Problems with DGT Pi

[Cordial Iter]

I haven' been here for quite a while and am surprised how much the project improved. That's great! (and not dead, at all...)

I tried both versions from Johan's GitHub site and played with my Chestnut Air+.

The stand-alone version with an PI4 works just fine. It's fun to play through all the options.

On my PI 3B I have the DGTPi version and found some issues.

• The speed of the voices announcing the moves is terribly slow, no matter what speed I choose in the option menu.
• The sound works only over HDMI. Bluetooth speakers or AV Jack doesn't seem to be supported?!
• The clock shows only the time, or the name of the opening. I remember that the clock used to show the moves of my opponent. And there used to be a menu that was reachable by the right-arrow. Has it been thrown away?

[Johan Sjöblom]

Some quick answers/comments. Not at the computer now.

1 and 3 looks like potential bugs. 

1. If you edit picochess.ini does it then speed up (is the bug in the menu only perhaps)

3. The clock should show the engine move, and if the right double arrow does not work please check if any button work? You need to have the dgtpi setting in picochess.ini for them to work

The middle issue 2 seems like system settings in raspi-config

--Johan

[Johan Sjöblom]

Oh yes, at the moment when not on DGTPI the clock menu is not there... I am considering bringing the clock menu back also for standalone Pi/desktop.... I have brought back all the other buttons, but not the double-arrow menu buttons...

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[Johan Sjöblom]

I had a quick look at the master code. Could not find any repeatable bugs.

1. The sound slowness could be a system issue...  The menu does change the correct speed setting.

3. The clock does show the engine move, and its the double arrow that opens the menu, it should open on a DGTPI in the 4th button.

But if you can give a specific case for me to repeat i might be able to catch something. At the moment I cant find any error...

-- Johan

[Cordial Iter]

Hi!

I guess I found the reason why the clock didn't' work. And I think this might be helpful for others having the same issue.

The problem is the CPU speed of the PI. As it is noticed in the DGTPi Instructions.txt you have to set the core_freq and core_freq_min in the config.txt to slow down the PI for being able to communicate with the clock. I experimented with some values and found out that for my DGT3000 Limited Edition both values set to 300 do the job. The clock is working fine. (It used to be 500, but this doesn't work). Maybe different clocks need other values?!

But the slow speed of the voice announcing the moves remains. Sometimes it takes about 5 sec from the flashing of the Chessnut's LEDs till the voice starts announcing, sometimes some syllables are cut off.

One little bug: changing the language doesn't effect the speakers language, the picochess.ini still has en:christina. I had to change this in the ini-file.

[Randy Reade]

Yes. There's an (old) issue open for this clock issue:

https://github.com/JohanSjoblom/picochess/issues/79

For the voice speed you can try switching the audio backend to sox.

Randy

[Johan Sjöblom]

Thank you for sharing important test results. Lets see if I could automate the installation to set 300 on both when using the dgtpi install parameter. I also think we need to stay on SOX for Pi3. 

I thought I had fixed the menu setting for voice selection, obviously not, so need to check that as well. Did you test the clock menu on DGTPi or the new menu… I think I will find it anyway…

— Johan

[Johan Sjöblom]

Oh yes. The voice selection from the menu fix I did was not complete. Now I fixed the language selection in the new menu. It now changes to de:christina if you make that choice. Change the system language first, then select the system computer voice. Now it should be fixed in master.

[Johan Sjöblom]

And there is now a Pull Request (PR) with a fix that can install the correct parameters (300 and 300) and set SOX as sound. Test instructions in the description.

https://github.com/JohanSjoblom/picochess/pull/411

Finally Randy I got around to fixing this :-)

[Cordial Iter]

I tested the new install routine. It doesn't change anything because I had all the parameters set in advance. 

But the slow voice is definitely a problem of the audio backend. For the DGT Pi Sox is default. I tried to switch to "native" and to my surprise the problem vanished. Sound is okay now!

Thanks to Johan for his help and Randy who pointed to the right way of thinking!

[Johan Sjöblom]

Nice that it works.

I have updated the install so that it sets the CPU settings to 300/300 as you had tested. A fresh install will still start with SOX instead of native for a DGTPi install... That is because of the example file that we copy during new installs. But if you already have a picochess.ini it will not overwrite any values you have chosen in an existing install.

Did you experience any problems with missing libraries that you had to install or did native audio just work out of the box? I seem to remember that you do need to add some library.

-- Johan

[RandyR]

Voice speed is working for me using SoX on the stock DGTPi. And, using SoX has the benefit of normalized volume. :^)

Randy

[Johan Sjöblom]

Now thats annoying isnt it... we cant have that. I just had to make a small feature branch to test if I can normalize at least the server side sound when native is chosen instead of sox.

This is not a big change... One commit only and it mostly introduces a new function.

To test see: https://github.com/JohanSjoblom/picochess/pull/415

The branch to test is named there, it is 414-native-sound-volume

The issue is here: https://github.com/JohanSjoblom/picochess/issues/414

Comment on the issue or the PR, or simply here, it doesnt matter. Nice if someone can test this.

-- Johan

[Randy Reade]

Much better. I only tested en:christina and enabled PicoWatcher and PicoCoach but I think it's a definite improvement. Nicely done, Johan.

Randy