Thanks for fast response & succinct infos!

You're right about the ADC High-pass switch -
I managed to turn it off within alsamixer (already installed when using Patchbox OS) -
took me a while to figure out "m" is used to toggle this (for future reference/newbs like me)
The ADC channels differential vs. single-ended conversion type can also be set in there.

Toggling the HP switch & using single-ended setting (/wo RCA breakouts) we've measured that the card can capture
both AC and DC signals between 0-5V (cca. -200mV and +5.1V to be precise) before clipping/distorting.
For future readers I'd emphasize what has already been mentioned - it makes sense to be cautious when
handling the card (esp. around header pins) in order to avoid introducing static electricity into it - I think we managed to destroy 2 inputs
by not being careful enough so they now only read a very noisy signal (self-noise probably) and don't respond to external signals.

I will report with more on this when we unscramble the inputs - maybe this pin-death turns out to be software related and they really aren't fried and if not, it's
collateral for lessons learned :)

V V ned., 9. maj 2021 ob 23:32 je oseba Matt Flax <matt@audioinjector.net> napisala:

Hi Staš,

On 8/5/21 3:10 am, Staš Vrenko via People wrote:
Hey,

I'm working on a project in which I'll use the Octo soundcard for capturing, processing, and outputting DC voltages.

Sounds like an interesting use for the Octo.


Using PD (Pure Data) for signal generation and a digital o-scope for measurement, me and my colleague managed to output DC voltages (directly from positive pins, not using breakout RCA boards) of approx. 0.77V (@amplitude of -1), 2.44V(@ 0) and 4.2V(@ +1). The negative pins output an inverted signal (same p-p though).

The DC INPUT testing (not using breakout RCAs) was a bit confusing.

There's a channel number re-assignment problem when Pure Data gets opened and closed or when RPi gets rebooted. I've read it can be related to a driver problem?

It isn't too hard to unscramble input channels if they are scrambled. This code does it :

https://github.com/flatmax/gtkiostream/blob/master/test/ALSAFullDuplexMinScan.C#L40-L72

One way to use it with PD is to create an ALSA plugin which applies this code on input channels. Then you could start PD with that plugin.


Getting the AC signals into PD was easy but there was no such luck with DC - so I'm
wondering whether DC capturing has been tested/proven to work?
If it has - could it be that there's a DC filter somewhere in RPi signal path (JACK, etc.)?

Both input and output should be capapble of DC coupled signals. Is it possible that alsamixer has the setting for a high pass filter or DC removal set ?

I notice in the ALSA mixer there is the high pass filter switch :

https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/sound/soc/codecs/cs42xx8.c#L92


Otherwise, it's a great card & hats down for developing a custom IC!

thank you
Thank you for your answer, best,
Staš :)


    
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