Dummies Guide to Pi2AES! Throw away your PC or laptop.

New hardware sometimes needs a new operating system, if it isn’t booting you’ll have to wait until they update their image with a newer version of raspbian or whatever they use. For a dedicated music purposed Pi it’s probably better to stick with 1-2GB models, they’re cheaper and there’s no advantage to having more memory that isn’t being used.

 

Maybe you can try the beta 64 bit raspian that they also announced?

 

But these cables are not outliers. Canare connectors and Blue Jeans Cable are well known and popular. You should expect customers to be using these larger plugs (which has already happened here, and this is not a large forum). Therefore I vote for a larger hole. Cracking shouldn't be an issue because there should be no stress on the plastic at this location.

 

we have increased the opening for the RCA plug. Unfortunately that change won’t take affect until the current run of cases is exhausted.

 

I also have this issue with the HDMI connector preventing proper contact due to the case, will this issue be addressed in the upcoming change as well?

 

@Michael Kelly what about the Christmas lights issue?

 

That is the first I heard about the HDMI. But, I can add it to the change list. Do you have some idea of the amount it would need to grow?

 

That is fixed in the design of the board itself. Although I could certainly change the resistor values to dim the lights, in a well lit room they might be too dim. I think the electrical tape over the case or the lights themselves is the only realistic answer.

We gave no plans to add a more sophisticated LED controller, thus increasing the cost and incurring a software requirement to control them. Somethings sound simple in concept, but are more challenging in execution.

Sorry!

 

What about a free Santa? Lol.

Thanks for the response, and I agree with it.

 

I use LightDims on power LEDs in my home. https://www.lightdims.com/store.htm

 

I'm not sure it could be solved easily by widening the hole as much as a thinner plate, I can flex the panel enough for it to make a connection but then as it relaxes it pries out the cable. Might just be my cable not having a long enough connector, who knows. I'm ok with running it without the panel installed.

 

Hello from Kansas. I have been lurking on this thread and am now the happy owner of a Pi2AES. My plan is to try both Volumio and Mo0de. To that end I have Volumio installed and it is running very well. The difference from my laptop is stunning in a good way. Next I have tried to get Mo0de to run in comparison.

Without changing any equipment or cable connections, I flashed the Mo0de iso and got it to boot up. My understanding is that I should use the Hifiberry Digi+Pro as the I2S selection. After rebooting, I noticed that the red LED on the pi2AES was not illuminated. I decided to play a file. The red LED came on but Cambridge DacMagic did not output a signal to my amplifier. The web interface seem to show that the file was playing.

After some restarts I gave up and put the Volumio card back in. The red LED is always on whether I have a file playing or not with Volumio. So I am thinking I have missed some setting with the Mo0de install. Like most beginners I don't know what I don't know. I am using the same BNC connection for Volumio and Mo0de.

Any suggestions? Thank you in advance.

 

The red LED comes on when you play a file that is 44.1 Khz or some multiple of that. Yellow LED comes on when the file is a multiple of 48Khz. Volumio plays a 44.1 Khz start up sound and the leaves the red LED on until you were to play a 48Khz file. Moode does not play anything at startup.

 

Thanks for the information on how the LEDs work. Any idea why my Cambridge Dac Magic is not able to output with Mo0de when it works with Volumio? Is there a setting that needs to be addressed?

 

I think I had something similar happen once, ever since that incident Moode (6.4.2) worked reliably.

A couple of possibly obvious suggestions, a combination of which (cannot remember exatly) that sorted this out for me:
- re-start the Pi a couple of times after selecting the "Hifiberry Digi+Pro"; select something else, restart, and switch back to Hifiberry, re-start the PI
- power the PI2AES before Pi if using separate power sources for Pi and PI2AES
- check that Audio Config -> MPD Config -> Device Type D= I2S audio device and Volume control = disabled (and the other audio settings should leave the audio untouched)
- re-start the DAC (low probability that the DAC glitched, but possible)
Edit: - cable between Pi2AES and DAC connected and right input selected in the DAC

 

Thank you Dr J! It was in the MPD config. Device type was listed correctly as I2S but under Volume Control was the option "Software". I changed it to "Disabled", saved it and restarted. Music is playing and all seems fine.

 

Assembly instructions for the 7"Display case are now on line. Since we've already shipped a few dozen, it was clearly time to get his done! For some reason even with all the extra time Covid has provided, I still wait until the last minute!

http://www.pi2design.com/uploads/4/8/5/3/48531975/pi2aes_7_display_case_assembly.pdf

Feedback welcome as this is the first draft. Also, I posted this in our main thread, so sorry if that's wrong.

 

I installed the 7inch display case over the weekend. It wasn't too bad at all. The only issue I ran into was the kit did not come with the M3 screws to mount the display to the case. Luckily, I had some extra from pc parts I was able to use. On the software side I configured RopieeeXL to work with Roon, Airplay and Spotify. Initial impressions on the sound quality is this is a very nice upgrade.

 

Very sorry about that and to anyone else who got a kit with missing hardware. We had a mixup between this case set and the standard case and I think a handful of people got a weird mixture. New product, so still working the kinks out on the production side. You would think just gathering some screws and standoffs and all putting them in a bag would be super simple. But apparently we are dumber than that!