Pi Zero W, Pirate Radio and the PhatBeat

Hi there @jmul,

The reason you can’t log in is because the password is just “raspberry”, not “raspberrypi”. :)

As for the display, are you using an HDMI screen plugged in with a micro HDMI adaptor? If so, double check the your monitor is reading HDMI (it’s always good to check).

Since your SD card is running on another RPI, we can rule out the possibility of SD card faults.

Could you maybe create another topic so that others with the same problem can find it more easily?

Thanks! :D

Hi okay first, how do I create a new topic?

Second I am using a HDMI to micro HDMI so it plugs directly into the pi.
Used the same cable in the other pi to check the SD card so the cable
should be good.

Is there anything else I can try besides reloading the OS? Does the hat do
anything to the pi that would make the OS load on my standard pi and not
load on the pie with the soldered board attached?

Also Im using the raspberry pi that has WiFi. So that should be the W.

Thanks again

Jeff

You can create a new topic simply by pressing the “New Topic” button in the top right hand side of the screen when you’re looking at the forum’s home page.

Your micro HDMI adaptor should be working fine, but you never know!

The board itself doesn’t do anything to the PI that should prevent it from booting, but again, it’s always a possibility!

Thank you and I created a new topic. Also the user name and password worked!

Thanks

Jeff

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Hi There,

i bought a Pirate Kit and prepared a MicroSD with the actually Raspbian Lite-OS.
After this, i followed this manual:
https://learn.pimoroni.com/tutorial/sandyj/streaming-spotify-to-your-pi

The installer ( curl https://get.pimoroni.com/spotipy | bash ) run without any problems, but after the installation / reboot, the Mopidy-Webinterface ( http://192.168.x.xx:6680/iris ) is not reachable.

I check my firewall-settings, reinstall the system, do a port-scan on my Pi zero … nothing helps.

Can anybody help me with that ?

I appreciate this is a massive bump but I’ve just rebuilt my Pirate Radio after an SD card failure and reading back through this thread, I wonder if this ever happened. I generally have it playing pretty quietly and would like the VU to actually do something because at low volume, they really don’t move much.

There was a thread on that very topic. I haven’t redone my pirate radio setup in ages, back then I did the following.
Scott I believe posted this in that thread. It worked for me, just play around with the 131071.0f
I think I settled on 90000.0f. Set the volume to what you usually use then tweak that value to get your VU where you want it.

You can increase the sensitivity on the Phat Beat VU Meter by doing the following:
cd Pimoroni/pivumeter
nano src/devices/phat-beat.c
Change line 88 to:
int bar = (meter_level * (meter_level / 8) / 131071.0f) * (brightness * (NUM_PIXELS/2));
Recompile the library:
sudo make
sudo make install
Sudo reboot

Now your VU meter is more sensitive! Tweak the values to your liking.

int bar = (meter_level * (meter_level / 8) / 900000.0f) * (brightness * (NUM_PIXELS/2));
Is what I think I’m using now.

Thanks, 350000.0f is giving the best effect for me.

Glad it worked. Where your volume is set while you tweak it makes a big difference.
There is likely a setup file in the Pimoroni software you could edit before doing your install. I never bothered to try and hunt it down though. I haven’t had to redo my Pirate radio setup in ages.

Something else I do is tick the box for “wait for network” in Raspberry Pi configuration. It takes a little longer to play on boot up But for me, now mine starts up on the channel I left it on when I shut down.
Before I did this it would sometimes change feeds on bootup, looking for an active feed or something.

I’ll look at that, thanks. However, none of my Pis have a GUI, is that setting in raspi-config anywhere?

Yes its under Boot Options.

Thanks. Despite having been playing with Pis for years now, I’ve never looked at that specific option.

I didn’t either until I setup my Pirate Radio. It would switch stations and sometimes not start at all until I switched stations manually. Best guess is its looking for a stream before the WIFI is fully functional and cycles through the playlist until it finds a working one.
Ticking the wait for network was a bit of a stab in the dark but it worked. Now Mine starts up on my preferred station almost every time. About the only time it doesn’t is if the Internet is down.

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Hi - I’m new here. My kids bought me the Pimorini Raspeberry Pi Zerow W Pirate Radio project kit. I am struggling to get it working and I think the problem may be related to software versions and possible out-of-date instructions.

So far I have installed Raspian OS (Buster) using the Raspberry Pi Imager tool and have also ran the following…

sudo apt-get update --allow-releaseinfo-change

…as I saw on another forum that this was a way around the ‘VLC Radio installer does not work on this version of raspian’ issue that I had. Buster should be backwards compatible with Jessie - it’s just that the installer doesn’t recognise Buster, right?

The install proceeded without issue as far as I can see using…

curl https://get.pimoroni.com/vlcradio | bash

On restarting I didn’ get any sound so I started looking for the config settings.

The instructions at https://learn.pimoroni.com/tutorial/sandyj/internet-radio-on-your-pirate-radio suggest that "The list of stations is in a file in /home/pi/.config/vlc called playlist.m3u". However I cannot locate that file. Should it exist?

By the way, I ran ‘speaker-test -c2 -t wav’ and can hear the left/right voice and see the led Vu meter working so I think the hardware side should be OK.

I really would like to get this working as my kids spent quite a lot of their money and I have nothing to show them in return so far.

Any help is appreciated.

Try sudo nano /etc/vlcd/default.m3u
Another way is to just copy your playlist file to the fat boot partition on the SD card.
It will be moved to the correct spot automatically and become the new default playlist.

Hi, thanks for your reply.

I just tried sudo nano /etc/vlcd/default.m3u

Directory ‘/etc/vlcd’ does not exist

Are there any log files or things I could check as pointers to where the problem may lie?

That I don’t know. My setup has been running almost problem free for at least a year now. I occasionally get a lost stream, but a reboot fixes it. I’m not going to redo it until it just won’t work anymore. I don’t bother trying to edit the default playlist, manly because I only listen to a select few Classic Rock stations. There isn’t anything in the default that I want to keep. I just copy “my” playlist.m3u file to the SD card on my Windows PC. Then boot up my Pirate Radio and enjoy my tunes. I’m not running Buster, Jessie or maybe even Stretch.