You rock!

( Urban Dictionary: You Rock )

Hi Patrick,

WRT official support Mike Powell, the element14 Wolfson Audio Card Project Lead, contacted me by email, and is looking into why the file is unpackable by (some) OS X users.

So there is official interest in solving the problem. Hopefully he and his people will get to the bottom of it.

Thanks to Laura Moore at Wolfson Microelectronics for passing my email on to Mike.

Geordie

I had to email the PR people at Wolfson to get any response from Element14. Mike Powell emailed me Thursday morning asking for info which I provided but two days later I am still waiting for him to get back to me.

Here is his email to me:

Hello Geordie:

I’m Mike Powell, and was the project lead for the Wolfson Audio Card here at Premier Farnell (= Farnell/Newark/element14).

I’m sorry you are having difficulty unzipping the OS/driver package we prepared. I have organised that, today, we will verify the file is still in good shape by going through the download/unzip process ourselves, again. I have somebody pulling the file down now, and we should have a result later today. If it works, that doesn’t help you, I know, but it will verify the file itself is in good shape.

The file itself was prepared using native Windows 7 compression tools, and unzipped using them too. I also used a number of different decompression tools to decompress the file too, successfully. We also carried out a significant verification exercise on this, and can assure you that the unzip process was designed not to be reliant on Microsoft Windows in any way, but rather a generic format that most OSs could deal with.

Additionally, not to minimise the issues you raise, we’ve seen loads of downloads and successful deployments take place so far.

It sounds like you know what you are doing, so, I’d like to know what platform you are using, and what tools you are using to decompress the file. You mentioned that you have tried this on two platforms – what are they?

We’re looking in to publishing the MD5 checksum as well so that users can verify the download went well.

I’ll let you know later when we have a result on the above, but in the meantime if you could let me know what systems you are using, we can go from there. Once we have you up and running, and have identified the issues, we’ll make sure other users don’t experience the same thing.

Thanks and regards,

I still have the flu.

I'm still bored.

So, I've made a smaller download for you, containing only the kernel, modules and use case scripts.

It's meant to go on top of an existing Raspbian installation.

I have only tested it on 3.10.25 from the 2014-01-07-wheezy-raspbian image. YMMV, No warranties, Caveat emptor and so on...

The archive contains:
boot/kernel_wolfson.img              # The kernel.
lib/firmware/...                     # ... with subdirectories. Firmware for various hardware.
lib/modules/3.10.25_Wolfson+/...     # ... with many subdirectories. Kernel modules.
home/pi/.asoundrc                    # From Wolfson's NOOBS image. Creates a "Master" volume control.
home/pi/use_case_scripts             # Wolfson's and some of my scripts.

The archive doesn't overwrite your current kernel or modules. It does overwrite /home/pi/.asoundrc if it exists. If you have customized your .asoundrc, make a backup of it first.

To install:

• Become root: sudo -s
• Go to root directory: cd /
• Untar the archive: tar xvzf /path/to/where/you/saved/kernel_3_10_25_wolfson.tgz
• Add the line
    kernel=kernel_wolfson.img
  to the file /boot/config.txt
• Reboot

If it doesn't work, you can revert to your original kernel by just removing the "kernel=kernel_wolfson.img" line from /boot/config.txt

File name is kernel_3_10_25_wolfson.tgz
Size is 17MB
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BzIaxMH3N5O1RnJfcGVpdmY1T1E/edit?usp=sharing
md5sum dec8d63b3c42846e54082c7c6ff1834f

The Wolfson-patched sources I used to build it, with .config, ready to build.

You don't need them, I just want to make them available.

File name is kernel_3_10_25_wolfson_src.bz2
Size is 99MB
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BzIaxMH3N5O1ZlNuSkVCUzR0djQ/edit?usp=sharing
md5sum 4811e56887bfa1988bbb7686b1e21e83

Source tree I patched: https://github.com/raspberrypi/linux/commit/c43739885d512c92c0aa443b5895b96df5141da0

--

Ragnar

Hi Patrick, Ragnar and Geordie et al,

I am really pleased to see the developments you have made on your compressed image files - nice work !

The reason we helped create the download Wolfson image (with help from the guys at Wolfson) in the first place was to provide you with a simple way of obtaining one self contained image that had everything needed to get you up and running with the Wolfson card.

We are currently working with the developers at Wolfson and the RPI Foundation to get the drivers uploaded into the official Raspbian Kernel.

This download image is only ever intended to be a temporary measure, and we will be removing this image as soon as the Wolfson drivers are embedded into the official Raspbian kernel. Once complete, you will only need to do an "apt-get upgrade" to download the kernel drivers for this audio card.

We are expecting this work to be completed within the coming weeks and I will update this thread again once this is completed and provide instructions on how to update your standard Raspbian builds to install the new drivers and additional software needed to run the Wolfson audio card.

Hope this helps address any queries on support from e14 and Wolfson.

Andy

Thanks Andy, that's good news.

And Ragnar - thanks for all your efforts. Hope you feel better soon.

Hi Ragnar!

Im trying your download, but i only end up with a kernel oops when loading the wolfson module. 

On 3.10.25.

What could possibly be the cause?

/J

Hej Bengan!

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but I have no idea

You're the first person reporting problems.

Could be a broken sound card, corrupted SD card, bad connection...

Hard to tell without seeing the error message.

Have you tried the official element14 image? http://downloads.element14.com/wolfson/wolfson_3.10_master.zip?COM=WolfsonAudioCard

--

Ragnar

Just one question:

when I install the new wolfson-Kernel: how to install further music programms as volumio e.g.??

- or must I install the nedded utils myself (alsa-mixer, mpd,....)

- or are there complete images with wolfson-drivers and music packages

Volumio isn't a program you install on your currrent OS. It's a complete Linux distribution with its own streamlined kernel, applications and customizations.

Volumio comes as one big image file you burn to the SD card. As far as I know it doesn't have support for the Wolfson card yet.

It may be possible to switch out the kernel and modules, but I don't know.

The only complete media-player type image with Wolfson drivers I'm aware of is SqueezePlug.

--

Ragnar

Hey Ragnar,

Any chance you could upload your Module.symvers from your kernel build?  I'd like to build the RTL8188CU wifi module driver against that kernel, but I'd rather not wait however many hours it takes the Pi to build the full kernel.

Thanks,

Ben

Here you go!

--

Ragnar

The only complete media-player type image with Wolfson drivers I'm aware of is SqueezePlug.

Thank you for your reply, so I'll try Squeezplug...

By the way: in the "normal" DL-image you wrote, ist there a mdp-player included?