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Too many glitches on pi/Volumio

Nic,

Here is some additional info, whilst you wait.;)

If you wish, you can try increasing the usb power.

Switch off the pi in the proper shutdown manner and pop the SD card into a reader and then into a computer.

In Windows open the BOOT partition and open the config.txt folder with Word Pad.

Scroll to the bottom and add the following text

Code: 
max_usb_current=1

Save and exit, disconnect the card properly and put it back in the pi, power up.

A proper power supply is here, if you need one (you can compare the power output spec to the one you now using).

https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/...MIzZmd5uuW3AIVyYTVCh10PAmqEAQYASABEgKjo_D_BwE
 
Will give that a try! I think one of the other distros will do this from the GUI but not this one. Very useful. Thanks.

Edit: Think this might have worked! Just added that line of text and after re-boot just added the HDD. It did say "under-voltage detected" when I connected. BUT whilst playing it's not doing so...and no glitches in evidence so far.

#2Edit: After 10 minutes of working perfectly it's back to "under-voltage detected!" every 20 seconds or so. Bugger.

Touch wood!
 
Tw99 said:
The pi may be booting too fast, so it tries to mount the usb disk before it's spun up. You can add a delay parameter to the boot command line to fix this.
Click to expand...
This might be the icing on the cake. Quick google can't see this...any idea how to implement?
 
OK. I'm watching the undervolt messages whilst listening to quiet piano music. They definitely coincide with the audible glitches. Plus, the LED on the HDD seems to go steady at about the same time.

Oh well...I'll definitely consider getting the latest Pi which I'm sue will sort it but first let's see what a powered hub will do - this should take any pressure off the Pi to deliver the juice at any rate.
 
mikeyb said:
Pi doesn't have the power to power itself and a USB drive at the same time
Click to expand...

A pi has no problem with a 2.5 inch usb drive. Maybe with a 3.5 inch drive. If you search around the 'net, especially on the pi forum

https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/

there are lots of posts which detail the power supplied to the usb outputs and the draw from usb drives.

And I know this because I have used a pi in this fashion myself, without any problems.

If the under voltage lightning bolt is showing then it is the power supply (or cable) which needs to be changed.

Ronnie

Delaying the boot of the drive may be a good idea, see this post

https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=41911

(there is a lot of info over here )
 
So a couple of compromises which slightly tarnish a dream machine. Any thoughts?

Thanks,

Nic.
Click to expand...
I’m no volumio expert but do you have to use a direct usbdrive in the pi? Could you mount it on the router instead? If you can it should be lesss stress on the pi and just as simple
 
My experience of pi, DAC, music source and player is as follows.
Currently I run 2
Pi 3, Is2 IQAudio DAC, USB mounted disk of music Moode Audio player v4.1 The well specd version.
Pi 2 USB Maplins DAC and Seagate NAS for music files again Moode Audio v4.1 The resource tester.

Both work fine. Volumio I gave up on. A brief dalliance with Rune got no where.
Moode is not for the ‘I just want’ tribe. It is something you have to compile but these days there are excellent build tools. If you ‘just want’ look elsewhere . If you are comfy with Linux and enjoy tweaking Moode is worth examining.

The theories of cannot cope with .... The right software does not sap pi power, DAC can be no problem, disk store can be no issue.

Mains cables do not make a difference.The only time I heard irregular sound was with a beta version of Moode.

Moode has an excellent forum support community I forgot to mention.

Have fun

Edit: I leave both powered up 24/7 so don’t fret about startup
 
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adamdea said:
I’m no volumio expert but do you have to use a direct usbdrive in the pi? Could you mount it on the router instead? If you can it should be lesss stress on the pi and just as simple
Click to expand...
I could do that but I think I'd have to reformat as FAT and some of the files are too big. Plus it'd be spinning 24/7, I guess.
 
Nic Robinson said:
I could do that but I think I'd have to reformat as FAT and some of the files are too big. Plus it'd be spinning 24/7, I guess.
Click to expand...
maybe a powered usb hub? Is this a problem specific to your usb drive. Maybe it would be simpler just to get another one and use this one as a backup.I find your problem surprising because I was under the impression that lots of people use a pi and a usb drive as nas.
Personally I use a QNAP NAS.
 
When I last tried it about 3 or 4 years ago, I couldn't get Volumio to index my, admittedly huge, music library and gave up with it.

I got endless audio dropouts using USB on the Pi to connect to the DAC, a SPDIF or toslink hat works flawlessly.

I have since gone full circle and gone back to using a Macbook pro for audio as it does software MQA decoding in Tidal and I missed the library management in iTunes.
 
Update:

My £6.99 USB hub arrived. I wouldn't say it's eliminated the problem but it's much, much better. The occasional Under-volt message still comes up but I've heard nothing audible (it was previously every few seconds).

One annoyance I can't understand: in the USB drive's library list on the GUI, some folders are displaying in a funny order (i.e.not A-Z). This seems to be new and is very annoying. The drive when connected to my Mac has everything nice and neat in alphabetic order. Any ideas if I can address this in Volumio?
 
Which usb hub did you get? It's been a while since I did my own research on this when putting my streaming system together but I remember that it needs to be a hub that won't "backpower" the pi.

No idea about the Volumio library part, sorry. Mine has always just listed everything alphabetically automatically. I don't add anything to the library itself though, I just go into the folder structure itself to select what I want or just use the search bar to search for a particular album or artist.
 
Nic Robinson said:
I'm a bit worried now! What does that mean?
Click to expand...

Scroll down this page for info

https://elinux.org/RPi_Hardware


clivem2 said:
This is what's needed: https://thepihut.com/products/7-port-usb-hub-for-the-raspberry-pi

It prevents the power and grounds getting mixed up between powering the USB drive and the Pi.
Click to expand...

This is a really good, cheap hub, It also works well with a Mac-Mini, when setting up< but mostly I use it for a Raspbian Stretch Desktop system with monitor, keyboard, mouse and usb- dac.

Ronnie
 
I believe using wifi together with usb can causes problems. Picoreplayer releases audio optimized version which disables wifi.
 
Nic Robinson said:
Update:

My £6.99 USB hub arrived. I wouldn't say it's eliminated the problem but it's much, much better. The occasional Under-volt message still comes up but I've heard nothing audible (it was previously every few seconds).

One annoyance I can't understand: in the USB drive's library list on the GUI, some folders are displaying in a funny order (i.e.not A-Z). This seems to be new and is very annoying. The drive when connected to my Mac has everything nice and neat in alphabetic order. Any ideas if I can address this in Volumio?
Click to expand...

How much current can your RPi PSU deliver? I‘m currently running one of my Pis (OSMC/Kodi) with an old Blackberry charger ´cos I lost the 1a one I had...I also get the low power alert...doesn’t affect picture quality I can see, but I‘ll need to find the lost PSU now.
 
I can't remember what the specs say but I find around 2A is the limit for a Pi due to two reasons. 1st the micro usb plug becomes flakey with higher currents....the connection in the plug just rest against the pcb tracks. 2nd the power tracks on the Pi pcb are quite skinny.

2A includes whetever the Pi needs for itself.
 
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