Raspberry Pi 400 (audio issues)

So, the RPi400 came in. First of all, is it worth the money? Yes it is. The device itself has a good, i.e. reasonable, weight to it, thanks to the internal heat-sink. The keys feel very good and typing is on those is a pleasure. The mouse, meeeeh, well, feels a bit cheap, works well though. In my view, the cheap feel of the mouse comes from its lack of weight. Reducing the mouse acceleration to 3 already helped a lot. I might be temped to open the mouse up and add some weight to it, e.g. by gluing steel nuts to the inside of the case.

I love the size of the device, just perfect. Have a look at my before (Raspberry Pi 3B+) and after setup.

The old and the new

The photographs show my old RPi3B+ setup with a 3.5" external mechanical 320GB USB2 HDD and the RPi400 with a 128GB Kingston SSD in a USB3 enclosure.

The RPi400, having USB3 ports, can benefit from the SSD in a USB3 enclosure. Further, the RPi400 can boot from USB devices. Therefore, the speed of the combination is really close to a decent desktop PC. 

Now, I am appear to be full of praise for the new device. However, beyond the disappointment with the mouse, there is something else which is close to being a deal breaker, at least when running Raspberry Pi OS. That deal breaker being the difficulties of connecting audio output devices, aka speakers.

The RPi400 does not have an analog AV output, which all the other Raspberry Pis have. Hence, there is not way of connecting a wired audio connection, e.g. active speakers, to the RPi400. Lets forget about HDMI for a minute... Well, no problem, you may think, the RPi400 got Bluetooth... RIGHT! Yes, it got Bluetooth, however, the implementation in Raspberry Pi OS does not connect to BT audio sinks as easily.

It took me the better part of the evening, despite the posts about the issue I found on divers fora, to get a BT speaker connected. And even then, the result is less than perfect. My way is sufficiently satisfying to me, however, this might not be the case for someone expecting an OOB experience.

Here is what I had to do to get to the point of semi-happiness:

1. in a terminal type: sudo apt install pulseaudio-bluetooth-module
2. add "Volume Control" to the TaskBar, next to "Volume Control (ALSA/BT)" 

Item 1 will add all the necessary programs and drivers to the system.

Item 2 will give you control over the volume of the audio played out. Somehow, the ALSA/BT panel item does no longer function with BT devices, however, it is necessary to select a BT device as an audio sink. Controlling the volume itself is now done with the 'other' volume control icon, but not in a way that is desirable... Right click on the icon and " Launch Mixer". This will open a terminal with alsamixer. While this works, perfect it is not.

A possible solution could be using a different OS. However, this comes with some drawbacks itself. Raspberry Pi OS is optimized for the hardware and comes with some very interesting software packages, e.g. Mathematica or the RPi Bookshelf.

Another solution would be to add a USB sound card to the mix. However, the RPi400 only having 3 available USB ports, of which one might be used for the mouse and another one for the USB-boot-device, there isn't a lot of wiggle room, unless adding a USB-hub. 

In the near future, I will have a look at other operation systems on the RPi400. One of my present favorites might be Ubuntu Mate 20.10.