RPi Zero W and Dac/Amp/LCD

Hi Folks,

I am looking for a bit of guidance if anyone can offer any? I have one of these:

shop.pimoroni.com/products/pira … stereo-amp

The software/plugins/scripts that are provided however, only work with Mopidy, which I do not like one bit - correction, I quite like Pi Musicbox but ‘vanilla’ Mopidy is horrendous. The Pimoroni script just installs Mopidy with Iris , and the plugins necessary for the buttons and screen, which is zero use to me as I have not got a premium Spotify account (nor do I ever plan on having one). After a solid two weeks trying to get ANY of the other web clients working has proven completely fruitless, I have followed all the instructions that I have been able to find to the letter, but nothing has worked. You would also think (unless you’re an expert in these matters I guess?) that the plugins/scripts would work ok with a Pi Musicbox install - it being Mopidy based, but the script just breaks your install. I have asked on Pimoroni’s support forum for help but they haven’t bothered to supply any answers whatsoever so I gave up with all that inferior stuff and did the proper thing and installed Volumio on the Zero - I already have a RPi 3b+ running it and I adore the software!

Anyway, I haven’t really been able to do much with the screen/buttons on the phat - I installed the GPIO buttons plugin and have successfully got the A and B buttons to work - play/pause and lower volume - but for no discernible reason the other two - X and Y (next and increase volume) just will not work. I have mapped the correct buttons - BCM 16 and BCM 20 - but pressing them does nothing. What I find odd is the other two working absolutely fine. I have checked and checked and I am using the right pins according to their GitHub/website instructions so I am at a loss with that.

I’d also love to be able to do something with the screen - I only have experience with Arduino and character displays unfortunately so I am completely out of my depth with trying to get any data from MPD printing onto an SPI IPS colour LCD! It wouldn’t even have to be anything like that - I’d be happy with some sort of clock and spectrum analyser type affair but I am not up to the task of coding something that complicated in Python, which is a language I have no knowledge off really. I have thus far managed to get a rainbow type thing to just run in a loop (just a block colour that gradually changes. No animation or anything remotely complex!)

I am happy following a decent guide if anyone knows of any, or if you can point me towards something relevant. I have searched and searched but not found anything myself yet - I will keep looking but a helping hand would be fabulous and much appreciated.

Kind regards,
Ste

p.s. I can confirm - for a small low powered system, maybe for putting inside a vintage radio case or similar I can confirm that this phat sounds tremendous for the money, if you pair it with the right speakers. It has a switchable stereo/mono output. I have it hooked up to a pair of salvaged Blaupunkt tv speakers and the sound is rich and fills the room. It isn’t a connoisseurs output no doubt but it is still pretty decent. They also do a headphone amp and a line out version. (should have got me that version!).

Quick update - I figured out the buttons. I should have realised this, don’t know why I didn’t notice. The buttons are all active low but GPIO 16 and 20 are pulled low by default, so it was just a case of setting them high in config.txt. Easy fix once I read the specs of the pHAT properly!

Hi to volumio power users,

i know this is an old thread but i have the same components:

• RPI Zero W(H)
• Pimoroni Pirate Audio: 3W Stereo Amp

And i like volumio as well, specially after trying Moode and Mopidy.
What works:

• Amp Function of HAT
• Buttons A and B

Whats not working:

• Button X and Y (does anyone can tell me the syntax how to define BCM16 an BCM20 as active_low in /boot/config.txt?)
• LCD screen (only backlight)

Maybe someone can give me hints how to move forward in these two issues:

• does anyone can tell me the syntax how to define BCM16 an BCM20 as active_low in /boot/config.txt?
• how can a 240x240px LCD, connected via GPIO be activated?

Thanks in advance

AxLED

Hi volumio users,

i made little progress on the tft.

TFT examples work by executing them from ssh (without breaking playing sound).

What i did:
cloned github repository: github.com/pimoroni/pirate-audio
execute one of the following examples by command „python3 <file.py>“

volumio@volumio:~/pirate-audio/examples$ ls README.md backlight-pwm.py buttons.py rainbow.py

AxLED

Hi volumio users,

i made progress on the buttons X and Y.

What i did:
I added following lines to /boot/config.txt

gpio=16=pu gpio=20=pu

Now are all 4 buttons (A, B, X any Y) of pirate audio AMP working with the volumio plugin “gpio-buttons”

AxLED

I’m quite familiar with those 1.3inch screen, they are very nice. I did a Hat for RPi0 for building a mini retrogame console, 240x240 is enough for old games. There is a nice driver to use them with low CPU consumption, I can help to set it up if required.

My question is: what do you want to display on the screen? I think VolumIO UI will not be a good fit.

Hi Darmur,

thanks for your reply, here are some samples of informations which would be great on the display

Description:
Trackinformation (artist, album and song) as text
Identifiers of buttons (a symbol for the 4 buttons)
Volumebar (bar if possible, number instead between 0-100 would be also ok)
Trackprogress (bar if possible, time played/time total would be also ok)
Album Artwork “as background”

Sources (maybe helpful):
github.com/pimoroni/mopidy-pidi
github.com/rusconi/TFT-MoodeCoverArt

I am looking forward hearing from you.

AxLED

Got it,

I’m not 100% sure that user interface can be used together with VolumIO out-of-the-box, it’s a plugin for Modipy

Hi volumio users,
@Darmur,

i got it working, see thread https://forum.volumio.org/need-working-example-websocket-restapi-call-python-t14805.html#p76791

Greetings

AxLED