pHAT DAC no sound issues

Support
1

Hi everybody!

I’m having issues playing back audio on a pi zero, using my recently bought pHAT DAC!
I followed the installation setup, both the automatic one https://get.pimoroni.com/phatdac | bash and the manual one too check if everything was fine.

I’m running Jessie.

If I go to the Audio Devices panel, I get this error:

“No ALSA audio devices were detected. Enable the internal audio device, or connect a USB or HAT audio device.”

The audio icon is greyed out, and I cannot change the volume.

I’m trying to play back audio using this speaker .

I tried playing an example mp3 file using omxplayer as suggested in the official guide on the raspberry pi page but I had no luck.

If I run alsamixer I get this result : https://forums.pimoroni.com/t/phatdac-install-issues/5671/7

How should I test if the pHAT DAC is working properly?

I’m using a 11mm stacking header on the pHAT DAC, I also checked each pin with the multimeter and the soldering is fine.

IMG_1590

PS: I’ve got a project due next Friday in which I’d really loved to use the pHAT DAC… :( )

2

As a side note, from what I understood the pHAT DAC output signal needs to be amplified… would something like that work: https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/adafruit-stereo-3-7w-class-d-audio-amplifier ?

3

Yes that will work. I have one plugged into the analog audio jack of a Pi 3B.

You can plug a set of ear bud MP3 player headphones in for testing though.

1 Like
4

I’m fairly certain you’ve soldered your pHAT DAC upside-down if you intend to plug the female header onto the Pi?

5

Don’t know how I missed that, but yes if your Pi has a male header you have your stacking header soldered in the wrong way round. You have bottom side up instead of down.

6

Yep. The header’s on the wrong side… however… if you solder a male header on the underside of a Pi Zero, then it should work just fine!! Unconventional, but…

7

Thank you all. My pi zero has a female header, here are some pics:

IMG_1594
IMG_1594.jpg2951×1651 609 KB

IMG_1593
IMG_1593.jpg2725×1673 847 KB

So it is fine, isn’t it?

8

Yes it’s fine, it will (should ;) ) work that way. Normally it would be a male connector on the Pi, but that’s not etched in stone.

9

Today or tomorrow I will receive the adafruit amplifier and I will proceed to connect the pHAT to it and then to the speakers, which audio test should I perform in order to understand if the board is working as it should?
Thanks!

10

Well, that’s a very neat way of doing it!!!

11

I’ve put a female on the bottom side before. Makes it easy to plug a Pi Zero into the pHat Stack etc, just like it was a pHat. Using a stacking header would give you the best of both worlds so to speak. You give up a little headroom though if you only use one side. I would but the female side down and male pins on top of the Pi Zero. Nothing says you have to, its just how I would do it. ;)

12

Thank you guys.
Can I just ask you how should I test if the audio is working fine (I read somewhere on the forum that omxplayer is not suitable for this) ?
I’m using the festival tts library for my project, could I just test it with festival?

13

On my Pirate Radio pHat Beat I did as follows from the terminal window.
sudo systemctl stop pulseaudio
speaker-test -c2 -t wav
I’m not if it applies to the pHat DAC though?

14

OP, were you ever able to resolve your issues. Seeing similar behavior.

15

@V00D00 I’m sorry but in the end I moved to another board (UDOOx86) which worked well. I’ll try again in the future and update the post in case it works!

16

@vvzen, Thanks for the response. I actually ended up reordering the phat DAC and this one worked fine. Not sure why the first one was faulty.