ULTRA++ installation guide

[Raspiaudio]

Hello,

I realize that the ULTRA has been a pain in the neck to configure because the drivers for the WM8960 are never included in the new releases. Could it be due to the fact that Raspberry Pi is now making their own sound card and trying to favor their brand?

So, I will stop making the ULTRA and instead replace it with the Pi Audio Drive that uses a driver included in every distribution and has an EEPROM to automatically load the drivers, while having the same audio input and output capabilities.

[Aw1]

What’s the latest and greatest installation guide for raspberry pi 2W 32 bit Bookworm and ultra+? I tried multiple ones,… nothing worked. Or should I install/ switch to 64bin? Best regards

[Aw1]

I have a similar issue! I can see the devices with aplay -l and arecord -l but cannot play or record any sound,…

[anonymous_me]

For those arriving at this post in 2024, I’ve found a set of instructions that get the on-board mics and speakers working on a Raspberry Pi 5 (headless in my case). I tried every method in this thread with no luck, but came across this post here that uses the same chipset:

https://wiki.seeedstudio.com/ReSpeaker_2_Mics_Pi_HAT_Raspberry/

Here’s the steps I followed:

## Install Raspbian OS Bookworm (I used lite version)
sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade -y
sudo apt install git

git clone https://github.com/HinTak/seeed-voicecard.git
cd seeed-voicecard
sudo ./install.sh
sudo reboot

To test, record a sample using the on-board mic:

arecord -D "plughw:0,0" -f S16_LE -r 16000 -d 5 -t wav test.wav

Play back that sample using on-board speaker:

aplay -D "plughw:0,0" test.wav

NOTE: Your “plughw:0,0” numbering for both those scripts might be different from mine. The first 0 is the index of the sound card. You can find this number out for your mic by running “aplay -l” and for your speaker by running “arecord -l” and looking for where it says “card X:” where X is the number you should use instead of that first 0.

Hope this helps someone else!

[Raspiaudio]

thanks for sharing, I noticed Seeds cacked it a few days ago great news for the Ultra.

[ultra_plus_user1]

@rec

ga

Thank you to user “anonymous_me” – i was able install the ultra++ with;
PI4 hardware, version bookworm desktop 64-bit release july 4, 2024
NOTE: I needed to run the ./install.sh a second time after reboot.
NOTE: the index was “plughw:3,0”
NOTE: the gain was very low, alsamixer is in the distro, so I used that to adjust gain

Thank - you !

[hjkaddict]

Hey Raspiaudio, thanks for your product.
I’m using ULTRA++ and working on a project where I can use a raspi as portable recording device with external binarual microphone.

I also have tried many different things to make it work and at the end external microphone works well. The only issue is that the noise (kind of buzzy sound) comes in.
Here is the sample recording: [https://stream.oolongradio.com/apps/sharingpath/oolongradio/oolongradio/dummy/output.wav]

It might not be heard with low volume but you can here this contant tick sound when you make it louder. Are you familiar with this noise? I assme that it’s not an issue from your module but could be noise from processing sound from raspi itself? I’m not sure… I wonder if you have faced this issue when you develop this module and would be appreciated if you have any solutions.

The microphone itself has no issue because it has no noise issue on other handy-recorder.

[Raspiaudio]

Hi just to try :

Disable wifi / bluetooth
Try to power your Rpi on on USB power bank

Even if not a viable solution it will help to investigate the origin of the noise

[hjkaddict]

For those who have been struggling with this module installing on your Raspi 4B bullseye,
I did a bit of workaround and confirm that ULTRA++ is working well on my Pi.

hostnamectl from my machine returns:
Operating System: Debian GNU/Linux 11 (bullseye)
Kernel: Linux 6.1.21-v8+
Architecture: arm64

Basically you can follow @Raspiaudio’s Method 2 full control instruction but here is what I have done.
After you git clone https://github.com/waveshareteam/WM8960-Audio-HAT and cd WM8960-Audio-HAT, you need to change a commit version to the old one because the recent one seems to be coded for bookworm (which is not working on both bullseye and bookworm on Rasp 4B).
To change the working commit version, you can command: git checkout 8141dad26281d661de4be2a823662f5510ec98da inside of the WM8960 directory. Once it is changed, you can start sudo ./install.sh

This method works.

[Raspiaudio]

A new way to install for the last version of Pi OS is out, check first message of this thread.
Tested on Bookworm 12.

[msknight]

Having problems with Ultra++ on PiZero v1 which was installed with an image about two weeks ago and updated.

Have installed the hat and drivers according to the new instructions on page 1. The soundcard appears in raspi-config. It appears on aplay -l and checking in /etc/asound.conf shows the card as the default device… however dmsg gives…
wm8960 1-001a: No MCLK configured
… and trying to aplay a wav file gives…

Playing WAVE 'LTT Theme.wav' : Signed 16 bit Little Endian, Rate 44100 Hz, Stereo
aplay: set_params:1416: Unable to install hw params:

I’m guessing that the primary problem is going to be the MCLK but being a newbie at this, that’s a guess.

I am also running MPD on this board, to act as a receiver for audio from Home Asisstant, so my ultimate goal is to use the headphone out for MPD, although I haven’t heard the quality of the on board speakers yet, so I’d like to be able to try MPD through both.

Grateful for any help.

[Raspiaudio]

Hi and welcome, please let me know what is your exact version of Pi OS that you are using?

[msknight]

Hi, thanks for responding.

PRETTY_NAME="Raspbian GNU/Linux 12 (bookworm)"
NAME="Raspbian GNU/Linux"
VERSION_ID="12"
VERSION="12 (bookworm)"
VERSION_CODENAME=bookworm

[Raspiaudio]

could you try this method 1 here :

ULTRA++ installation guide

So here is the procedure to install the workaround on the new Bulleyes 32bit and 64 bits. On one hand with this you will access only basic features like playing on speakers and record, but on the other hand this is simpler to install and more portable to any version of Raspberry OS. So this script will not install the real drivers for the WM8960 but will directly send the I2C commands to start the codec. type in a command window : git clone https://github.com/RASPIAUDIO/ULTRA.git cd ULTRA …

[msknight]

Sorry - I can’t see anything beyond “here:”

EDIT - Just as I posted that… it came up!

[msknight]

Didn’t work. Same messages in dmesg and while trying to play wav file.

[msknight]

Any more ideas on this please?

[Raspiaudio]

Last version of Pi OS introduced some modifications on the audio management system and we have not tried it on the zero since. We need to put one engineer on the task and try it in your exact setup, it can’t be done overnight because every body is assigned on something else now, but we will do it by the end of next week and post an answer here.

Thanks for your patience.

[msknight]

That would be wonderful. Thank you very much for your efforts. I’ll wait.

[LatherConch]

What a shit show of instructions/documentation and stolen code.

So what is the final way to install the old ULTRA++??

I installed the latest raspbian on a pi zero w, ran this: GitHub - RASPIAUDIO/ULTRA, didn’t work, then ran this: GitHub - RASPIAUDIO/ultra_install, didn’t work, the wm8960 service isn’t starting at all. Then I tried: GitHub - RASPIAUDIO/ultra2: This is an enhancement fork with the explicit aim of supporting current shipping Raspbian/Ubuntu kernels without requiring downgrading. Please donate at https://hintak.github.io/ if it works for you., and again, nothing works.