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Is TiltAudio still going?
- Thread starter SBDESIGN
- Start date
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- bttf tilt!audio
Yep ,think I still have one that has issues with incorrectly routed track.Explains why i only have one then
To be fair, the design now is probably completely indestinguishable. I remember his (was it?) STM32 Pin2dmd equivalent. Again total disaster, and again the board design changed every couple of months.
I'm all for regular upgrades, however issues on the older boards were never really "fixed"...
He tends to add things as he progresses in design which includes errors .
It must be finished by now.
dookieshooter
Registered
old thread, but as I decided to try this out for a Stern Whitestar, I thought I'd post with my experience.
rev 3.10 of the board works using firmware 1.42b (beta). I had some issues, probably mostly my fault.
1. I received everything pretty quickly. Steve was out of components for the whitestar adapter. the Pinsound Whitestar adapter is identical... I ordered that for $70 USD.
2. The 12v-5v DC buck converter was smaller than in the pictures. took some creative use of headers to get mounted. Only needed to solder it to 4 of the 8 holes (the smaller one only has 4 pin holes)
3. The STM32 has the 4 programing pins already soldered on with a 90 degree pin. Makes it more difficult to mount. 3 suggestions here:
A) solder female headers to the PCB first for all pins. This way, you can treat the STM32 black pill as a socketed chip.
B) for the 4 programing pins, I used male to female jumpers using dupont connectors. I bent the male pins to 90 degrees, soldered them to the PCB. Then just slide the female ends onto the SWDIO, SWCLK, and GND pins in order. Alternatively, you can desolder the 4 pins and just use header pins as normal.
C) the 3v3 pin on the programmer connection should be left off. It's a 3.3v output. When mine was connected, I noticed it would rise to 4.2V after a few seconds of power on. After removing the 3v3 pin connection, it was normal. I also think this led to a problem with the STM32.
4. 5v converter: Be careful with your soldering on this. I did not do a great job. Initially it measured good, but a little wiggling later and I saw 0 volts or only 2.5v here.
5. CHECK VOLTAGES EVERYWHERE BEFORE PLUGGING in the PI, and MAYBE BEFORE PLUGGING IN THE STM32!!!!
-- For Whitestar, this meant checking for 12v at the buck converter input and a constant 5v at the output.
-- check the 12v or whatever on the amplifiers
-- after connecting the STM32, check to see that it A) powers up and B) has 5v on it's 5v pins and 3.3v on it's 3v3 pins.
-- plug in the pi. Same test as above. Check for power on, 5v and 3.3 volts on the appropriate pins.
6. PI: before you solder the header on, realize that with the pi3b+ and up, the usb ports don't provide enough room if the header is soldered flush to the PCB. either solder the pins up higher or get a 40 pin extender and use that (what I did). You'll also need additional standoffs to support the pi.
7. STM32: the STM32 used is a STM32f411CEU6 model. It's basically a WeAct STM32F411CEU6 V2.0 board (clone?) and can be found at amazon, etc...
-- After the 4.2v issue was corrected, I found that the tiltaduio.sh script that runs as part of the tiltaudio service could not properly communicate with the STM32. It uses a command "openocd" to talk to it. I ended up buying a cheap ST-LINK V2 Debugger that connects to your computer via USB and to the 4 pins on the STM32. So another reason to NOT solder these 4 pins and just use the dupont jumper pins.
-- whatever caused the issue with the STM basically put the device into RDP level 1 (read protection) and had enabled write protection in the WRP0 byte. Using the STM programmer software with the debugger dongle, I was able to first disable RDP level 1 (have to set it to "AA" (level 0/no read protection)) and disable any write protection. Then I was able to manually flash the stm with the version 2 firmware found in the pi image. I reconnected the STM/pi and saw that the tilt audio webpage showed it was able to communicate with the MCU and read the proper version number from it. Also was able to use the MCU LED flash test in the test page to flash the LED.
8. buy some female headers and install those FIRST before you add any of the boards!!!!! This will make life much easier in the future if something goes bad/needs replaced.
9. Firmware 1.42b is broken.
A) Missing swi-pi.cfg
This is necessary to program the STM32 black pill. I messaged steve about this, but... nothing. So, I copied it from a previous version. You will have to scp/rsync it to the pi, or ssh into the pi and type it in. it's almost identical to test.cfg, but not quite.
Here are the contents for swi-pi.cfg:
interface bcm2835spi
bcm2835spi_speed 31200 # 31.2 MHz
# increase working area to 64KB
set WORKAREASIZE 0x10000
source [find target/stm32f4x.cfg]
bindto 0.0.0.0
# set reset_config to none, if there is no wiring for reset line -> software reset
reset_config none
# reset_config srst_only
# reset_config srst_only srst_push_pull
that file belongs in: /home/pi/despi/swi-pi.cfg
B) a shared library required by despi is not in the LD LIBRARY PATH. libwiringPi.so can't be found. I'm not 100% sure if this is an issue, but despi doesn't like that it's missing. It IS on the SD card, though. It's in /usr/local/lib so you need to ssh into the pi and then symlink the 3 library files to /usr/lib/ or better, just do the following:
echo "/usr/local/lib" | sudo tee /etc/ld.so.conf.d/local-lib.conf
sudo ldconfig
The errors are gone after that.
I have two issues that I don't know what to do with:
1. I have some "whine" noise from the cabinet speakers. I don't hear it during the game, but it is super annoying when there's no sound. I'm almost temped to swap the cabinet amplifier to see if it's just bad. I don't think I notice it from the headphone jack on the DAC... I'd love some suggestions on how to fix this.
2. WIFI. I cannot get the tilt audio software to connect to my wifi. I set it through the web page, reboot, and it reverts back to the default access point. I haven't spent too much time on this, but it's quite annoying and allows someone to easily login to the device (default user/password)
This now is working pretty well. I'm using an Alt Sound pack for Austin Powers and it's much better. There are a few quirks, and it boots a bit slower than I'd like. I will tweak a few of the sounds and swap some of the music for something else, but it's SOOOOO much better than original. I might build another for my south park just to add some better songs.
rev 3.10 of the board works using firmware 1.42b (beta). I had some issues, probably mostly my fault.
1. I received everything pretty quickly. Steve was out of components for the whitestar adapter. the Pinsound Whitestar adapter is identical... I ordered that for $70 USD.
2. The 12v-5v DC buck converter was smaller than in the pictures. took some creative use of headers to get mounted. Only needed to solder it to 4 of the 8 holes (the smaller one only has 4 pin holes)
3. The STM32 has the 4 programing pins already soldered on with a 90 degree pin. Makes it more difficult to mount. 3 suggestions here:
A) solder female headers to the PCB first for all pins. This way, you can treat the STM32 black pill as a socketed chip.
B) for the 4 programing pins, I used male to female jumpers using dupont connectors. I bent the male pins to 90 degrees, soldered them to the PCB. Then just slide the female ends onto the SWDIO, SWCLK, and GND pins in order. Alternatively, you can desolder the 4 pins and just use header pins as normal.
C) the 3v3 pin on the programmer connection should be left off. It's a 3.3v output. When mine was connected, I noticed it would rise to 4.2V after a few seconds of power on. After removing the 3v3 pin connection, it was normal. I also think this led to a problem with the STM32.
4. 5v converter: Be careful with your soldering on this. I did not do a great job. Initially it measured good, but a little wiggling later and I saw 0 volts or only 2.5v here.
5. CHECK VOLTAGES EVERYWHERE BEFORE PLUGGING in the PI, and MAYBE BEFORE PLUGGING IN THE STM32!!!!
-- For Whitestar, this meant checking for 12v at the buck converter input and a constant 5v at the output.
-- check the 12v or whatever on the amplifiers
-- after connecting the STM32, check to see that it A) powers up and B) has 5v on it's 5v pins and 3.3v on it's 3v3 pins.
-- plug in the pi. Same test as above. Check for power on, 5v and 3.3 volts on the appropriate pins.
6. PI: before you solder the header on, realize that with the pi3b+ and up, the usb ports don't provide enough room if the header is soldered flush to the PCB. either solder the pins up higher or get a 40 pin extender and use that (what I did). You'll also need additional standoffs to support the pi.
7. STM32: the STM32 used is a STM32f411CEU6 model. It's basically a WeAct STM32F411CEU6 V2.0 board (clone?) and can be found at amazon, etc...
-- After the 4.2v issue was corrected, I found that the tiltaduio.sh script that runs as part of the tiltaudio service could not properly communicate with the STM32. It uses a command "openocd" to talk to it. I ended up buying a cheap ST-LINK V2 Debugger that connects to your computer via USB and to the 4 pins on the STM32. So another reason to NOT solder these 4 pins and just use the dupont jumper pins.
-- whatever caused the issue with the STM basically put the device into RDP level 1 (read protection) and had enabled write protection in the WRP0 byte. Using the STM programmer software with the debugger dongle, I was able to first disable RDP level 1 (have to set it to "AA" (level 0/no read protection)) and disable any write protection. Then I was able to manually flash the stm with the version 2 firmware found in the pi image. I reconnected the STM/pi and saw that the tilt audio webpage showed it was able to communicate with the MCU and read the proper version number from it. Also was able to use the MCU LED flash test in the test page to flash the LED.
8. buy some female headers and install those FIRST before you add any of the boards!!!!! This will make life much easier in the future if something goes bad/needs replaced.
9. Firmware 1.42b is broken.
A) Missing swi-pi.cfg
This is necessary to program the STM32 black pill. I messaged steve about this, but... nothing. So, I copied it from a previous version. You will have to scp/rsync it to the pi, or ssh into the pi and type it in. it's almost identical to test.cfg, but not quite.
Here are the contents for swi-pi.cfg:
interface bcm2835spi
bcm2835spi_speed 31200 # 31.2 MHz
# increase working area to 64KB
set WORKAREASIZE 0x10000
source [find target/stm32f4x.cfg]
bindto 0.0.0.0
# set reset_config to none, if there is no wiring for reset line -> software reset
reset_config none
# reset_config srst_only
# reset_config srst_only srst_push_pull
that file belongs in: /home/pi/despi/swi-pi.cfg
B) a shared library required by despi is not in the LD LIBRARY PATH. libwiringPi.so can't be found. I'm not 100% sure if this is an issue, but despi doesn't like that it's missing. It IS on the SD card, though. It's in /usr/local/lib so you need to ssh into the pi and then symlink the 3 library files to /usr/lib/ or better, just do the following:
echo "/usr/local/lib" | sudo tee /etc/ld.so.conf.d/local-lib.conf
sudo ldconfig
The errors are gone after that.
I have two issues that I don't know what to do with:
1. I have some "whine" noise from the cabinet speakers. I don't hear it during the game, but it is super annoying when there's no sound. I'm almost temped to swap the cabinet amplifier to see if it's just bad. I don't think I notice it from the headphone jack on the DAC... I'd love some suggestions on how to fix this.
2. WIFI. I cannot get the tilt audio software to connect to my wifi. I set it through the web page, reboot, and it reverts back to the default access point. I haven't spent too much time on this, but it's quite annoying and allows someone to easily login to the device (default user/password)
This now is working pretty well. I'm using an Alt Sound pack for Austin Powers and it's much better. There are a few quirks, and it boots a bit slower than I'd like. I will tweak a few of the sounds and swap some of the music for something else, but it's SOOOOO much better than original. I might build another for my south park just to add some better songs.
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dookieshooter
Registered
Yeah. But... If you like diy stuff and spending less while being able to change things at will, this is an option. Hopefully, my experience can help others do this with less trouble.
Some of us like the puzzle. I call them solvable problems with low jeopardy.
The shared experience helps others know if this is an easy and low cost method to get a good result. Thank you for the write up that lets other have success but also the skills needed to make it work.
The shared experience helps others know if this is an easy and low cost method to get a good result. Thank you for the write up that lets other have success but also the skills needed to make it work.