Tools, Accessories, and Equipment to get started

Hardware
1

We just ordered our kit.

What tools, accessories, and equipment will be helpful? Could be anything from breadboards to jumper wire, soldering iron, oscilloscope, audio interfaces, midi equipment, speakers, tools, cutters, crimpers, any speciality cables, etc, etc

2

I really jumped into this hastily. Looks like one needs to get, at the least, a Raspberry Pi. Which one? is 4 okay? I’m still looking around for info on the website and github.

3

This one looks nice.

https://www.amazon.com/CanaKit-Raspberry-4GB-Starter-Kit/dp/B07V5JTMV9/r

still, not sure at all what else is needed to get started

4

Mods, sorry but is it possible to move this into the appropriate category? My mistake.

5

Looks like there’s a bunch of stuff someone would want to get started.

Some kind of ribbon break-out cable to get to the I/O

Some kind of ribbon cable to connect to the RPi?

As asked already: Which RPi’s will work? 4 will work?

Probably other stuff.

Would be helpful to gather all of this and present the information clearly to the user when ordering the kit etc

6

Heya, answering from my phone so excuse any typos. I would go for a Pi 3 b+. I am not sure if the sdk works with pi 4 yet. Also check out the mutable instruments breadboard friends. There are a few places that sell them in kit form. Very handy.

7

Hi!

For the time being we support only the RPi 3B / B+, the RPi 4 will be supported early next year, sooner is unlikely.

You do not strictly need to be comfortable with electronics to use the board, you can make a user interface for your system by remote-controlling our Sushi headless-DAW over Open Sound Control and/or gRPC. The UI could be on a touch-screen tablet, or PC/Mac, for example made using Lemur, TouchOSC, or Open Stage Control.

Best,
Ilias B.

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9

The enclosure in the Pi kit above would be too small to contain the Elk hat.

Are there off the shelf enclosures that would fit?

10

Björn was kind enough to contact me with the below info. Figured to post it here and keep the discussing going!

What you need to get started is the following:

  1. USB to UART adapter
  2. HDMI monitor + Keyboard
  3. Ethernet connection on PC

You can connect the Raspberry Pi to your computer with the Ethernet cable. If you want to connect potentiometers or buttons with a breadboard you will need male to male jumpers.

11

There’s a tweak you’ll need to make to the sd card to allow the keyboard USB to work.

Per another post:

You’ll have to edit the file /boot/cmdline.txt and remove the part that says dwc_otg.speed=1. This will break some MIDI USB devices, it is an issue on the RPi 3 single-board computer which only has an OTG USB controller.

12

Hi @Dauq,
the tweak was only in the preview image for beta testers.

Next release will have the default switched back to USB 2.0 for this reason. Unfortunately, with the USB controller set at 2.0 speed, most USB MIDI devices will have issues due to drop packets.

This is an issue purely on the Raspberry Pi 3 Single Board Computer, which only has the USB controller in OTG mode. See also this discussion on Raspberry Pi forums.

So, for the next release, you’ll have to change the parameter if you want to use USB MIDI devices. We have UART MIDI available on the Elk Pi, too.

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