or a little more, for USB rev 1.1 - 2.0.

 

Then also make a 3.3v.

This can be as little as 0.5A or 1A. This is due to powering the board only.

 

Then connect the power to the header pins.

 

Use the 12v from the 4 pin molex or diskette drive connector, either size molex connector will do, if going up to 2A.

More than that, use the larger Molex connector.

 

This way, you will know if it is the power, if it is, then you can just de-solder the onboard linear, and buy those switching ones :-) and you will also have two regulated power supplies boards ready for other experiments.

 

Once you get all that sorted, just add an external H.D.D. for extra storage ;-)

 

Another thing to check for, but now a little late, is the 5v rail on the USB. It should be between 4.75v and 5.25v, anything outside that range, and you will be having problems.

 

Now, as for your "powered" USB hub... have you ever checked the power supply rating for it?

 

I ask since most of the ones I have personally come across have a very small power adaptor ( or wall cube or whatever it is called in other parts of the world). It should be capable of at least 500mAh PER PORT.

I have seen adaptor included in packs that were 300mAh!! Much less than what the USB port actually provides...

Unless you do a design similar to what was published in Silicon Chip a few years ago... then you need to beef up your adaptor to match your hub.

 

p.s. I do not own yet a Pi, but I am contemplating on buying one soon in the next couple of months. Not to mention I will need to learn how to do the linux thing.

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