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Rocking The Rocking Raspberry Pi Challenge.. Part 8 Problems I am Facing With Wolfson Audio Card...

saurocksall

Hi Guys, Sorry for the delay My exams are going on currently, so I was busy in them and had no time to write the blog, however I took time to work on the project,

In this post I will discuss about some problems I am facing with the Wolfson Audio Card.. If any one out there can help me please help me out..

 

So Here it goes..

 

First I tried to download the Image file provided by  Wolfson, it took around 15 hours to download, and after I unzipped the file size was bigger than the size of my memory card, I was depressed and angry because of this, So I searched and searched the internet for a solution for this and found ragnar.jensen's Image file which was smaller and I downloaded and installed on my card..

 

After which I am facing these problems :


1). Raspberry pi hangs allot, and gets over heated..


2).Wi-Pi and other USB devices don't work properly, works for some time and then stops completely and then system freezes..


3). When I remove and replace any USB device, Raspberry pi gets restarted, this is strange !!!


4). VLC Media player hangs allot, and shows error in audio output..


5). And the most interesting one is now I can't even get audio output form the Pi's audio jack !!!


The competition is near its end and I am now really far behind because of Wolfson Audio card, I am not a software person, but know the basic stuff, But unlike the PiFace CAD Wolfson Audio card has almost no support and tutorials etc. for making it easy to use, I agree that it is a fine piece of hardware but if it not easy to use its not worth any thing, the Element14 team should really need to focus on to provide some good documentation on how to use it, with some good examples like the PiFace People made, Something like that will be really helpful, and please make a smaller image file for it, or better make it install-able by apt-get or something..


If some one has the solutions to my problems please help me out, I will be really thank full to you guys...

Parents

  • Hi Saurabh,

     

    after I unzipped the file size was bigger than the size of my memory card

     

    • What is the size of your memory card ?
    • What class is your memory card?
    • What image are you running on your memory card, if not the Wolfson one ?

     

    If the SD Card is less than a Class 6 then that's a problem which needs to be fixed, Christian tells me you were sent an 8gByte SD Card with NOOBS on it, that should be enough to have the Wolfson Audio Card image written to it (are you using Win32Imager as stated in the User Manual ? Wolfson Raspberry Pi Soundcard Manual (.IMG install) V1.1).

     

    Just to state the obvious you do not directly copy the .img file you download to the SD Card.

     

     

    Raspberry pi hangs allot, and gets over heated..

     

    You will probably find that if you get a new SD Card with a higher Class rating that the majority of your crashes will stop or you will have different problems.

     

    The default Wolfson SD Card Image that you can download from element14 overclocks the Raspberry Pi by default, so you could prevent that if you're using it by just removing those lines from the config.txt (overclock details here: RPiconfig - eLinux.org or here How to Overclock Your Raspberry Pi - Make Tech Easier ).

     

    Also it could be that your power supply isn't up to task; don't run it from a USB port on your computer, use a standalone power supply rated to at least 1Amp, preferably 2Amp.

     

    Failing that, put a heatsink on it. Even if its a few copper coins (I used to do that with my Playstation 2 slimline as a heatsink).

    Wi-Pi and other USB devices don't work properly, works for some time and then stops completely and then system freezes..

     

    This will be related to your SD Card and power as stated above.

     

    When I remove and replace any USB device, Raspberry pi gets restarted, this is strange !!!

     

    This is normal behavior, the Raspberry Pi does not handle USB very well and the Ethernet adapter shares the same chip. My experience has been that it reboots if it is a device that is power hungry (though not out of specification for the device, just something like a WiFi adapter).

     

    VLC Media player hangs allot, and shows error in audio output..

    It would help to copy and paste the errors into a quote on your blog post, but I suspect that this is related to the above issues, namely which SD Card image you're running and the Class of the SD Card.

     

    And the most interesting one is now I can't even get audio output form the Pi's audio jack !!!

    This could be down to any multitude of reasons, it makes sense that if you've got the Wolfson Audio Card and you've used a 'use case' it will have switched the audio output to your Wolfson Audio Card and that this would have to be changed. What the original settings are? I'm not certain. Typically it's easier to just wipe the SD Card and start again.

     

     

    Wolfson Audio card has almost no support and tutorials etc. for making it easy to use

     

    I understand it's my own blog post, but if you are just using Raspbian then the steps I point out here: Can you hear the Wolf(son) calling? Setting up and using the Wolfson Audio Card are relatively straight forward.

     

    The user manual is also a helpful resource to read thoroughly: Wolfson Raspberry Pi Soundcard Manual (.IMG install) V1.1.

     

    Frankly it sounds like the SD Card you're using is what is mainly hindering you if the Class rating is below 6. If you're having problems downloading SD Card images in future, let me know and I'll look at providing a mirror for the file(s) temporarily.

  • in reply to cstanton

    Hi Christopher,

     

    Thanks for your help, I checked the power supply it is working find its already 5 volts 2 amps supply, I also tried another supply but the same problems occur, Over heating still is one of the problems, even though i have heat sinks on my PI, you ca see that in this image..

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    I am running the image file made by ragnar.jensen for the Wolfson pi..

    Raspberry Pi works fine without the Wolfson audio card and the USB problem is because of the Wolfson card only... I was able to play music with VLC media player out of the pi's audio jack but that was with NOOBS installed Raspbian on anther card..

    The NOOBS SD card we received was a 8 GB class 4 card i think its the main reason for the problem, now i need to buy a new card image  that is a problem as i have only a few days left for the challenge to end, what should I do now ??

     

    VLC  media player installed on the card with Wolfson pi image installed gives error " Audio output failed: The audio device "default" could not be used: No such device. "

     

    Please help me....

  • in reply to saurocksall

    Hi Saurabh,

     

    I think VLC lag is to be expected (or, more likely) if the video is of high bitrate or of particular encodings maybe. Could you try a low-res, small file that you store on the SD card, not on USB stick or network? If that still causes lots of lag, try it on a USB stick?

     

    The Wolfson Pi card has no interaction with USB, but for now just don't unplug any USB device, to work around this.

     

    That then leaves the issue of "audio output failed" using VLC. Does that occur without the Wolfson pi card installed?  Did you try it with the

    Wolfson pi card plugged in? I'm still concerned that you're using an image that is not greatly tested (no disrespect to Ragnar's image - this should

    be fine in theory), but since you have an 8GB card, is there no official image that supports the Wolfson card?

  • in reply to shabaz

    Hi Shabaz,

     

    There is an official image but it is a 4.5 GB download and after unzipping it exceeds the size of a 8 GB card..

    and the video file i tried  to play was a mp4 file, resolution was 640 * 360, bit rate was 447 kbps, 25 frames a second..

  • in reply to saurocksall

    Hi Saurabh,

     

    I see. What is the URL of the 4.5GB image? Are you unzipping on a Windows PC or something else? Also, I see someone has instructions to cross-compile, but even experienced software people may not want to go down that road if there is an alternative. Saurabh, if you have many hours to spare :-( there is the native compile method here Instructions for compiling the wolfson audio card kernel drivers and supported use cases  that you could try on the most recent Raspbian image from Raspberrypi.org. I know it's not ideal since it will kill a lot of time :-( ...

    I too will try it on the latest raspbian that I can download (I may as well exercise the RPI CPU while I do other stuff) to see if the instructions work ok on the latest image, and can paste the log of the steps I took, so you can repeat it. However I don't have a Wolfson Pi card to confirm that aspect of functionality.

Comment Children
  • in reply to saurocksall

    Hi Saurabh,

     

    Just to let you know, the process to compile the kernel natively on the RPI will take an extremely long time. I started last night, and 12 hours later it is still building. This is without any overclocking or other parameter changes.

  • in reply to shabaz

    Hi Shabaz,

     

    Thanks for your efforts, I really appreciate them. I am not a software guy so it is really tough thing for me, have you checked out ragnar.jensen's image file ??

  • in reply to saurocksall

    Hi Saurabh,

     

    I just took a look at Ragnar's build mentioned in the comments here and it looks good as far as I can tell. And it looks like he has built it on the latest Raspbian too, so this should work.

    My build finally completed it, and my RPI boots up fine. This is without the wolfson card, I don't have it. I have placed my built files here.

    If you wish to use these built files, note they will only work on the Raspbian that is currently downloadable, I used

     

    NOOBS

     

    Version: 1.3.4

     

    Release date: 2014-01-07

    Approx 1.3Gbyte download (.zip file)

     

    First, make a backup to your PC of anything important that is on your SD card!! If these instructions fail, at worst case you'll need to re-create your SD card from the NOOBS file that you will download - so not a major issue, as long as any important files are backed up.

     

    Grab the file mentioned from github. After gunzip, and un-tarring (type gunzip rpi.tar.gz  followed by tar xvf rpi.tar) it will contain:

     

    pi@raspberrypi:/mnt/share/rpi$ ls -altr
total 64
-rwxr-xr-x 1 pi   pi    633 Apr 27 14:03 SPDIF_record.sh
-rwxr-xr-x 1 pi   pi    537 Apr 27 14:03 SPDIF_playback.sh
-rwxr-xr-x 1 pi   pi   1319 Apr 27 14:03 Reset_paths.sh
-rwxr-xr-x 1 pi   pi    730 Apr 27 14:03 Record_from_lineIn.sh
-rwxr-xr-x 1 pi   pi    555 Apr 27 14:03 Record_from_Headset.sh
-rwxr-xr-x 1 pi   pi    588 Apr 27 14:03 Record_from_DMIC.sh
-rwxr-xr-x 1 pi   pi    714 Apr 27 14:03 Playback_to_Speakers.sh
-rwxr-xr-x 1 pi   pi    393 Apr 27 14:03 Playback_to_Lineout.sh
-rwxr-xr-x 1 pi   pi    793 Apr 27 14:03 Playback_to_Headset.sh
-rwxr-xr-x 1 pi   pi    510 Apr 27 14:03 debug_info.sh
-rw-r--r-- 1 pi   pi    272 Apr 27 14:03 .asoundrc
-rw-r--r-- 1 pi   pi   2009 Apr 27 14:03 hd_tracks.png
drwxr-xr-x 2 pi   pi   4096 Apr 27 14:06 rpi_wlf_3.10_beta
drwxr-xr-x 3 pi   pi   4096 Apr 27 14:19 compiled
drwxr-xr-x 4 pi   pi   4096 Apr 27 14:20 .
drwxrwxrwx 6 root root 4096 Apr 27  2014 ..
pi@raspberrypi:/mnt/share/rpi$

    Everything above will be in the /home/pi/rpi folder, but move it to /home/pi, i.e. you should see /home/pi/SPDIF_record.sh for example.

     

    The folder called 'compiled' contains:

    pi@raspberrypi:/mnt/share/rpi/compiled$ ls -altr
total 6616
drwxr-xr-x 4 root root    4096 Apr 27 14:17 lib
drwxr-xr-x 3 pi   pi      4096 Apr 27 14:19 .
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 6749088 Apr 27 14:19 kernel.img
drwxr-xr-x 4 pi   pi      4096 Apr 27 14:20 ..

    The lib folder contains everything that should be copied to /lib on your RPI

    the kernel.img needs to be copied to /boot (make a backup of the current kernel.img that is there).

    To do that, from the compiled folder, type: "sudo cp -R lib /"

    That will copy the lib folder contents. Then, type

    sudo mv /boot/kernel.img /boot/kernel.img.backup
sudo cp kernel.img /boot/kernel.img

     

    Hopefully that will work, but you may have to play around a bit in case I made a mistake in these instructions.

     

    If it messes up, you'll need to re-create your SD card again, which of course does not take a long time, but make sure you've got nothing on your SD card that is not backed up if you need it.

  • in reply to saurocksall

    Hi Saurabh,

     

    One last thing, I noticed on the 'net people mention omxplayer as being hardware accelerated, whereas (say) mplayer is not. With mplayer, a 720p video will be very sluggish.

    There is this post which describes how VLC can be hardware accel enabled: http://intensecode.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/tutorial-vlc-with-hardware-acceleration.html

     

    I just don't know for sure if they version you're using is hardware enabled or not (and no idea if it comes with the raspbian image or not). It may be worth checking around, or as an alternative use omxplayer for now, since that is definitely hardware-accelerated.