Zynthian Kitless and Hopefully Headless

Introduction

Well what can I say about Zynthian except wow. This is the open platform Synth users have been looking for;

• Multiple Synth Engines
• LV2 effects 
• Audio and MIDI recording
• MIDI routing
• and much more.

But hang on .... before you can say RPi's don't cost 285.00€. Sure you can DIY but I think you would be pushing it to source all the components let alone come up with an as neat a solution. Its horses for courses whether you are looking for your next electronics project or a new instrument (some assembly required!?!).

So where am I at with it. I am interest in the kit but I want to check out the functionality now.

So that means I need to set up an image on my RPi 4 (and 3B+) to run with a mouse, HDMI TV (with digital audio). I want this to work on my wifi network. Ultimately I would like to see if I can run this headless over wifi on a RPi Zero with a USB Sound card. This looks possible with the command-line UI over SSH.

Zythian Kitless on Raspberry Pi 4/3B+

Following the wiki on getting the software.

1. Downloaded the image. 6.3Gb download. 12Gb expanded onto SD Card.
2. Flashed using Balena Etcher onto at a fast (100Mb/s) SD Card with a min 16Gb capacity .
3. Set up RPi with mouse and HDMI connected.
4. Connect Ethernet cable between your notebook and the RPi
5. Insert SD card and power up.
   Note: You should see some typical RPi linux booting text and and then to a blank screen. It probably will crash and seem stuck in a rebooting loop but do not worry. WebConf-UI is running in the background and  is up enough to change the hardware settings to stop the reboot loop. I got this from the forum. Here and here.
6. Connect to the WebConf-UI http://zynthian.local/
7. The web config tool will load and ask for the admin password. The default password is "raspberry".
8. You need to change the default hardware to the following either from clicking on items in the main page or the Hardware drop down menu or the links as below.
9. Go to http://zynthian.local/hw-kit and change to a CUSTOM kit (last option).
10. Go to http://zynthian.local/hw-audio and change to RBPi On-Board Audio.
11. Go to http://zynthian.local/hw-display and change to Generic Hdmi Display.
12. Go to http://zynthian.local/hw-wiring and change to Dummies.
13. You can also set up wifi at this time under the System dropdown menu or go to http://zynthian.local/sys-wifi.

This got me to this with a slightly off screen UI. I think this is an issue with my monitor. [solved] it was the TV screen fitting on my Samsung TV that was over scanning.

You can see the UI dials left and right that can be manipulated via mouse. You have a mous cursor that you can use to click through the menus. The top black bar is a Back Button. To the right you can see a green bar which can be CPU or Audio Level (via WebConf-UI  under the Interface drop down menu UI Options Http://zynthian.local/ui-options).

I was able to get sound out over the HDMI to the TV by setting up a Sound Engine Layer connected to MIDI Ch 1 and connecting my MIDI keyboard to the USB on the RPi.

On Going Headless

My first pass (yes I am upto about 5 so far) at building for my RPi4 I just winged its and put WPA_SUPPLICANT.conf on the SD card. It conneted to the network. I was able to access http://zynthian.local via wifi from my notebook and made the changes to WEBCONF to support it working without the default hardware.

This worked ONCE! And I haven't been able to reproduce this!

I think this is more an issue with my home network as my workshop area only has 75% SNIR. [not the real reason]. I think it was actually my WPA_SUPPLICANT.conf upset the Zynthian config ... I need to sort out a bit more what is going on with WPA_SUPPLICANT and the Zynthian wifi.

Stuff that Geeky Headless Stuff .. Lets Play

Might have something to do with my personality but I got way distracted this afternoon playing with my new shiny synth. Oh if you want to be boring ... there are user guides too.

• Step sequencer with a song mode!
• Load up the Special Layer Mod-UI so you can play with a virtual pedal board from your browser
• Increase the font size so you can read it without your glasses on. http://zynthian.local/ui-options

Other More Boring Things I have Learned

• Raspberry Pi Ethernet socket can automatically crossover (as well as normal) so you can wire LAN directly between a notebook or two Raspberry Pi's with a normal cable.
• When a desktop is too big for the TV its proably overscan or sizing on the TV that is causing grief ... not the computer.
• WPA_SUPPLICANT.conf can break wifi on Linux ...  gotta love it!
• In the main menu. ALSA Mixer can fix up the PCM gain on the RPi internal audio (thanks here)