[Installing Pure Data On Raspberry Pi
Saija Grzegorek
I just got a Pi 3 and managed to get pure data (vanilla) up and running over the weekend. It is working really well.
I never used a pi before, and after seeing the critter and gittari organelle I really wanted a small machine to run my pure data creations on.
Anyone else out there trying this?
I have 3 RPi now, 1 in my workshop as an internet radio, it is an old v1 model B running MPD with the adafruit pitft, then I have a model 3 in my living room running retropie for oldschool gaming fun and another card for general messing about, then I have the Fuze -rpi-c1/keyboard with a model 3 it has a decent GPIO board with some analog outs, I plan on using it for prototyping and just messing about with.
Definitely check out SonicPi, in case you did not know it is a live music coding app based around Ruby and Super Collider, I have found it to be very interesting and much more powerful than expected, you can set up quite complex musical structures, you can even use your own samples with it. Well worth spending a few hours fiddling with it, I found it easiest to load the examples and edit them, got some cool stuff happening in next to no time. It also has a built in audio recorder to capture your jams. Highly recommended!
Another excellent app is SEQ24, it is a midi sequencer designed to be simple to use like the old hardware sequencers like MMT8, Q80 etc but it take things a bit further, you can do all manner of time signatures, each track can have its own length and signature, and tracks are mapped to the keyboard for easy pattern mute jamming, very stable and reliable and the timing seems excellent. It can support multiple midi interfaces and even works well with those cheapo chinese USB-Midi cables.
I bought myself a raspberry (2 I think) last summer and managed to get it up and running in quite basic way. Never done anything in Linux before so lots of new/different/confusing stuff. But anyway, I managed to get my display running (5" touch, adafruit), so I at least could see its status. Then I managed to get an remote wifi connectivity with my Win 7 laptop by following an instruction that someone had in his blog. Then my SD card somehow broke, and when trying to get a new one up and running my laptop suddenly isnt really enjoying seeing SD-cards any longer. Tried with two different card readers as well as different cards, with no difference as far as I could see. Now I dont remember the exact issues, but some searching on internet pretty much confirmed that Win 7 could be very finicky in this aspect as it were the exact same error messages I got.
wondering if any of you regular Pi folks know whether one can run PD or less basic alsa commands at teh terminal level as scripts etc - i.e. can PD be run at some level without starting a PI GUI environment
Not sure that PD could be run that way, but perhaps ALSA can be deployed which might be a bit more tedious - anyway, anecdotal feedback about there being zero hit for loading the GUI would be interesting to hear about - keep in mind this is the very first Pi
Then the thought struck me, with all these original iphones lying around - surely there may be a way to present data over the network such that the phone can present an interface of sorts (not a remote desktop view or a SSH terminal view) but a way to tackle this issue in preference to possibly using the OLED
OLED/pots/encoders
main advantage is it standalone.
writing to oleds is pretty simply esp. since a lot of them use the same I2C or SPI protocols,
so there are a ton of C++ libraries, or even python to help with interfacing to them
similarly there are a ton of open source projects you can go check out the code for.
Good shout - I did use an app on the og iPhone that required addressing the phone with openGL through an external in a Max environment. It shows, along with those linked apps( one of which I definitely have), that something could be in reach that way.
I have a project involving playing multiple audio files at once. My go to option was to use WavTrigger but I might need extra manipulation on the audio files rather then only a volume control and play/pause/stop the files. This is the reason I think about using Raspberry Pi with Pure Data instead of the WavTrigger.
In arduino in order to received the data from the outside world(sensors) you need to write the code in the arduino ide .
When using max msp with arduino I could either use Maxuino or using the Serial object. Either way I needed to use the Arduino.
This circuit connects to two Analogue to Digital converter channels connected to the Raspberry Pi's GPIO pins. If you don't have one already then you can simply use the one described in the Drum sequencer project in MagPi 68.
In the arduino if I am connecting the middle lug of a potentiometer to A0 and the other two lugs to +Vcc and GND I could read a continuous data of voltage between 0 and +5V that is represented as numbers between 0 and 1023 (10 bit number)
the ADC is converted the variable voltage between 0V and +5V to on off state that later on will be represented again in the Raspberry pi (or in our case in the pure data software) as continue numbers between 0 - 1023 ?
if I want to use the arduino for reading the analog data from sensors how can I pass it to the Raspberry pi (and to pure data)? connecting the arduino TX pin to one of the spi gpio at the raspberry pi?
Yes you need to use the Serial data GPIO pins, but you have to cut down the 5V TX from the Arduino down to 3V3 before it is connected to the RX pin of the Pi. Use a potential divider with a 1K and 510R resistor. But you still need to power the Pi with its own power supply so there is no point.
if so, so I can power the Pi via the micro USB port, then connecting the Pi +5V pin to the Arduino Vin pin and then use the Arduino pico mini USB port or the arduino uno USB port to connect to the Raspberry Pi USB port for communication between the two?
If I would like to run pure data on it and playback some audio files. how can I do it?
Can I place the audio files on the Pi desktop and read those files in pure data from a buffer or something similar?
Does the internal 1GB memory of the Pi 2 model B is enough for running Pure Data and reading audio files (that could be up to 512MB size) or I should installed the pure data and placed the audio files on external micro sd card?
The only image for ARM that has Pd installed, that I'm aware of, is Satellite CCRMA. But again, I'm not sure it's still maintained. You can just download the sources from Pd's website and compile yourself. The INSTALL.txt file is pretty clear as to what you need to do to install it.
That's if you want the latest Pd. Otherwise you can just type this in a terminal:
sudo apt-get install puredata
which will probably give you an older version of Pd, like 0.46-2, or maybe 0.47, not sure. Still that should be good enough (especially if it's 0.47, cause it includes the deken plugin for easily installing externals).
In addition to terminal you can use the graphical file browser (I dont have NOOBS but I would assume this is the same for Raspbian Jessie/Stretch and Noobs..but maybe not).
If you click the top right of the GUI you get a menu and under one of those tabs is something that says "get software" or something...under Add or Remove Programs I think (sorry to be vague, this is from memory)
This allows you to access the respository of programs without Terminal.
You can ind Pd in there.
Also all the libraries.
I think you have to search them individually so maybe just start with what you think you want or need, you could base this on what you are using in Extended already. The reason for this is that there are a lot of libraries and downloading many of them this way can take a very long time.
Installing Pd with apt-get gives you vanilla (which is better since Extended is no longer maintained), but there's a bunch of externals available from the repositories. Type this in a terminal:
apt-cache search ^pd-
and you'll get all the available externals (like pd-zexy, etc.). Then you can use apt-get install to install the ones you need.
That means that Pd is not installed in your system. Type this:
dpkg -s pd
and post the output here. If the package is installed, then this command will return an "installed ok", otherwise it will tell you that the specific package is not installed in the system.
Since you're the kind developer of Purrdata: why don't the old patches for Pd-extended work flawless? See this topic about the super great Miniwoog patch. I like to use the wonderful patches from But if they do not work anymore... For instance: from the Miniwoog patch the "on screen" keyboard does not work, neither can you load the presets. Sorry to bother you. Thank you for continuing the great Pd-extended work.
You may want to customize the command line arguments for Pure Data according to your own needs. To do that, check the Pure Data's Command Line documentation and edit /usr/local/pisound/scripts/common/start_puredata.sh.
plugdata comes with the ELSE library installed by default, providing a wide range of general-purpose objects that offer high-level abstraction on top of pure-data. plugdata also ships with the cyclone library, to make Max users feel at home when they use plugdata.
plugdata integrates with the Heavy/hvcc project to allow patches to be converted into C/C++ code. It ships with a compiler toolchain to make exporting plugins, or running patches on the Electro-Smith Daisy platform a piece of cake.
plugdata is fully cross-platform, and is available for most common processor architectures. Officially supporter operating systems are Windows, macOS and a wide variety of Linux distros. Run your patches on a PC, Mac and even Raspberry Pi. plugdata can also run on FreeBSD when compiled from scratch.
plugdata is fueled by a passionate group of volunteers who are dedicated to providing an exceptional user experience. Our commitment to open-source principles ensures that plugdata will always be free and open for everyone to use and contribute to.
795a8134c1