seeed-voicecard

The drivers of ReSpeaker Mic Hat and ReSpeaker 4 Mic Array for Raspberry Pi.

ReSpeaker Mic Hat

While the upstream wm8960 codec is not currently supported by current Pi kernel builds, upstream wm8960 has some bugs, we had fixed it. we must it build manually.

Get the seeed voice card source code.

git clone https://github.com/respeaker/seeed-voicecard
cd seeed-voicecard
#for ReSpeaker 2-mic
sudo ./install.sh 2mic
sudo reboot

Check that the sound card name matches the source code seeed-voicecard.

#for ReSpeaker 2-mic
pi@raspberrypi:~/seeed-voicecard $ aplay -l
**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 0: ALSA [bcm2835 ALSA], device 0: bcm2835 ALSA [bcm2835 ALSA]
  Subdevices: 8/8
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
  Subdevice #1: subdevice #1
  Subdevice #2: subdevice #2
  Subdevice #3: subdevice #3
  Subdevice #4: subdevice #4
  Subdevice #5: subdevice #5
  Subdevice #6: subdevice #6
  Subdevice #7: subdevice #7
card 0: ALSA [bcm2835 ALSA], device 1: bcm2835 ALSA [bcm2835 IEC958/HDMI]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: seeed2micvoicec [seeed-2mic-voicecard], device 0: bcm2835-i2s-wm8960-hifi wm8960-hifi-0 []
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
pi@raspberrypi:~/seeed-voicecard $ arecord -l
**** List of CAPTURE Hardware Devices ****
card 1: seeed2micvoicec [seeed-2mic-voicecard], device 0: bcm2835-i2s-wm8960-hifi wm8960-hifi-0 []
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
pi@raspberrypi:~/seeed-voicecard $ 

Next step

Go to https://github.com/respeaker/mic_hat to build voice enabled projects with Google Assistant SDK or Alexa Voice Service.

ReSpeaker 4 Mic Array

The 4 Mic Array uses ac108 which includes 4 ADCs, we also write ac108 rapberry pi linux kernel driver.

git clone https://github.com/respeaker/seeed-voicecard
cd seeed-voicecard
sudo ./install.sh 4mic

#reboot your Raspbian OS
sudo reboot

Check that the sound card name matches the source code seeed-voicecard.

#for ReSpeaker 4-mic
pi@raspberrypi:~ $ arecord -L
null
    Discard all samples (playback) or generate zero samples (capture)
playback
capture
dmixed
array
ac108
default:CARD=seeed4micvoicec
    seeed-4mic-voicecard, 
    Default Audio Device
sysdefault:CARD=seeed4micvoicec
    seeed-4mic-voicecard, 
    Default Audio Device
dmix:CARD=seeed4micvoicec,DEV=0
    seeed-4mic-voicecard, 
    Direct sample mixing device
dsnoop:CARD=seeed4micvoicec,DEV=0
    seeed-4mic-voicecard, 
    Direct sample snooping device
hw:CARD=seeed4micvoicec,DEV=0
    seeed-4mic-voicecard, 
    Direct hardware device without any conversions
plughw:CARD=seeed4micvoicec,DEV=0
    seeed-4mic-voicecard, 
    Hardware device with all software conversions
pi@raspberrypi:~ $ 

If you want to change the alsa settings, You can use sudo alsactl --file=asound.state store to save it.

Test:

#for ReSpeaker 2-mic
#It will capture sound an playback on hw:1
arecord -f cd -Dhw:1 | aplay -Dhw:1

#for ReSpeaker 4-mic
#It will capture sound on AC108 and save as a.wav
arecord -Dac108 -f S32_LE -r 16000 -c 4 a.wav

uninstall seeed-voicecard

If you want to upgrade the driver , you need uninstall the driver first.

pi@raspberrypi:~/seeed-voicecard $ sudo ./uninstall.sh 4mic
delete dtoverlay=seeed-4mic-voicecard in /boot/config.txt
delete snd-soc-ac108 in /etc/modules
------------------------------------------------------
Please reboot your raspberry pi to apply all settings
Thank you!
------------------------------------------------------
pi@raspberrypi:~/seeed-voicecard $ sudo ./uninstall.sh 2mic
delete dtoverlay=seeed-2mic-voicecard in /boot/config.txt
remove seeed-2mic-voicecard.dtbo in /boot/overlays
remove snd-soc-wm8960.ko
delete snd-soc-wm8960 in /etc/modules
------------------------------------------------------
Please reboot your raspberry pi to apply all settings
Thank you!
------------------------------------------------------

with Google Assistant

if you run the assistant but the playback is speed up considerably, try to configure alsa:

sudo cp asound.conf /etc/asound.conf

If the alsa configuration doesn't solve the issue, try to use pulseaudio. See #4

Enjoy !