How to Setup M8 Headless with M8C on a Raspberry Pi

[@ywenp]

One thing I don't understand is that the Teensy is perfectly able to deal with screens directly via the SPI pins, and it has an internal DAC. I suppose that's how the regular M8 deals with its screen (although maybe it has a dedicated, separate DAC for analog audio output). Is that deactivated in the M8 headless firmware? If so why? And if so why not use the regular M8 firmware and hook up a SPI screen directly to the teensy?

[@dviant13]

I have just recently started to look at this project. This is a great question

[@dalevanmail]

I got this up and running on a 3B+ ... Unfortunately I'm getting intermittent clicks and pops in the audio output... It appears Laamaa now recommends using PulseAudio loopback (which is what I've done) instead of JACK... But obviously I'm not loving the clicks. Have you tried PulseAudio loopback as well? Just curious if you've found it more (or less) reliable than JACK. Thanks for the great tutorial!

[@Two-Eyed_Boy]

Always appreciate a good Pi project. This is one of the more exciting ones!

[@villagenumerique9085]

Thanks Man for all the videos you have done on the M8 Headless really useful waiting to get the hardware but not before september for me ... :-( have you ever tried to use a gameboy with a rasberry P4 in order to use the M8 ? i know you can find custom gameboy mounted with a rasberry P4

[@KandMe1]

Thank you, easy to follow, just ordered 2x 3.5 touch screens online here in Australia for the pi’s, they said sending immediately. I have the pi’s just need a few teensy’s now. This seems a good way to go and super cheap because the device is steep and long waiting list because of lack of chips. And also need a decent midi interface, not sure what is needed there. Probably I should be more focused on the interface.

[@modology]

does M8C works without graphic desktop mode? possible to run from a minimum raspbian with no desktop installed?

[@Digiphex]

I see Adafruit has a 3.5 inch touchscreen, though out of stock. Is this what you are using? How do you enter data do you have some buttons?

[@Emefak]

Would it be doable to have a full fledged M8 using a Teensy, a Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W, a capacitive touchscreen, and a Keypad? Maybe an audio shield for the Zero would be needed?

[@TOMMYOOST]

its struggling on a 3B+ which is more powerful than a Zero 2.

[@timothylamb7861]

Awesome! It should be noted that the frame rate looks fairly lackluster. It should be 60FPS. But I imagine the Pi struggles a bit.

[@littlescalemusic]

Yeah for sure - the frame rate is not great, but it is still very useable. Thanks so much for your work on this Tim, and for the headless version - I'm loving it!

[@tumultex]

is it possible to run this as a standalone on raspberry pi zero? Also, if I wanted to fit the whole into a custom gamepad, how would I connect the actual buttons to the functions within m8 ? thanks

[@goesbysteve]

I think you may be asking too much of a pi zero but I could be wrong. You’ll still need a teensy. How to wire up buttons is a much larger and off topic question I feel. You can start by looking at how to add momentary push buttons to a pi using gpio. There should be lots of article on that if you Google. You’ll then need to get these to show up as ascii key presses in the pi os. M8 should then be able to see them. If you want a stabs almond display look at a 3.5” touch screen that connects to the pi connector not hdmi. If you follow this video and attach a hdmi mini monitor to the pi you will be able to work without a separate computer. He’s using VNC or Remote Desktop I think here but you don’t have to.

[@tumultex]

@@goesbysteve thank you so much for all these details man !

[@Rr12NewZealand]

Do you have any updates? I am also interested in putting it inside a gamepad. Also you should be looking for the updated raspberry pi zero 2 w instead of the zero.

[@quinxx12]

Is there a similar way how MIDI out can be enabled, maybe directly from the teensy. I dont see anything about MIDI in the github repo

[@PDRIFT86]

Is it possible to add buttons to the teensy for control like the actual m8. I'd like to add this to my portable pi project with buttons to control it.

[@connorcarbon]

Any thoughts on how to fit all this and power all this inside the shell of the PiBoy DMG by Experimental Pi? I have a theory and I guess I might as well give it a shot, but you might have a better one

[@jg8124]

hi, It seems that I cannot run the command to start the program. it gets as far as finding the m8 and opening the port but then it says that it is aborted. any help would be greatly appreciated

[@OPdbx]

Were you able to fix this issue? I'm having the same problem.

[@10kfreemen]

Thank you for your service!

[@VirusUploadMusic]

Aw this is what I've been waiting for! Have been looking for a decent enough intel sbc to run windows in kiosk mode for weeks now lol Any idea if/how this would work in patchbox os?

[@laamaa]

I would imagine that it runs just fine, as it seems to be based on Raspberry Pi OS

[@beatnikcafe]

Would it be possible to run multiple headless Teensy M8s at the same time using just one main computer as the host?

[@littlescalemusic]

I'm sure you could, actually. Not sure on the pi, but on a Macbook - why not? Each would just appear as its own serial port and you could make an aggregate device for the audio input

[@beatnikcafe]

thanks!

[@EricFoster]

I'm slowly collecting the parts to do this... And maybe this is a dumb question... But the Raspberry Pi has an audio jack, could that be used?

[@arixshow]

Yes, instead of using card 0 for hdmi you would use card 1 for headphones. Changing hw:0 to hw:1 in the respective command.

[@shoba7665]

Would there be an easy enough way to make the Pi auto boot into m8 headless in full screen?

[@jerrymk6846]

The m8 headless firmware is only for the Teensy, and since it is not open sourced, that is all you get from DirtyWave

[@granolakitti8521]

Is the raspberry pi zero fast enough for this?

[@littlescalemusic]

I don’t think it would be

[@MikelaMenace]

it's possible work with raspberry pi zero 2w ?

[@littlescalemusic]

I would be surprised if it was powerful enough but I haven't tried it!

[@robotriddims]

i'm pretty sure the answer to this will be "no"... but anyone got any idea how old a Pi I can get away with? I have what appears to be a 1st generation model B revision 2.0 that needs a purpose... guessing that's kinda ancient history though...

[@robotriddims]

for anone else wondering the answer to this question - i've got the display working so far, we'll see about the audio tomorrow! assume this will work though as it is just routing audio from the Teensy I assume. frame rate is a bit slow for the waveform display I think, but looks pretty useable. definitely need the OS version with the desktop or it will not run.

[@absint0o]

@@robotriddims dos you get the screen and audio working? As I can't get my hand on a original M8 i would like to build my own! Does the M8 uses teensy on top of the raspi or uses other board?

[@modology]

@@robotriddims just wondering if Teensy can output HDMI or RGBS out for crt screen?