Raspberry Pi 400 Audio Issue Solved

Somehow, I expected the problem to be solved before the great XMAS sales. Well, in this case, it was just before, or in the country I live, too late.

I am posting this message on December 5, also known as Sinterklaas day. In The Netherlands, this is when kids get their gifts. Heiligabend (Dec.24) or Boxing day, don't mean anything over here in the Low Lands. So, what I am writing about was probably too late for the Dutch market.

Anyway, the Raspberry Pi Foundation published a new version of Raspberry Pi OS, in which they replaced ALSA with PulseAudio. PulseAudio works directly with Bluetooth, solving all the problems I complained about before.

On part, the complaining might have been on my own laziness too. I wrote about installing PulseAudio and that it would be working so so. In particular volume control from the desktop would not work. More on that later.

So, I did the typical apt update and apt full-upgrade. Indeed, now PulseAudio is running.

Without further thinking, I tried to use, just as a newby, the speaker icon in the panel to control the audio volume, without any luck. However, this is me, using a customize panel, so everything is locked in place from the previous of the OS. At closer inspection, the panel item I was using was still ALSA.

After removing the "Volume Control (ALSA/BT)" panel item and adding the "Volume Control (PulseAudio)" item, the problem was finally solved.

With the audio problem solved, I can highly recommend the Raspberry Pi 400 as a desktop PC replacement for non-gaming use.

By now, not only have a written some texts and programs on the RPi400, I also designed (CAD) a few parts and prepared (slize) those for 3D-printing, all with just the RPi400.

Not having used the GPIO yet, I can report the Arduino working perfectly with a RPi400. More on this in posts to come.

Raspberry Pi 400 as Desktop Replacement

The audio issues from the former posts set aside, after some time using the RPi400 I came to the conclusion that is can be a pretty good desktop replacement for some regular stuff.

First to mention, I am not a gamer, not at all. My use of computers is somewhere between doing online social media things, regular office work and programming.

Besides watching videos, which requires audio, bringing us back to the audio issue, all other of my online needs are served fine by the RPi400.

On audio, I found a USB audio dongle which does play audio fine. However, the alsamixer is not able to control this particular device, therefore, the audio volume cannot be adjusted from the OS. My speaker has got a volume potentiometer, therefore, this is not a big deal in my daily life. However, it is not a solution for getting decent Bluetooth support.

The keyboard is good, although it appears to be a little bit smaller than others, which it is not. However, for unknown reasons, sometimes a keystroke is not recognized, in particular lighter keystrokes. From my experience, I create more typos than I used to with other keyboards. The solution that I found is stronger hammering on the keys, which however slow me down a little bit. Anyway, this is something I can live with and learn to adapt to.

The mouse is very lightweight. In the beginning that felt strange or even cheap. However, this strange feeling, in my view, came from the original mouse sensitivity settings in the GUI (openbox). In the "Preferences" menu, under "Keyboard and Mouse", I reduced the "Acceleration" from 5.0 to somewhere between 2.0 and 3.0. With less acceleration, the mouse feels a lot more comfortable to me. Also, the lack of weight does not play a role any longer, at least to my taste.

My RPi400 is configure to boot from USB. I am not repeating the method here, it can be found easily with any internet search engine. My choice was a SSD in a USB3 case. This gives a real speed boost over the SD-card as mass storage. Further, it allows for a lot more storage than on an SD-card.

Another advantage of an SSD is the safety of your data, due to the controller built in an SSD drive.

If I recommend any change or addition to a RPi400, this would be the one, get a USB3 SSD drive.

Networking works fine in principle. 

Nothing to report about Ethernet, it just works.

WiFi, however, suffers a little bit from the design of the RPi400. Don't get me wrong, it does work, however, there is an issue worth to mention. The SoC is cooled by a big aluminium plate, which sits under essentially the entirety of the keyboard. In terms is passive cooling, this is excellent! However, this also provides a decent shield for the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz WiFi signals. My RPi3B+ in a plastic case, receives my WiFi access point a lot better than the RPi400 in the exact same place on my desk. Network throughput is therefore lower with the RPi400. In case I am running a system upgrade, I therefore have an Ethernet cable handy, so that in case, I can full bandwidth if needed.

I am a longtime Linux user. Therefore, I am used to a certain set of tools. Up to know, I was able to find everything I needed in the repositories for  Raspberry Pi OS (raspian buster).

For reasons of accessibility of RPi specific tools, such as Bookshelf and Mathematica, I opted for the 32-bit version of the OS. 

One of the first tools I installed in addition to the preinstalled programs was synaptic. This package manager give an easy overview of what is available and what is already installed. It makes it very easy to add applications you will find helpful in your daily computing routine.

While my RPi400 suffices my present needs, in the future it is very likely that it will be extended by means of a powered USB3 hub, e.g. for card-readers, webcams, DVD-RW drives, etc.

Raspberry Pi 400 audio issues update

Bluetooth remains still unsolved beyond what I was writing earlier.

In order to get some sort of audio output, I changed back to the only HDMI monitor having speakers in my possession. After the removal of pulseaudio (apt remove pulseaudio), the monitor is perfectly fine to use for sound playback, however, the audio from those tiny speakers is pretty poor. I guess, it is what it is.

Hopefully the Raspberry Pi Foundation will solve the Bluetooth issues with the RPi400 as soon as possible.

Raspberry Pi 400 audio problems - USB not the solution

In my earlier post, I as speculating if the use of a USB sound card would be a possible solution to the audio problems of the Raspberry Pi 400.

Well, it is not!

The audio was playing, however, at a terrible quality, not worth further talking about.

While the RPi400 was never meant to be used in my amateur radio setting, it now shows clearly to not be suitable for such use at all. The only thing still untested would be SDR devices such as the SDR-Play RSP1A.

Seen that a simple audio dongle does not work well, I have serious doubts about any of the SDRs being better supported,

If the Raspberry Pi Foundation is reading, please consider adding an AV jack to a future version of the RPi400. The form-factor of the device is excellent, having it performing similar to a RPi3B+ in respect to audio would make this device usable for not just the ham radio community but also so many more folks looking for some audio abilities of a device.

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.

Connecting JBL Flip 4 Speaker to a Chromebook

If you follow my other blog, you might know that I lately obtained a pair of JBL Flip 4 speakers. There were a few drivers behind that decision, first of all the sublime sound quality and secondly that a pair can form a stereo pair. While that was all find with my phone, my Chromebooks, while connecting, had troubles accepting the devices as audio sinks.

For convenience, I gave those things names, as this is possible in the JBL Connect App on Android. Maybe that was the cause of all troubles, I don't know.
The speakers, while working fine, refused to present the settings option on the JBL Connect App at some stage. Also, it turned out to be a hit and miss game when connecting the speakers up into a stereo pair.

So, I decided to reset the speakers to factory setting. This is done by pressing the "+" and "play" bottom, while the speaker is powered on, until the speaker powers off.
Of course, this removed my fancy naming scheme. Well, so be it!

As a result, the speakers are now recognized by my Chromebooks.
So, If you have trouble connecting your JBL speaker to a Chromebook, you might want to try to reset your speaker to factory settings.

As a side remark, you will still need your phone to setup stereo mode. Once that is done, you can connect with the Chromebook and enjoy a clean and neat stereo stage setup by really small Bluetooth speakers.

The Hackintosh a PC able to run Apple's OS-X

A hackintosh, in general, is a PC which is able to run Apple's OS-X. The hardware for such a PC is absolutely crucial, since the Intel based Macintosh computers are very specific. Of course, those PCs may equally run MS Windows, Linux, FreeBSD, OpenIndiana, Solaris x86, etc. Some of the OS' I just mentioned are equally critical in terms of the hardware that can be used for such a computer.
All in all, this post focuses on OS-X.

To the time I started playing with OS-X, all the information I used was coming from InsanelyMac. Lists of compatible hardware, user compatibility reports, recipes how to put things together and a lot more. Still today, this site is very useful!


The early stages

I happen to live relatively close to a huge electronics retail store. So I took my printed compatibility list and went shopping along the shelves.

The PC I decided to buy was a no-name with the following components.
Motherboard: foxconn G31MX
CPU: Core 2 quad Q6600 2.4GHz
RAM: 1x takeMS 2GB DDR2 800MHz
Graphics: Nvidia GeForce 8400
HDD: Samsung 320GB SATA (HD322HJ)
WLAN: sitecom WL-169 v1 001 (MacOS 10.5 driver available from sitecom)
Keyboard: standard USB
Mouse: standard USB

This PC came with a MS Windows Vista license. It was used with many different OS' with good results. In the course of time, the graphics card was replaces for a passively cooled "Asus EN8400GS silent". The 320GB HDD made place for a 750GB Western Digital (WD7500AAVS).


The first purpose built Hackintosh

resulted in a recipe. I believe it was publish by someone from berlios.de, but I am not sure about... it has been a while, as you will see on the hardware.

The second system was based built as a hackintosh, following one of the early build guides.
Motherboard: P5K-VM
CPU: Core 2 duo E4600 2.4GHz
RAM: 2x Kingston 2GB DDR2 800MHz
Graphics: PCI NVIDIA GeForce 8400 256MB
HDD: Seagate 250GB SATA (HD250HJ)
WLAN: Sweex USB Wireless LAN adapter LW053 (Ralink RT2671)
Case: Antec NSK1380 Cube Case (includes 350W PSU)
Keyboad & Mouse: Logitech S530 MAC

This thing was upgraded to OS-X 10.6.8 Snow Leopard w/o any problems.
In the mean time, I upgraded the system with a new HDD (WDC WD5000AAKS-00A7B0) and a new Graphics adapter (MSI GT-210 silent with 1024MB).


Genuine Modern Hackintosh

We are now looking at the more recent developments, i.e. like half a year ago. This build was inspired by one of tonymacx86's build guides and focused on Intel's Ivy Bridge processor. Said web-site also provides a guide for installing 10.6. Snow Leopard from the original install DVD (which I happened to have bought for €29.- at the time), search for "iBoot Ivy".

The hardware followed a "buyer's guide" of the site mentioned above.
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-Z77N-WiFi (mITX)
CPU: Core i5-3570K quad core (best bang for the buck)
CPU cooler: Antec Kühler H2O 620
RAM: 2x Corsair Vengeance 4GB DDR3 1600MB
Graphics: Intel HD4000 (integrated)
HDD: Seagate Barracuda 1TB SATA3 (ST1000DM003)
WLAN: TP-Link Wireless N PCIe card (TL-WDN4800)
Bluetooth: Intel Centrino Wireless-N 2230 (provided with the mobo)
Optical drive: SamsungSH-224BB (SATA)
USB-hub: Sitecom CN-050 v1 002
Case: Bitefenix Prodigy polar white
PSU: Antec VP350P
Keyboard: Apple wired A1234
Mouse: Logitech M100

Everything was running spot on. However, I decided to use an additional graphics card, in place of the HD4000, hence, I needed the sole PCIs slot. The graphics card I am using in this system is an fanless ASUS GT-610 2GB (GT610-SL-2GD3-L), which has genuine support in OS-X 10.8.3.
However, now I lack WiFi. The GA-Z77N-WiFi comes with an Intel WiFi/Bluetooth combi half mini PCIe card. Only the Bluetooth part of this device is supported by OS-X. Hence, I swapped said card with an Atheros AR5BHB92 (very cheap on ebay presently), which works like a charm! For Bluetooth, I took a random old thumb-drive (Sitecom CN-500).

At some stage, I decided a second internal HDD would do the system good, in particular when used for automated backups. The local electronics store had external USB3 disk drive on sale, I can't recall what the brand was. At home, the thing was dismantled, the drive inside was a Toshiba MQ01ABD100 (2.5in 1TB), which now lives happily in my Bitfenix Prodigy, wired to a SATA2 header.

Note, this particular combination of mobo and CPU allows for overclocking to spectacular specs, mind your cooling!

I believe that this PC comes closest to an iMac13,2 ... however, could also be an iMac13,1 ... not sure. Personally, I run this Hackintosh as an iMac13,2 w/o any issues.


Low power Hackintosh on a budget

For a system on a budget, again, we are looking at Ivy Bridge setups, as proposed by tonymacx86.
Motherboard: GigabyteGA-H77N-WiFi
CPU: Core i3-3225 dual core
RAM: 2x Crucial Ballistix Elite 4GB 1600MHz
HDD:  Seagate Barracuda 1TB SATA3 (ST1000DM003)
Graphics: HD4000 (integrated)
Optical drive: SamsungSH-224BB (SATA)
Case: Spire PowerCube 210 (includes a 300W PSU)
WiFi: Broadcom BCM94322HML (replacing the onboard Intel card)
Bluetooth: Sitecom CN-516
Keyboard & Mouse: Logitech K400r

This particular CPU was/is actually used in one of the latest iMacs. The definition of this particular PC comes closest to the iMac13,1. However, it seems as a Hackintosh, this computer may be closer to an iMac13,2.


Sounds gooood

For the perfect sound you might consider using really good speakers. Although it may seem a little overdone, I went for USB studio monitors and other USB studio equipment.

For audio I/O I am using a Behringer's PODCASTUDIO consisting of a UCA222 USB sound interface, HPM1000 broadcast headphones, a xenyx 502 audio mixer, an ultravoice XM8500 microphone and all required cables. The possibilities with this setup are endless. I used it for skype and surprised my contacts with ultra crisp audio.

The experience with the SAMSON StudioDock 3i monitors is great! They have a iPod dock not only to play music from but also to connect the iPod to iTunes (when installed on the PC). The SAMSON monitor's sound-interface can also be used as an AUDIO IN.
One feature of the StudioDock monitors is annoying, the power-switch is of the back of the right speaker.
Another thing which is a little odd. Active studio monitors draw a lot of power, that's known. So, when putting the PC to sleep, one might also like to switch off the monitors. However, in this particular order, the PC goes to sleep and when switching off the monitors, a USB event is created waking the PC up. Hence, always switch the monitors off first! On the positive, it is sufficient to switch on the monitors in order to wake up the PC... yep, that really works!

As an alternative to the SAMSON StudioDock monitor, I also used ALESIS M1Active 320USB monitors. Those are a little bit smaller and have grills over all speakers, which is great for portable action. The power-switch is incorporated with the volume potentiometer at the front of the right box, which is great! The sound is less "studio", i.e. linear, to me. This will actually make those active USB monitors more popular for media consumption, mind you, studio monitor are designed to be unforgiving, so that the producer can easily spot imperfection in the audio production.


Webcams

This is a non-trivial topic.

Previously, i.e. years ago, the only camera of choice for me was Microsoft's Xbox Live Vision. The manual focus CCD (!) webcam does the job, however develops quite some heat.

Lately I obtained a Logitech HD Webcam C615. This little beast not only has got autofocus, Logitech provides a tool for OS-X which enable full manual control over the camera settings. The C615 stays at relatively low temperatures.




General comments

Some of the builds above are very cramped in space. Cable management is essential under such condition.

The off-the-shelf foxconn box came with really nicely managed cables, nothing had to be done. OK, I replaced the SATA cable with one that had a 90 degree connector, but that was all I did cable-wise.

The Bitfenix Prodigy allows for hiding cables in places where there is no airflow, brilliant case.

The two other builds are quite a different story. Both cases are really small. The provided PSU are purpose build to fit the case, leaving very little space to play with.
In the of the budget hackintosh, I decided to mount the HDD vertically on the side in order to improve the air-flow about all components.
In order to optimize your cabling and air-flow, try to minimize a) air-flow resistance b) air-flow short-cuts and c) hot air loops.

You may have noticed that I mentioned the "Mac type" or identifier a couple of times. Here a the web-page that will help you out finding the type you will need for your build:
http://www.everymac.com/systems/by_processor/