AudioInjector Zero prevents boot. HELP needed!

Hello everyone from Spain. A couple of weeks ago I discovered this amazing project, so I wanted to build a custom Zynthian.

First I tested on a RPI3 (RPI4 soon) with built-in audio and HDMI. Everything worked ok.

But now I’m trying to use the AudioInjector Zero soundcard. I’ve spent hours with no luck.

I’m using just the Raspberry 3 with the AudioInjector Zero hat, first setting AudioInjector in the WebConf, and following the AudioInjector instructions on Github.

My conclusions:

-Setting AudioInjector in Webconf and rebooting causes Zynthian not loading. I can’t access Webconf, SSH or even ping.

  • Setting Dummy audio or Custom Audio and rebooting allow me to access Webconf and SSH (With “ERROR” and the IP con screen, but I don’t know if it’s related). But when I add the line dtoverlay=audioinjector-wm8731-audio in /boot/config.txt happens the same as above.

Even the green light on the RPI turns off.

If I disconnect the AudioInjector soundcard and reboot I can access Webconf again (with the ERROR message on screen).

Please, help! I’ve spent hours and hours and I don’t know what else I can do.

PS:
I’m astonished by this project and this community. Thank you everyone for making things like this possible and for your help.

Mike.

Yes the nastiest thing that can happen to a zynth is to put a big jack error right in the middle of the start up routine because EVERYTHING relies on establishing that…

can you get an ssh console… ?
https://wiki.zynthian.org/index.php/Accessing_Zynthian_from_your_computer

Opening Synth Engine Native GUIs on your Computer

With an ssh terminal we can
1/ stop the zynthian start up process ( systemctl stop zynthian zynthian-webconf)
2/ start up the zynthian process in the console so we can see error messages (cd /zynthian/zynthian-ui; python3 zynthian_gui.py)
and
3/ check the sound card setting… aplay -L etc.

I have run several zynth’s with audioinjector zeroes so we should be able to fix it assuming the cards ok…

Finally I made it work!

I burned the IMG again. Set built-in audio and HDMI in WebConf. Followed the instructions for AudioInjector on Github. Then shutdown and mount the soundcard hat, and selected AudioInjector. Rebooted and everything worked fine.

Now I have to test audio input, then with a 3,5 screen and the encoders.

Following your directions (cd /zynthian/zynthian-ui; python3 zynthian_gui.py) I can open the GUI from SSH. But when something is wrong (audio, display… ) it won’t start the GUI. How do you see the log for debugging when Zynthian can’t start?

Thank you a lot for your help @wyleu . I’m a musician and some kind of tech geek, and this is one of the best inventions I’ve seen!

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Don’t worry there are plenty of electronics and computer people round here whohave similar uncertainties on the subjects of scales & modes…

You should see the (rather exhaustive) error messages on the command line when yu attempt to stat with python3 zynthian_gui.py…

This is a (working) zynth starting up …

I then used control C to stop the running zynth and used aplay -l to list the devices …

THis machine is set up to use the onboard sound …

image

If you have a start up failure you should get lots of messages that describe the reason for failure… and the aplay command should show you what devices alsa ( a much more hardware part of the audio chain that talks to jack…)

If doing this kind of debugging then remember to stop the Zynthian service so that it doesn’t impact your testing:

systemctl stop zynthian

I tried that yesterday, I noticed that messages on the command line. And being able to see the GUI on the computer is like some kind of sorcery.

Thank you!

not so much sorcery as as part of the X Windows system. A computer can seemlessly run on one machine and display it’s results on another…

This is all the side effect of the ‘-x’ on the line ssh -x root@zynthian.local… If you leave it out it will run locally on the GUI…

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