piCorePlayer 7 on Audiophonics EVO-SABRE Balanced DAC 2xES9038Q2M

[psketch]

I've been looking for a more upto date replacement for my Transformer, and settled on Evo-Sabre DAC from Audiophonics. It's a really nice device, and with a second OLED for displaying track etc. information.

Audiophonics provide a dietPi image with a custom Python script for this second screen and lirc settings for the remote. However, I run PCP everywhere else, so wanted to get PCP running. It took a little work and involved

Building a custom tcz for all of the Python 3 modules
Updating the scripts to Python 3
Updating the lirc settings to use the native Squeezelite lirc support (vs an old expect script)
Update the script to pick up the MAC address automatically, and take the LMS IP as a parameter

The steps (ignoring the backups and reboots) are something like

Install standard extensions
freetype.tcz
python3.8.tcz
iproute2.tcz

Install custom extension
evosabre-py38-deps.tcz

Copy the custom .py and fonts sub directory to /home/tc

Configure squeezelite in pcp
Set Card to Audiophonics ISabre Q2M
Disable onboard audio
Set ALSA Volume Control to Digital

User Command to python3 /home/tc/lms_oled_3.12_py3.py LMSIPAddress

gpio-shutdown : Yes, GPIO-17, Active Low, Pull Up

Install LIRC
GPIO : 4
Upload custom lircd.conf and .lircrc

If anyone's interested, let me know and I'll post all the files. By default, the Audiophonics setup uses a full Simplified Chinese font for album titles - i.e. it's a font with all languages in there, including simplified chinese - so it's large and take a while to load when you start the script. I can understand why they did this - some people will obviously want track titles in chinese, but I created a everything except chinese version, which is about 1% of the size, so unless you want the large one, I'll likely post the short one.

pete S

[Greg Erskine]

That sounds like a lot of work!

Thanks.

[psketch]

Firstly, as with all these things, I always start - erm - blatantly copying and learning from others. On that note, I'd like to call out the great work done by gregex here , who got a lot of this going to the raspdac mini.

Then, you know the way of it - once I start on something, I find it hard to put down until it's done. So, kept chipping away at it until it was working well...

[psketch]

I've been continuing to fiddle around with this, and have it pretty much finished now. I've updated the script quite a bit to make it more native to LMS (e.g. reading the track info from LMS vs. from ALSA as it was before), reading all the info from LMS in one go rather than loads of separate calls, pick up if volume is 100% and if so, don't show it, made some of the other calls more native etc.

I'd like to thank @Steve Agnew for his help testing things and tidying up the readme I created. If be happy to share the files with anyone that wants them. All in all, I'm really happy with the DAC now and I think it's a good high-er end addition to the family.

pete S

[pmendiuk]

I am very interested on getting the second display running on PcP. Please post the files.

[psketch]

Hi pmendiuk

There's a readme.md and zip file with everything in it here. Let me know how you get on.

pete S

[pmendiuk]

I am experiencing an error trying to download the files.

[psketch]

Hmm- I'll have a look at that later. For now, I've emailed them to you.

[pmendiuk]

No module named 'netifaces'

I did a fresh install of PcP 8 and installed freetype.tcz, python3.8.tcz and manually installed evosabre-py38-deps.tcz.

I'm getting an error running lms_oled_3.12_py3.py

tc@pCP:~$ python3 /home/tc/lms_oled_3.12_py3.py 192.168.1.170
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/home/tc/lms_oled_3.12_py3.py", line 33, in <module>
    import netifaces
ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'netifaces'

I installed python3.8-pip.tcz and then tried to install netifaces with pip:

tc@pCP:~$ pip install netifaces
Requirement already satisfied: netifaces in /usr/local/lib/python3.8/site-packages (0.11.0)
WARNING: You are using pip version 20.1.1; however, version 21.3.1 is available.
You should consider upgrading via the '/usr/local/bin/python3 -m pip install --upgrade pip' command.
tc@pCP:~$

I checked the path:

tc@pCP:~$ python3 -c "import sys; print(':'.join(x for x in sys.path if x))"
/usr/local/lib/python38.zip:/usr/local/lib/python3.8:/usr/local/lib/python3.8/lib-dynload:/usr/local/lib/python3.8/site-packages

I'm running out of ideas

[psketch]

Hi

That's saying that the module evosabre-py38-deps.tcz either didn't load properly, or I've sent you the wrong one. This loads the dependencies for the script, and includes netifaces.

If you do

ls /etc/sysconfig/tcedir/optional/evo*

do you see

evosabre-py38-deps.tcz

Then, if you do

more /etc/sysconfig/tcedir/onboot.lst

is evosabre-py38-deps.tcz included?

pete S

[pmendiuk]

Hi Pete,
It looks like it's all there.

tc@pCP:~$ ls /etc/sysconfig/tcedir/optional/evo*

/etc/sysconfig/tcedir/optional/evosabre-py38-deps.tcz

tc@pCP:~$ more /etc/sysconfig/tcedir/onboot.lst

pcp.tcz
pcp-8.0.0-www.tcz
freetype.tcz
python3.8.tcz
pcp-lirc.tcz
evosabre-py38-deps.tcz
python3.8-pip.tcz
tc@pCP:~$

[psketch]

Hi Pete,
It looks like it's all there.

tc@pCP:~$ ls /etc/sysconfig/tcedir/optional/evo*

/etc/sysconfig/tcedir/optional/evosabre-py38-deps.tcz

tc@pCP:~$ more /etc/sysconfig/tcedir/onboot.lst

pcp.tcz
pcp-8.0.0-www.tcz
freetype.tcz
python3.8.tcz
pcp-lirc.tcz
evosabre-py38-deps.tcz
python3.8-pip.tcz
tc@pCP:~$

Hmm - what if you do

tce-load -i  /etc/sysconfig/tcedir/optional/evosabre-py38-deps.tcz

Does it say that it's already installed?

I just tried doing a new setup - downloaded a fresh copy of 8.0.0 and then followed the script and it all worked first time. Silly question - you did reboot after copy the .tcz? Else, it wouldn't be loaded.

[pmendiuk]

It's installed:

tc@pCP:~$ tce-load -i  /etc/sysconfig/tcedir/optional/evosabre-py38-deps.tcz
evosabre-py38-deps is already installed!

I started with a fresh PcP 8 install and then installed the extensions and python script. The RPI was rebooted several times since setting up PcP and the extensions.

[psketch]

It's installed:

tc@pCP:~$ tce-load -i  /etc/sysconfig/tcedir/optional/evosabre-py38-deps.tcz
evosabre-py38-deps is already installed!

I started with a fresh PcP 8 install and then installed the extensions and python script. The RPI was rebooted several times since setting up PcP and the extensions.

Yes, if it says it's installed, then it's rebooted. OK, so 2 plans. Firstly, maybe something's up with the .tcz I sent you. Maybe it's loading but it's not right. So, I'll email you just the .tcz. If that doesn't work, I'll build a new pcp8 again, and just post an image of the SD for you to download. That will only work on the same generation of Pi though - what model are you using - I assume you're just using the supplied Pi4?

I don't really understand why it's not working - as I said, I just did a new PCP 8.0.0 yesterday, installed the .tcz and the .py, and it just worked first time.

[pmendiuk]

I don't think I purchased the RPIs from Audiophonics.

Raspberry Pi 4 Model B Rev 1.2 4GB