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  • Author Author: saurocksall
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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...

  • 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.

  • 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 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 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 shabaz

    Hi Shabaz,

     

    Thanks for the suggestions, I checked the power supply it is working fine, I even tried a different supply which is my Nokia 5 volt 1300 mA charger still the same problem was there.

    The card I was using was the same NOOBS 8 GB cerd supplied by Element14 for the challenge, however I flashed a new card of same type bur still no successes...

     

    Then I removed the Wolfson Audio card and its all working now, but still the VLC media player is lagging and is unable to play videos, as soon as I try to play a video the VLC media player crashes..

     

    Do you know any solutions to this ?? Please respond ASAP I have only a few days left...