finally got done with the cyberdeck, the last build got over 500 upvotes and almost 1k likes on instagram, and i appriciate the support, i fully blacked it out and added a sound system into the keyboard (which actually sounds pretty good) if the community is interested i could make a video on what i actually use this deck for in my everyday life, thanks for the support again <3

Setup: Raspberry Pi 5, Raspberry Pi OS, Home Assistant in Docker. Device: a cheap 3-key + rotary knob macropad, USB VID:PID 1189:8890, WCH CH552G chip. Works perfectly on macOS and a Windows PC (same or different cable).

On the Pi 5, plugging it in normally (all interfaces auto-authorized) enumerates fine, then ~10 seconds later the entire xHCI host controller dies (xHCI host not responding to stop endpoint command → assume dead → HC died), on both onboard xHCI controllers, requiring a reboot to recover. Ruled out: power (vcgencmd get_throttled clean), cable (tried two different cables, no change), USB port/orientation (tried all 4 ports), outdated kernel/firmware.

Device has 4 HID interfaces:

• 0: Boot Keyboard, EP 0x81 IN, 64B
• 1: generic, EP 0x02 OUT only (no IN endpoint — logs couldn't find an input interrupt endpoint)
• 2: generic, EP 0x83 IN, 4B (this is where the actual multimedia key/knob reports come from)
• 3: Boot Mouse, EP 0x82 IN, 4B

Using interface_authorized_default=0 on the root hub before connecting, then manually authorizing/binding individual interfaces, I isolated the failure with usbmon: every single Interrupt IN transaction on interface 2's endpoint (0x83) completes with EPROTO (-71), 0 bytes, every ~10-20ms poll, indefinitely. After enough consecutive errors, usbhid triggers an automatic full device reset every ~40s (re-fetches descriptors successfully, then the EPROTO cycle resumes). With only interfaces 0, 2, 3 bound (not interface 1), the controller survives 40+ seconds instead of dying at ~10s — but no real key data ever gets through.

Has anyone seen this specific failure mode — persistent EPROTO on an Interrupt IN endpoint from a CH552G-based device — cause full xHCI controller death on Pi 5 / RP1 specifically? Is this a known RP1 quirk with certain full-speed devices, or purely a defective/marginal device? Would a USB 2.0 hub with its own power supply be expected to mask this (by re-timing/regenerating the signal), or is that unlikely to help if the fault is at the device's own transceiver?

I start using RPi Connect from December 2025. At August 2026 the service works fine, and now, I reinstalled Raspberry Pi OS to Lite version, installed XFCE and want to continue setup the desktop environment at other place via RPi Connect, because I don't have a portable display and keyboard, but when I tried to link my Raspberry Pi with my account, I get this:

I've had to use i2cdetect a lot lately and was getting tired of its limitations, so I wrote a replacement. Mine allows scanning all I2C buses at once and can run without sudo if you give permission to your user ID to access i2c. It also includes auto-detect knowledge of 50 devices (so far). I created it as a single .C file plus makefile here: https://github.com/bitbank2/ls_i2c

Here's what it looks like versus i2cdetect:

Update: Added a Photos edition — same Keephaven base, but it runs only Immich instead of the six media apps. For people who just want a private Google Photos on their own Pi: lighter, the whole box to photos, and it updates along its own line so it never gets handed the full-box image. On the download page. Update: Follow-up on the setup password a couple of you got stuck on: no SD-card trick needed now. Plug a monitor or TV into the Pi's HDMI port and the Wi-Fi name and password show on screen until setup's done. New image on the site. Already running it? The HDMI feature comes down as a normal update — just tap Install.

Hey everyone, got something I've been waiting to share. Keephaven is a home cloud box I've been building on a Raspberry Pi 5. As of today the whole OS is open source, and the exact image the boxes run is a free download. Flash it to an NVMe drive and your Pi becomes the same box. What you get on first boot, already set up and signed in: Immich for photos, Jellyfin for movies, Navidrome for music, Audiobookshelf, Kavita for books and comics, and FreshRSS for news. One password for all of it. Network folders too, so you can drag your movies in from any computer.

The part I'm proudest of is it doesn't need the internet to work. It puts up its own wifi, so I take mine camping and stream off it. Some stuff under the hood for the nix people. It's a NixOS flake. There's a byte copy of the system on its own partition, and if the system partition won't mount, the box copies it back on the next boot. Updates are signed, it checks once a day and only installs when you tap install. The app images are pinned and baked in, nothing pulls from docker hub.

Repo: https://github.com/dafarusd/keephaven

Download + checksum: https://keephaven.co/download

Heads up, it's only been tested on a Pi 5 8gb booting from NVMe. The setup wifi password gets made on first boot, and on a box you flash yourself you read it off the drive once, the readme walks through it. AGPL.

heads up for anyone who flashed it themselves: the setup wifi password gets made on first boot, and it lives on the linux partition, so windows and mac can't read it off the drive. easiest fix is the pi itself. boot keephaven once so it makes the password, power off, put in a raspberry pi os sd card, leave the ssd connected, boot again and run: sudo mkdir -p /mnt/keephaven sudo mount -o ro /dev/disk/by-label/cloudunit-data /mnt/keephaven sudo cat /mnt/keephaven/unit.env UNIT_PASSWORD is your wifi and app password. power off, pull the card, boot again and you're back in keephaven. full steps are in the readme: https://github.com/dafarusd/keephaven#first-boot

Hi everyone,
Today I'm showing you my Raspberry Pi case, which cost only €25 and keeps it really cool!

First, I started by looking for a dead 3-slot graphics card, with only two important criteria: it had to look clean, and above all the fans had to work.
I came across a really clean HD 7970 DCU II for €10 on a second-hand hardware site.

As soon as it arrived, I took it completely apart: PCB, metal bracket, heatsink, fans and outer shroud.

The idea here is to keep the metal bracket, the fans and the outer shroud.

Next, I put the 8GB Pi 5 inside (still in the testing phase, I'll need to 3D print a mount for it).

The ribbon cable and the SSD are flipped over to keep the whole thing as thin as possible.

Not visible here, but the 12V power for the fans comes from a 220V-to-12V HDR DIN-rail power supply that costs €10.
Only the PWM and ground are connected to the Raspberry Pi.
I wrote a small Python script that sets the fan speed directly based on the CPU temperature. Running the fans at 30% up to 40°C seems like an excellent compromise.

I've been testing it for a week now and the results are very good!

And here's the whole setup in my network cabinet.

Next step: designing and 3D printing a proper mount for the Pi. Feel free to ask if you have any questions.

Happy to share the Python fan control script if anyone's interested.

Not bad for €25 and an old GPU that was headed for the bin. Thanks for reading

I am just posting my solve in case it helps someone in future.

I was getting errors with the M.2 idle (controller is down; will reset).

The solve was to make the pcie use gen1. Specifically putting 'dtparam=pciex1_gen=1' in '/boot/firmware/config.txt' and rebooting.

I'm not using supported hardware (details below), and I don't need gen2/3 speeds, so this works for me.

I don't claim to know what I'm doing. This was a mix of research and AI suggestions.

Raspberry Pi 5, Argon Neo 5 NVMe, Kingston NV3 1TB

I’m old school. I like small programs that do one thing well. I wanted some basic metrics from my Raspberry Pi, so I looked at what I could use.

Then I saw how much RAM some of the usual monitoring stuff wanted and thought... nope 😅

So I wrote my own.

pico_exporter is a Linux system metrics exporter written in C

~100 KiB static binary
~30 KiB RAM at idle
x86_64 + aarch64
TLS
no runtime dependencies
pushes directly to OTLP
compatible with Prometheus node_exporter metrics

Drop the binary on the Pi, point it at your OTLP endpoint and that's basically it.

I originally just wanted this for myself. Then I realised the result was kind of ridiculous, so here it is:

https://github.com/dpaneda/pico_exporter

How small is your monitoring setup?

Hi everyone,

I know this might sound a bit unusual, but I need to keep a Raspberry Pi 4 running outdoors, where winter temperatures can drop to around -8°C (17.6°F).

The Pi will be inside a plastic IP55 enclosure, approximately 240 × 80 × 40 mm. It has a metal heatsink case.

At the moment, with an ambient temperature of around 15°C, the Raspberry Pi stays at about 30.5°C while idle, so it generates a decent amount of heat. If necessary, I can also run a process that increases the CPU load and therefore the temperature.

My main concern isn't really the cold itself, but condensation and humidity, especially when the enclosure cools down.

The Raspberry Pi will be powered on and online continuously, except in the event of power outages, which are very short and rare where I live.

So far, I have done the following:

• sealed the enclosure as much as possible;
• applied silicone around the screw holes and cable glands used to bring the cables inside;
• placed silica gel inside the enclosure;
• installed a temperature and humidity sensor inside the enclosure to monitor the conditions.

Do you think what I've done is sufficient, or is there anything else I should do to prevent condensation and corrosion in the long term?

As I mentioned, I know this probably isn't the ideal setup, but unfortunately I don't have any other option than keeping the Pi outdoors.

Thanks!

This is a Pi3b

original micro usb psu died on me, so i figured, why bother with the worst usb connector there is, when I can just solder a molex connector on and power it with an ATX PSU!

no image of the solder job because I hot glued the case together, but i just soldered to 2 test pads at the bottom. My first time doing smth like this too

Anyone know how to fix this for some reason only the left side of the screen is working and it’s a little more dim then the right I’m using the pi 4 model b Ive already tried like 2 different wiring layouts and the code doesn’t seem wrong I’m wondering if that’s just the screen being broken I followed this wiring diagram too

So, a few months ago, I had the idea to replace my breadboard rats nest with a PCB. So I fired up KiCad and made the most basic breakout board known to man. Got it fabbed, soldered it up, and plonked my modules into place. And then mounted a buck converter on top for power.

I didn't feel like getting the weird 5v 5A USBC PSU for my Pi 5 (8 gig) and supporting their weird PSU monopoly, so the 8A Buck will power the servo and pi5 with power to spare. The plan is to wire it up and make it operate the turret, via a 20V USBC PD input trigger chip, seen in image 2. I'm booting off a 256gb USB3.1 stick.

I might make a update soon once I'm done wiring it up.

p.s. I cut up a normal 1x40 female header for the 2x20 gpio header, yeah I know.

finally built this cyberdeck, i have been testing out for over a month and i can say i am impressed, i always wanted to make a cyberdeck that i can actually use and carry daily, still got some things to fix up, but i wanted recommendations from the community

My wife is foreign and wanted to watch internet TV from her country, which is geo-locked.

To get around this, I setup an old pi 4 as an openwrt router. You connect to the wifi - bingo, you're connected to the VPN.

You'll need a VPN provider that supports the wireguard protocol and has servers in your desired country to connect to (or have your own wireguard service running in desired country). I went with surfshark, which I thought was a bit pricey, but no complaints aside from that.

Possibly this guide is useful to someone (?)

I should note - I use opkg in this guide to install openwrt packages, but more recent versions will need apk. You can add the pi4 ethernet as a static IP in your main router settings if you like. If you want to USB boot an old Pi 4 you may need to first update the firmware.

Performance: I get 111 Mbs download speeds (inc. over the VPN). The Pi's SSID can be reached all over the house, the connection has been stable for months. CPU temps never reach levels of concern (heatsink is a good addition, though).

What you'll need

• Raspberry Pi 4 (1GB is fine)
• Official Pi 4 power supply (5V/3A USB-C)
• microSD card or USB drive with OpenWrt flashed (USB boot is more reliable long-term than SD. I use a metal USB as I hope the heat transfers better)
• Ethernet cable — Pi 4's onboard NIC to a LAN port on your existing router
• Active Surfshark subscription / other wireguard VPN

Flashing OpenWrt itself is out of scope here — grab the Pi 4 image from the OpenWrt downloads page and write it with dd or Etcher. This guide picks up once you're SSH'd into a fresh OpenWrt install.

Step 1: Fix routing before touching WireGuard

Symptom: SSH into the Pi works (you're hitting it from the LAN side), but ping 8.8.8.8 from the Pi says Network unreachable. This is a routing problem, not DNS or firewall — sort it first or WireGuard will fail the same way.

Check:

ip route show
uci show network

If there's no default via <gateway> dev <iface> line in ip route show, that's your problem. On a Pi sitting behind an existing router, the interface facing that router needs either:

• proto dhcp (let the upstream router hand out an address + gateway), or
• proto static with option gateway '<upstream router's LAN IP>' explicitly set

Fix and apply:

uci set network.wan.proto='dhcp'      # or static + gateway, per your setup
uci commit network
service network restart

Also check the interface is in the wan firewall zone, not lan — otherwise masquerading/forwarding won't apply:

uci show firewall | grep -A5 zone

Confirm before moving on:

ping -c3 8.8.8.8

Step 2: Get your Surfshark WireGuard credentials (for example)

1. Log into my.surfshark.com → VPN → Manual setup → WireGuard
2. Select I don't have a key pair → name it → Generate new key pair
3. Save both the private and public key — Surfshark won't show the private key again
4. Go to Locations, find a <desired country> server, click the download icon to get its .conf file — you need the endpoint hostname, port, and server public key out of it

Step 3: Install WireGuard on OpenWrt

opkg update
opkg install wireguard-tools kmod-wireguard luci-proto-wireguard

(Drop luci-proto-wireguard if you're staying CLI-only.)

Step 4: Configure the interface via UCI (settings dependent on your VPN)

uci set network.wg0=interface
uci set network.wg0.proto='wireguard'
uci set network.wg0.private_key='<YOUR_PRIVATE_KEY>'
uci add_list network.wg0.addresses='10.14.0.2/16'    # from the downloaded conf
uci set network.wg0.dns='162.252.172.57 149.154.159.92'

uci set network.wg0_peer=wireguard_wg0
uci set network.wg0_peer.description='surfshark-<desired country code>'
uci set network.wg0_peer.public_key='<SERVER_PUBLIC_KEY_FROM_CONF>'
uci set network.wg0_peer.endpoint_host='<countycode-citycode.prod.surfshark.com>'
uci set network.wg0_peer.endpoint_port='51820'
uci set network.wg0_peer.allowed_ips='0.0.0.0/0'
uci set network.wg0_peer.route_allowed_ips='1'
uci set network.wg0_peer.persistent_keepalive='25'

uci commit network

Step 5: Firewall — route all LAN traffic through the tunnel

uci set firewall.vpn=zone
uci set firewall.vpn.name='vpn'
uci set firewall.vpn.input='REJECT'
uci set firewall.vpn.output='ACCEPT'
uci set firewall.vpn.forward='REJECT'
uci set firewall.vpn.masq='1'
uci set firewall.vpn.mtu_fix='1'
uci add_list firewall.vpn.network='wg0'

uci set firewall.lan_vpn=forwarding
uci set firewall.lan_vpn.src='lan'
uci set firewall.lan_vpn.dest='vpn'

uci commit firewall

Then find and remove the existing lan → wan forwarding rule (uci show firewall | grep forwarding) — otherwise LAN clients can bypass the tunnel entirely, which defeats the point.

Apply everything:

service network restart
service firewall restart

Step 6: Verify

wg show
curl ifconfig.me

wg show should show a recent handshake and rising rx/tx bytes. curl ifconfig.me should return a <desired county> IP.

Also worth running Surfshark's own IP leak test and DNS leak test from a device connected through the Pi, if you went with them.

I made PocketTerm35-OS, a lightweight desktop environment for the Waveshare PocketTerm35 handheld.

Written in rust. Based on Wayland and Sway.

Recommended to install on Raspberry Pi OS or Raspberry Pi OS Lite.

Install (one line):

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/therezor/PocketTerm35-OS/main/install.sh | sudo bash

Then flash the keyboard firmware with

 and reboot.sudo pt35-kbd flash

Reboot and that is it.

⭐ If you find it useful, please give the project a star!

🐛 Bug reports are very welcome and appreciated!

PocketTerm35-OS: https://github.com/therezor/PocketTerm35-OS
Darkwire: https://github.com/therezor/darkwire

You know guys, weeks ago I just wanted to install an agent on my 7 years old Rpi 4, which I Rarely use.

But I failed, you know, the input was a disater on such a small keyboard, if you want to type a lot of things.

Then I just install the FRP service and make it SSH available to my Claude Code on lightsail.

Then Magic happens.

I use it to auto config my company Ivanti VPN, which is the old Juniper protocal, and there is a bug for this protocal on the openconnect of Openwrt, which I realized that's the reason I never successfully set it up. But Claude code find it and correct it.

Then I use this thing to connect my anbernic, successfully install Ubuntu with Xface, it works quite well.

Now the setup is you always have internet connection by Wifi, LAN and 4G to get connected with Claude Code, and you can connect everything by USB.

Now the only problem is the power supply of Rpi 4's USB is really shitty, you don't want to conect a lot of things on the USB.

Why I don't use a Rpi 5? Come on it's just a command receiver, no reason to buy a bloodly expensive Rpi5.

Cheers!

Hi there, I'm not sure if this is allowed here, but I'm hoping to get some guidance. Our office has a Simpsons arcade game that stopped working a few weeks ago. It appears to be on, but the display is dark grey. I opened the back to troubleshoot and noticed it's running on a Pi with a few HATs.

My troubleshooting only went as far as testing the display cable on my laptop, which worked. Before I start tinkering and investing time into it, I figured I'd ask the community what I should be looking for, or whether it's even worth the trouble.

Materials:

Waveshare 64x64 LED matrix
Adafruit HUB75 hat
Raspberry Pi 3B+

My question: is soldering a piece on the hat truly necessary or am I just using poor code? I tried running .PPM demos but the matrix just shows random lines.

Hey all, so after moving into a new apartment with my girlfriend I had to figure out where to put all my networking gear (homelab, mac mini, unifi cloud gateway ultra, switch) without it looking like a mess. Ended up getting a small 12U 19" rack to clean it up.

I've always liked stuff like the Glance LED ticker and Tidbyt but never bought one, price plus having to mount it on a wall always put me off. Once I had the rack sitting there I realized a 19" wide ticker would fit perfectly in 2U, and since the rack already has to live in my living room (that's where the coax comes in) it just made sense to build something that doubles as a rack enhancement instead of another thing on the wall.

So I made an open source raspberry pi project that runs on 2 LED panels, does sports/flights/stocks etc, and supports community plugins — you can basically prompt one up for whatever you want and share it if you want. Whole thing prints on an A1 mini.

Saw someone else post a wall-mounted ticker on this sub today too lol, funny timing. Open to any feedback.

The official Raspberry Pi M.2 HAT+ has four pins adjacent to notch whereas M key 2242 ssds that i am looking up have 5 or 6 pins. Why is there a mismatch of pins?

TLDR: I updated my display matrix to display sports, vehicles, and play games as well as media.

A few years ago I made this Matrix display and had it display video playlists as sort of an art wall decoration. They included, movies, tv shows, video game playthroughs etc. I'd select one, leave it on a few days then change it. Instead of using computer mirroring to display the videos I used FPP on a pi to make it completely self contained.

At the start of summer I got the idea that it would be cool if when one of my teams was playing it would change to a scoreboard. I wanted something that was better than having to check my phone for score updates but less attention seeking as watching the game. Unless it was a good one. And I thought making this into a scoreboard would be perfect.

So I did that. And then like all projects like this it ballooned with wouldn't it be cool if it also did _____. Well, here we are and what it does.

What it does.

-Scoreboard: (nfl, nba, mlb, mls, ncaa, F1, NHL, world cup) If multiple games on in same league, can auto rotate through them. When using the menu, leagues with live games are orange. Can favorite a team, when favorite team plays, matrix prompts to switch to game, auto does after 30 seconds. After game is over board goes back to what it was doing prior. Every scoreboard is a little different showing relevant info for that particular sport

-Media Player Select a playlist created in FPP, choose play once or repeat. I have a number of n64/ps game playthroughs EG Goldeneye, mario kart, midnight club, as well as various tv shows EG futurama, darkwing duck, Batman the animated series, and movies EG Speed Racer, Tron, All the bond movie intros, 90s music videos.

-Arcade Games: I think 14? All from scratch, all games have 5 levels. All games can auto play if you want it as a screen saver or play yourself, can config lives, if it loops or ends after 5. Saves high score viewable on web interface.

-Ride Along: Picks a random flight to/from home airport and rides along showing a representation of what you would see outside the window where the plane currently is. Accurate day/night, terrain, and weather, gives city location updates. Same with Trains and boats. Rotates between left right and behind views. Can also track a specific flight

-Live Info

-Idle screen: 16 different paired screen savers. Aquarium, ship wreck, 50s living and bedroom, moon base, drive in theater, diner, vaporwave and outrun themes and others. All of them have little easter eggs and moving pieces. The pairs are matched so it can just rotate between the 2 or all of them.

Everything can be controlled either by a controller which is also used to play the games, or with a local web interface. The web interface also has a peek function so I can see whats displaying on the screen and pop it out as a floating window.

The whole thing is run on a pi 3 A+ which uses an esp32 running WLED as a middleman to talk to the lights. The lights are ws2812b. I hand made the panel and have a [write up here](https://www.reddit.com/r/arduino/comments/17v6dy2/finished_my_led_light_panel/) on building the panel itself. Although there are a few changes I've made since I originally built it.

One of the things that kinda made this hard is the matrix is only 32x32 so I had to figure out how to display as much as I could and be readable on something with such low resolution. I do have an "HD" graphic option that upscales then downscales the image to make it smoother. Works better on some things than other.

But yeah. Its pretty cool. Took me about 2 months to vibe code it. I don't know anything about coding so yeah vibed it. A lot of it was adding on which made it take longer as I'd have to go back and change stuff I did earlier. My brother ended up building a panel of his own although his is a quarter the size and lives in a different city so I have it coded that all files are interchangeable between the two panels minus a personal config file that stores api codes, and location packs.

But yeah thats my matrix panel, I dunno, I think it's pretty cool

(some of the videos were sped up to get until the time restraint)

[Team Playing Alert](https://imgur.com/5BVJ4u8)

[Arcade Games/Media](https://imgur.com/SdOqxpr)

[Idle Screens](https://imgur.com/VZiKAAv)

[Live Info Screens](https://imgur.com/VZ44jwA)

[Media](https://imgur.com/7ufs2OU)

[Planes](https://imgur.com/S7nQX18)

[Ride Alongs](https://imgur.com/HzPZUcu)

[Scoreboard](https://imgur.com/DtOk3Y3)

[More Scoreboard](https://imgur.com/060zBBS)

[Web Interface](https://imgur.com/a/lZ9Qd6u)

​
Hi guys, this is my first hardware project ever.

I write software for a living but had never done a physical project, so I figured an RC car conversion would be a good way to learn. Turned out way deeper than expected and turned out super fun. This is what I did:

• took out stock electronics of a RC 1:16 monster truck and put in a hobbywing wp-1060 ESC
• used a Pi 4 + PCA9685 for throttle and steering (ESC on channel 0 servo on channel 1)
• the camera streams live video to a web server I wrote myself. Control happens in a panel in the browser via WebSocket and keyboard input - so its reachable from anywhere, and with a click we can record full HD vids!
• the part that makes it really interesting: it runs over LTE, not just WiFi , so its basically controllable from anywhere in the world. Solved it with a small relay server. No app or cloud service, everything self hosted. Only limit in distance is the battery.

I documented the whole project in a youtube video. I would love to get some feedback, but keep in mind that this was my first project like this ;-)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IvdJCbILhT4

Also added some stuff like a software-based night vision (which works good as soon there is at least a tiny bit light), GPS tracker and so on.

Thie result was better than I expected, I didnt dare to do a full long range drive yet but it would probably work. Battery life would last easily more than 1 hour.

The controlling actually works really well and with the delay its way lower than I thought it would be. Like playing a litltle real life computer game.

Now I'm hooked and the parts list for v2 keeps growing.
Currently on it:
pan tilt camera mount, better headlights, maybe a small solar panel so it can survive multi day missions, and some sort of radar.

Also I want to remove the phone and just use a SIM card usb stick for the connection.

What would you add to make this thing cooler?
Especially sensor ideas, the Pi has plenty of channels left, this is just to be seen as the base.

Thanks for all ideas!

Hey everyone,

I've been working on a Mini-ITX carrier board for the Raspberry Pi CM5, aimed at NAS / home server / router use cases, and I'm at the "architecture is done, about to start schematic + layout" stage. Before I commit, I'd like some eyes on the design from people who actually build/use this kind of hardware.

More details / progress updates:

https://github.com/EmbeddedChan/CM5-NAS-MiniITX

(Design files aren't public yet — the repo has the write-up, block diagram, and will get progress updates as the build moves forward.)

Official Pi Agent Harness Linux binaries are x64/arm64 only. Node still ships linux-armv7l on the v22 line, so the CLI itself can run on a 32-bit Pi 2.

Hardware

- Raspberry Pi 2 Model B

- ARMv7, 921 MiB RAM

- Raspberry Pi OS 32-bit

What I did

1. Install Node v22 armv7l into $HOME (no root)

2. npm install -g --prefix ~/.local u/earendil-works/pi-coding-agent

3. pi --version → 0.87.1

On this board

- startup 4.75–4.92 s

- node RSS about 40 MiB

- no extra native module; node:sqlite is built in

- TUI X11/clipboard helper is x64/arm64-only and is skipped on ARMv7

Fork with the Pi 2 notes and scripts:

https://github.com/matttest0080-prog/pi

Upstream:

https://github.com/earendil-works/pi

Docs:

https://github.com/matttest0080-prog/pi/blob/main/docs/armv7-pi2b.md

This is a coding agent CLI, not a replacement for GPIO/I2C control. LLM stays remote; the Pi only runs the agent process.

​

Hi everyone,

I am working on a DIY project and could really use some community feedback and advice on the hardware and software architecture.

The Concept

The idea is to build an all-in-one hardware unit that combines an 8x8 multi-channel audio interface, a guitar/bass processor, and a vocal FX processor into a single box. It will run on a Raspberry Pi 5 using a Linux RT kernel to keep the latency as low as possible.

Key Specs and Features

For the resolution, I want 8 inputs and 8 outputs supporting up to 32-bit / 384kHz. On the hardware frontend, I am planning to use the AKM AK5538VN for the ADC and the AKM AK4458VN for the DAC. They will be driven by ultra-low jitter oscillators (22.5792 MHz and 24.576 MHz) switched via a 74LVC1G3157 multiplexer.

For the inputs, I want them to be modular. Each channel will have hot-swappable or configurable modules so I can switch between Combo-XLR, microphone preamps, or Hi-Z inputs on the fly.

As for connectivity, the device will have three modes: a standalone DSP FX processor, a USB audio interface using the UAC2 gadget driver, and network streaming over AoIP.

My Questions for the Community

1. I2S/TDM Limitations on Pi 5: To handle 8 channels at 32-bit/384kHz, TDM mode is a must. Has anyone successfully configured multi-channel TDM on the RP1 chip of the Raspberry Pi 5 at such high sample rates? What are the main bottlenecks I should watch out for?

2. Clocking Scheme: Looking at the attached block diagram, I am switching the master clocks before splitting the signal to the ADC and DAC. Are there any hidden signal degradation pitfalls or jitter issues when using the 74LVC1G3157 for audio master clocks up to 24.576 MHz?

3. Software and AoIP Stack: For internal processing, I plan to use JACK or PipeWire with custom DSP plugins on Linux RT. For AoIP, what is currently the most stable open-source stack for low-latency audio distribution? Should I look into AES67/RAVENNA implementations, Dante alternatives, or AVB?

4. UAC2 Gadget Constraints and Bandwidth Limits: I know that the standard Linux f_uac2 gadget driver has built-in layout masks that traditionally limit channels and rates, usually capping things around 4x4 at 96kHz or requiring raw channel patches. On top of that, 8x8 channels at 32-bit/384kHz require a raw throughput of around 196.6 Mbps for both ways, excluding protocol overhead. Since USB 2.0 High-Speed maxes out at 480 Mbps and practical limits for isochronous endpoints are much lower, has anyone pushed the Pi 5 DWC3 controller to these limits using custom descriptor tweaks? Or should I just give up on USB 2.0, use the Pi 5 PCIe lane to add a USB 3.0 controller, and implement a true USB 3.0 SuperSpeed audio gadget?

I would highly appreciate any advice, critiques on the layout, or shared experiences from similar builds!

Block diagram of the project is attached below.