Category: firmware

All about firmware versions

Long time no update – new firmware

As I got serval requests for support of the Pi5 and also better support for Pi4 I updated the firmware image to the latest “Raspberry Pi OS” (by the time of writing 32-bit version from Nov/19/2024).

So this means I decided to go away from dietpi the distribution that was used so far. Even so dietpi claims a fast bootup time and better sd card lifecycle, this has not really proven in the past.

Boot up time

Boot up time is around 15 sec with Pi5 with the new image, all others (Pi3B, Pi3A, Zero 2) are at 24 sec, when using a “UHS Speed Class” card. Which is faster than before.

On image fits it all

Also Raspberry Pi Os runs on all supported hardware, dietpi has different versions for Pi5 and below.

Ram logging

To still prolong the sd lifecycle there is a new option enabled by default: logging to ram or main memory. This means logs are not persistent on the sd card, but only available while the system is running.

This means if you need to send my a log file, you either turn ram logging off, or you grab the log file via the web ui while the system is running.

Still beta, but please try

The latest image and firmware is still beta, so expect maybe a glitch here and there. I tested boot up on Zero 2, Pi3A, Pi3B, Pi4 and Pi5.

And Pi5 also “in the machine” so far all looks goods.

So please try it out and report feedback to me at steve@tiltaudio.com.

Download the beta here.

PS: today I fixed some bugs and further optimized startup time and sd card lifecycle:

– turned off swap
– disabled a couple of services
– bugfix for local AP not starting correctly

Security note

SSH is enabled by default and the initial user is not changed. So before putting the pi into a (public) nezwork please change the password of the user pi.

Creating a sd card

If you have a good linux experience it is easy to create a bootable sd card for TILT!Audio with arbitrary size.

For everybody else just use the standard method and flash the standard image with etcher.

Just use a normal micro sd card if size 8GB, 16GB or 32GB. These normally come with just one big fat32 formatted partition. TILT!Audio uses the fat32 partition not only for booting, but also as storage for sound packages.

What you need to do is create some space after the fat32 partition for the linux part. In Ubuntu you can just use parted or gparted to shrink the fat32 partition to a smaller size that leaves about 4GB unassigned space.

GParted after partition resize (and flushed filesystem)

After that use fdisk to create a second primary partition (linux type) that starts right after the fat32 partition. Just check the end block that fdisk displays for the first partition and add 1 block.

fdisk showing both partitions second starts right after the first

Such a prepared micro sd card then can be filled with data:

  • fat32 (boot) partition: just extract this zip
  • the linux partition can be “flashed” with dd using that image.

Creating your TILT!Audio sd card this way is much faster than flashing a 16GB image and you can choose what size of sd card to use.