# $70 all in one mumble server and wifi



## jtweigandt (Dec 9, 2017)

Just completed an experiment. Raspberry pi3 kit. Loaded mumble server on it. Modified the wifi settings so the pi is now it's own wireless router with wpa2 security. It works dandy with the phone app. It starts just by plugging in the power. No monitor, no keyboard. Just power supply and the pi in it's case ... about the size of a deck of cards. Stand alone system, no internet connection needed or desired.

Range on the wifi looks good so far. From my bunker/basement to the second floor of my house with no dropout. Am going to test in the theater this weekend for range and coverage. I do have the option of testing an external antenna version if range is a problem. Would add 15 to 20 bucks to the cost. 

Can be done on the pi zerow as well.. I will probably test this as well... which literally can give a school or community theater full duplex, low latency via wifi and phone app. for 25 to 30 bucks.. 

if range is a problem, wifi repeaters could be used in theory. 

Stay tuned. If there is interest out there, I could probably burn the microsd cards and send them to interested parties to plug in to the pi of their choice for the cost of the sd card and a few bucks for the burn and postage. 

Disclaimer.. the sd is theoretically vulnerable to corruption in an uncoordinated power down.. since we are not using keyboard/monitor. I've had this thing up and down lots of times now without incident.. but insurance would be keeping a second sd card handy and ready to plug in if need be.


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## Footer (Dec 9, 2017)

You could just take the image if the card and post that... much easier then snail mail. 

Be careful with 2.4ghz and an enviroment with lots of wifi devices. Pi's tend to get overwhelmed pretty quickly in dense wifi environments. Even if there is not a lot of devices on the network having 500 phones in the room looking for wifi can be a problem.


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## Amiers (Dec 9, 2017)

To add to that you should make it so the network is hidden so you have to manually type in the network. Next you need to test with multiple devices running off it st the same time. Whatever the amount you will have in the theater plus spares. 

Then you can truly say you’ve tested this. 

Personally I would say spend the 15$ for th extra antennas.

I would eve go so far as to say placing some range extenders around that can connect back to the Pi. 

I trust the software as I have used it many many times but it’s the capability of the hardware I think is what will fail you.


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## EdSavoie (Dec 9, 2017)

the pi3 is probably serious overkill for this. Once i'm back in ottawa for the holidays, i'll dust off the old Model B 512 and see if it can accomplish the same.
Setting mumble to intercom-like quality settings (SPEEX codec, really low bitrate.) it should be able to handle as many users as you can throw at it.

If i'm feeling adventurous, I might run an Open Lighting Architecture server on it as well, see how that performs.


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## jtweigandt (Dec 9, 2017)

Interesting about the wifi being overwhelmed.. unfortunately I won't have a "full house" environment till next spring.. Still even auto logging the pi into a conventional router. it makes a pretty good mumble server. 
I just thought the all in one solution would be an interesting alternative, since it would be zero configuration plug and play. Wonder if the overload the wifi problem could be overcome, if one used a dongle style usb antenna unit... would add 15 bucks to the cost.. but what the heck. Right now I use an older router, a pc server, and hard cabled cat 5 to some used cheap thin clients. I might be able to see how this washes out at a local 70 seat house though. Not sure what they use right now.

Amiers said:


> To add to that you should make it so the network is hidden so you have to manually type in the network. Next you need to test with multiple devices running off it st the same time. Whatever the amount you will have in the theater plus spares.
> 
> Then you can truly say you’ve tested this.
> 
> ...


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## Amiers (Dec 9, 2017)

Well then I would suggest you have a movie night that would involve kids/adults with phones and have them all connect to the mumble server and get her a test. Charge em 5$ a ticket and it will pay for the server and test it all at the same time.


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## jtweigandt (Dec 9, 2017)

Amiers said:


> Well then I would suggest you have a movie night that would involve kids/adults with phones and have them all connect to the mumble server and get her a test. Charge em 5$ a ticket and it will pay for the server and test it all at the same time.


 I do like the way you think..

The range test was pretty good today. Iphone went all over the stage and backstage with no dropouts Pi up in the booth 500 seat house... Old Ipad which has a crappy wifi antenna was adequate on stage and wings.. dropped backstage in dressing rooms. 3 stations running and communicating with very little latency. Our router signal (which we have as a hidden sysid) was visibly stronger of course, but the pi was impressive 

Instead of movie night, I may just go to the movies someday soon with the pi in my coat pocket (did I mention it runs really well on a 1500ah battery pack?) and have a couple of assistants sit across the theater and log on in a "cell phone rich" environment. Folks are on their phones all the time during the commercials before previews, so no one would raise a red flag if a couple of folks talked into a mumble app. Darned if I don't love me some tinkering in the wintertime.


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## Amiers (Dec 9, 2017)

Lol you could do that. Just have someone handing out mumble info as they walk in. A lot of work but an easy way to test it. It would be in an uncontrolled environment. So it would test it pretty well. Downside is not many ppl bring earbuds with them so you will get a lot of chatter if you don’t force PTT.


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## Scarrgo (Dec 10, 2017)

I must be living under a rock, but are you using this(mumble) as a wireless com?
if so, would this be able to connect with house com?

oh so many questions....

Thanks for taking the time...

Sean...


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## jtweigandt (Dec 10, 2017)

Scarrgo said:


> I must be living under a rock, but are you using this(mumble) as a wireless com? if so, would this be able to connect with house com?


the Mumble server is a pc or linux based program that sets up a live full duplex voice chat room on the machine of your choice. 
It can operate over wifi, or a cat5/6 wired standard pc network .. you can even bridge to the internet and talk from across the world.. The client machine (comm station in our case) can be a desktop pc, laptop, ipad,android tablet, android phone, or iphone.

The user can be voice activated, or set up as push to talk. Standard earbuds, earbuds with microphone, phone headsets, pc headsets, and just open phone work. I cannot get the phone or tablet app to behave with bluetooth earbuds.. but it works like a charm with the wired ones.

At our theater, we use the mumble server on a pc in the booth, hooked to a standard wifi router thats not hooked to the internet. It is on a totally closed internal network Stage left and Stage right have small used HP5740e thin clients and Logitech 800 wireless
bluetooth headsets. Stage left and right can roam about 30 to 40 feet from their base wirelessly this way. Booth staff is normally tied to the base pc. Booth staff cuts in their iphone to go out to lobby at intermission and monitor the bathroom line, or pre show to check the busses that bring in our patrons.

When we did "into the woods" our 4 tree onstage ballet crew had their phones cut in to have eyes in the sky for positioning and cues. 

So yes if you have a phone, it is wireless comm limited only by the distance of the wifi signal. If you have someone moderately well versed in electronics, you could use one of the
"in/out " jacks to your standard in house comm as a microphone/speaker combo to a pc running a mumble client. You would need to make up a patch cable and possibly have something to work
to match the voltage/impedance between the comm system and the pc input. Could do it with a cheap phone as well. Then that mumble client would be a bridge between your standard in house comm
and your additional wireless phones or pc stations.

Best part is the software is open source and free. Very stable and mature. 

So the point of the current experiment is to create a low cost, plug and play all in one wireless mumble server, the size of a deck of cards and perhaps as cheap as about 25 or 30 bucks. Taking what I am
already using to the simplistic zero configuration, cheapest config of mumble I can create. Hand a 30 buck tiny case and power supply to a school drama teacher, plug it in, and it's ready to go with no configuration.
just download the mumble app to their phones, log on to the wifi (password protected) enter the ip address of the mumble server, and voila... wireless stage comm. 

The raspberry pi computer has already been proven robust enough to handle the server duties. So I know beyond a doubt it can do this linked to a standard wireless router.. but that takes a few hands on configuration steps. I now
want to test the little gem set up as all in one.. being it's own router in a very wifi crowded full theater to see if my zero configuration dream is really achievable. If it is, then literally poor schools all over the country could have
wireless comm for as low as 30 bucks using a rasperry pi zero, with no pc skills, just plug and play. As it stands right now... standard mumble config isn' that hard, but you have to have a moderately tech savvy person set it all up.

You can say that I'm a cheapskate.. but I'm not the only one. I hope someday you'll join us... and the stage crew can live as one. (sorry John)


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## jtweigandt (Dec 10, 2017)

to be more precise on the house comm to mumble link.. Mumble client speaker output goes to House comm mic input, and Mumble client mic input goes to house comm speaker output. Would start with the pc output wayyy low... so you don't overdrive the mic input on the house comm.... Better yet .. get confirmation from someone who knows what the house comm input should be able to handle.. output .. no biggie..

could test on a pc/and cheap usb sound dongle you don't care much about and might work with just a patch cable config.. or as mentioned before, might need something between to match voltage and impedance between the 2

if you fry the usb sound dongle.. Again.. it's the mic input that might be sensitive...what's 15 bucks for science? More likely, if you don't have a match, the input or output might be over driven one direction or the other and distorted. That could be cleaned up with some tweaking by someone who knows how to match such things.


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## jtweigandt (Dec 10, 2017)

or just brainstorming more... gaff tape 2 headsets.... mumble and house comm Microphone to earpiece and microphone to earpiece. Proof of concept, but likely low quality
might surprise us though.. safe and decidedly low tech.

I just found this via Dr Google... just what we're talking about for 95 bucks..

http://avlifesavers.com/ccint.htm


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## EdSavoie (Dec 10, 2017)

To summarize a mumble to comms system, you would need to have a mumble user (possibly on the pi itself, using a usb line-in dongle) acting as the bridge.

If you are industrious, you could have two dongles, one for channels A and B. You would then only need to manually configure each mumble client to use the respective inputs / outputs.


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## Amiers (Dec 10, 2017)

You don’t need two dongles just set up two different voice channels in the one mumble.


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## EdSavoie (Dec 10, 2017)

I mean for two physical bridges, if you wanted separate A and B channels to match up with a given clearcom system


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## jtweigandt (Dec 13, 2017)

Ok more fun and games. Got the pizero W It will run the same microsd card with no modification. The wifi coverage seems to be identical to the pi3
It also integrated seamlessly with the Linksys range extender I had already. Tested pizero loaded with 6 stations no problem. All in all though, I would choose the 
pi3 for ease of administration, and also because it has a hardwired network connector as well, it bridged nicely to my wired network to link the wireless and wired segments
It is also easier to hook up to a keyboard, and monitor without micro to regular converter cable. Pi3 also has better access to the sd slot, if you have to swap in a fresh to replace a corrupted one.
Pi3 kit also comes with an sd card reader, and there's a one click clone feature on the Raspian desktop to make a backup copy. I did set up the zero so that I can use VNC when using it headless to gain access
to it's desktop and settings without having to physically hook up a monitor or keyboard. I am going to test in a school auditorium soon with their math teacher/tech guru. He can probably 
do a load test for me too if they have an assembly or other event. All in all things are looking up for cheap communication. Only 25 bucks difference between the zero and the 3. 

Also ran a 3 on battery pack (10 buck cell phone charger) for about 3 hours last night. Had it set up like a "belt pack" 20 bucks for headphone, 60 bucks for pi3 kit 10 bucks for battery, and 15 for usb sound output. 105 bucks for an auto connecting belt pack limited only by wifi distance isn't bad. Of course priced cheap cell phone android... 30 bucks + 20 buck headphones is a 50 buck belt pack... Need to keep em charged during the "off" time though. If cell phones go down for too long.. some don't come back. Battery pack on the pi is instantly swappable... so there is something to like about that.


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## jtweigandt (Dec 13, 2017)

Got a Logitech professional grade DECT headset USB interface to the pc. Wohoo. Has a very sturdy heavy charging base. On headset volume control, on mic mute with an LED indicator at the mic tip to show muted. I hooked it to one of my thin client pc's in the concrete basement.. went upstairs then outside my brick house, and walked down the street another 200 feet before the thing dropped out. Absolutely crystal clear. Seamless re connect as I walked back in range. This will be my replacement as folks abuse/ break the bluetooth Logitechs. This one also has a metal band for the head adjust.. much sturdier and forgiving than the plastic on the H800 bluetooth. Quite comfortable. 120 bucks to upgrade to basically full facility roving with nothing strapped to my belt. Configured instantly with the pc.. Couldn't get the sound to work with the pi and this headset as a mumble client yet.. but havn't fiddled with all the settings. Can see the $70 mumble server thread also for more fun and games.


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## jtweigandt (Dec 15, 2017)

Had a whole day off yesterday.. more tinkering.. and load testing. Here's what I would and wouldn't do with the pi(s), if I were in the shoes of a generally non computer conversant High School director with semi working or non working Stage Comm, and no pc that you want to dedicate to mumble tasks..

1 Get Raspberry Pi 3 Full kit is about 70 bucks from Canakit (search amazon)

2. Get sd card or image from me (working on getting a clean version purpose built before I make available) 

3. Plug sd into pi and power up. Position it Center on the Center stage front wall (it's black if you get the canakit) If you don't have power there, power from a cell phone charge block battery.

4. Download app to cell phone(s) connect to the picomm network with provided password. Give the provided ip to the phone app and talk away.

5. If picomm wifi signal strength not good enough, or too many cell phones interfere, plug in cat5 cable to router of your choice either on or off your network. (preferably off to avoid mischief) This image will auto configure.

6. Determine wired ip address of pi from your router. Connect to the wifi of your router, Plug in address to the phone apps.. and talk away.

7. Hook up to usb keyboard/mouse and hdmi monitor, Burn spare sd card using 4 mouse clicks and the built in copy utility and store in case of disaster taped to inside of your pi case.


With very little knowlege, you now have full duplex wireless stage communication for 70 bucks. The voice quality is great with headset or ear buds. 
If you don't like it, sell the kit on ebay, and you're out maybe 20-30 bucks. 

Don't want to depend on kids cell phones, or give out the connect info? Buy android prepaid phone from walmart for 30 bucks, download the app, and get headset or earbuds of your choice
headset with mute button is ideal, to avoid having the cell phone out to push to talk. Headset can be had on amazon for about 11 bucks. 

If you have more computer knowledge.... Get another pi 

1. Hook the pi to a keyboard and monitor, make a backup sd card
2. use Dr Google to find out how to set up the pi to use the sysid and password of YOUR choice
3. get another pi, and configure with a usb sound card and cheap wired headset, load mumble client 
4 Configure mumble client, and connect either to the wireless or wired network.. Now you have a station for wired headset use on stage.
5 If you're really tricky, or ask.. I can tell you how to have mumble autostart once configured, and you can run without keyboard or monitor.. just power up and go.
those details are probably better left to an off forum discussion. 

Unfortunately you have to have different user names for every station, so there's no way I can provide a zero config solution for client stations. 

What I can do.. but wouldnt right now... too many config steps for the average joe... 
Get the cheap pi zero kit 25 bucks...5 dollar usb battery brick (5000 ah ran all night) 13 dollar usb sound card. 3 dollar ear buds. 
Tuck into pocket or mic belt... and you're mobile..
Why not? Harder to make your backup sd. Harder to swap sd in the zero depending on which case you have. Harder to set up dt less usb ports on the zero.
Finally... the cell phone solution is cleaner, all in one, and.... get ready.... cheaper. I might just run one for fun during a show though, just for proof of concept.


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## jtweigandt (Dec 16, 2017)

Ah the force is strong with this one. Judge me by my size do you? I just took the $25 pi zeroW configured as a mumble server and wifi router in my leather jacket breast pocket powered by a small cell phone charging battery brick to go see Star Wars, The Last Jedi

My wife, son and I all logged on our phones in line for the tickets. Had earplugs.. hey who doesn't .. Son wandered about the lobby with me talking to him while I was waiting for 7 dollar popcorn Probably 50 people milling about. Had him step off into the game room and had LOS, automatically re acquired when he stepped back in to lobby. Went into the theater proper guessing 300 patrons or more. We were seated together, but no LOS. Wife and Son phones went into sleep mode. Mine was set to keep running. Waited till the credits rolled, they re started the app, no trouble aquiring signal, and I sat and watched a while, while my wife filed out with some of the crowd She held the talk key and I listened to the background noise to avoid her having to embarrass herself. LOS when she got to the exit corridor, likely steel studded drywall. Son did same.. Automatic re aquisition in the hallway.. Mumble app will hang in there and tolerate brief drops in the wifi, but the wifi re aquired every time on it's own. LOS naturally or rather stopped transmitting for the potty breaks. Automatic re aquisition with me at the far end of the lobby and wife emerged into the lobby from the hallway.. probably 75 to 100 feet away. So line of sight signal was really good in the crowded real world. Drops and re aquisition are automatic and seamless. Had I been watching their signal strengths I'm guessing much like at home Mumble has LOS when wifi gets crappy, but phone doesn't drop the connection until the wifi is really far gone.. it holds out hope.. thus the app is seeing a connection still, but waiting for the full data transfer to come back. So I'm thinking Server positioned on center stage front wall, and clients in booth, SL and SR will probably do well at the Smaller High school where the next test will likely take place. Would likely need repeater or a cat5 wired segment and repeater to cover some more remote locations.


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## jm_in_tx (Dec 20, 2017)

I've been looking for some theatre-related Raspberry Pi projects and this one just dropped in to my inbox. I can't tell you how much I appreciate this and the time you invested.
But I gotta say that we get the RPi Zero W here for $5 at the local MicroCenter (but you have to buy them one at a time, so I just walk in and out of the store a couple of times). Been using these to control network-connected props for an Escape Room. So easy to use. I call them A Solution In Search Of A Problem.
Let us know when you get the image up so I can try this at one of the little theatres I work with.

PS: I'm up for an off-forum discussion.


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## jtweigandt (Dec 22, 2017)

OK I uploaded the picomm document into resources under sound.. It has a step by step of how to roll your own. Hoping to upload the actual sd image today, but not sure if the board will accept a 2 gig tar file. If not, I may have to find other means to host the image for download. Can still contact me off forum and I would probably burn onto an 8 gig or higher micro sd sent to me with a SASE.


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## Amiers (Dec 22, 2017)

Google drive can hold it and will prolly out live us all.


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## Mark Harris (Jan 8, 2018)

I suggested something like this at our community theatre and the technical boss was not interested. He prefers a PTT system (currently using Uniden walkie talkies - it's a small theatre) so that you don't have continual noise in the headsets. Problem is, he starts talking before he's finished pushing the damn button so you're sitting in the booth wondering if that "-ts!" was actually "Go lights!" or what. We got him giving his commands twice for one show but he's gone back to his old habits [sigh]

Am I reading this right that you can do this with PTT? Seems to me full duplex means constant bi-directional, but I am only an egg when it comes to this stuff.


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## jtweigandt (Jan 8, 2018)

Yes you can set any and all stations to ptt. In our case we leave the stations on continuous and use headsets which can mute the mic but leave the audio live, so you're always ready to recieve. We left the walkie talkies behind for precisely the thing you were talking about here. The voice quality is incredible. You have to try it to believe it. It eliminates the accidental vox problem, and the talk too soon problem, along with an exponential increase in the voice quality. The earbud "mute" switch for phones doesnt function properly, but headsets and usb headsets with a true mute button or switch does work. On your phone, if you are using it for a station, there is an icon (lips) that you press for the ptt if you are not using a headset with mute.


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## Rob Kettridge (Mar 13, 2018)

This is looking quite interesting. Been playing around with it today using an old mac mini as a server and bridge between existing wired comms and the mumble network. All working as should, but there's one niggling issue, which is that the audio from the mumble network gets onto the comms line, but then because it's on the comms line ends up being transmitted back to the mumble network. This would be fine but the delay between the two is about a quarter of a second so by the time it's done two hops it's hearing yourself a good half a second after you speak. Anyone got any ideas how to cancel this out at all?


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## Amiers (Mar 13, 2018)

Echo cancellation


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## Rob Kettridge (Mar 13, 2018)

The echo cancelling feature appears to be missing from the mac version. Is it good enough to deal with this sort of issue? May have to boot camp the machine to give it a go...


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## Amiers (Mar 13, 2018)

Well when I used mumble it worked for me. 

So idk maybe give it a try.


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## jtweigandt (Mar 13, 2018)

Rob Kettridge said:


> The echo cancelling feature appears to be missing from the mac version. Is it good enough to deal with this sort of issue? May have to boot camp the machine to give it a go...


Pretty sure the mumble echo cancel is watching for a packet tagged with you as origin, and then doesn't play it for you.. So in theory.. you talk on the comms.. they inject into the mumble client.... if the client is filtering packets correctly, the hello comes in from the comm, goes out to all the other mumble clients, but shouldn't be returned via your mumble client acting as the bridge. It should be filtering packets that originated there, so the downstream to the comm doesn't get the echo.

Problem would be with hello from another mumble client.. goes to the bridge mumble, out to the comms, delayed so it comes back to the bridge, looking live not digital. Bridge injects back to mumble, and the mumble clients downstream are getting an echo. 

Only saving grace would be if I'm wrong and the echo cancel is just a simple temporary mute of the mumble client earpiece. Then it would work if the mute time was long enough. Just one way to find out I guess.


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## jtweigandt (Mar 22, 2018)

OK a little World experience here that may help some others if we’re trying this. I found out that you need to pay particular attention to microphone set up. If you overdrive, mumble will clip, and that divides your transmission up into many many small IP packets, which will for a few seconds seem to cause drop outs on the other stations. I thought I was getting Wi-Fi drop outs, but as it turns out that’s been pretty solid. But Mike overdrive and packet clipping is very annoying. It was a difficult diagnosis, but a very easy fix if you just run the audio set up carefully I had one station that was just driving me nuts


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## jtweigandt (Mar 24, 2018)

More real world thoughts Rasp pi3 acting as wifi router/ mumble server. HP thin clients x2 1 hard wired 1 wifi.. good as gold. Pizero wifi clients x2. 1 pc client, 1 pi 3 client. Needed the wifi repeater to cover the stage area for the pi zeros. Running another repeater to cover arrivals/parking lot. Pi3 as server has all the oomph you need to run 6 to 7 clients continuous. Wifi router server component rock solid. Pi zero clients wifi show the strain in a full house of patrons without the wifi repeater. Will auto reconnect, but get lots of reconnects. With the repeater pi zero clients are solid. Pi 3 as client in the box office working over repeater solid performance. Had one pi zero that got flakier and flakier over the last week. Final conclusion.. just a bad MB. Logitech 820e dect headsets, absolutely rock solid extremely long range in our building, even when the building fills up (house about 550) Can get all the way out in parking lot from booth. Also ran my cell phone as a client while on parking duty. All in all once I got the repeaters in, this is good. Have been running the units continuous, with some random forced restarts for the last couple of months as a burn in... Only 1 pi zero was not up to that, but it may have failed me anyhow. No sd card failures in this time period.


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## maldridge (Apr 3, 2018)

I think its been several years since I joined and made my first (and at this point, other) post, but figured I'd drop in. While my exploits in the theatre have slowed to a crawl, I do now work with a robotics competition where we use Mumble as a comms solution to handle queuing of teams on and off the fields, separate channels for staff in different areas, and other features that we've now grown to depend on. We ditched the walki-talkies for the reasons already stated in the thread and haven't looked back.

Some interesting perspectives about mumble stability: The most recent competition I was at I had the good fortune to have access to some very high end RF test gear (a keysight fieldfox if you're curious) where we identified over 500 discrete RF sources while walking around. These were all in the 2.4 and 5Ghz bands, but predominately in the 2.4Ghz band. To be clear, these were sources operating in infrastructure mode; I estimate there were easily another 2k cell phones sitting on the building's distributed antenna system. The entire time I was talking on a headset plugged into a cheap android phone and my signal did not drop. Our wireless solution was the classic Linksys 54G router, which was sitting at one end of the roughly hockey-rink sized arena. I had good voice quality the entire time, the system was stable, and we did not have serious issues in keeping it running over a 4 day continuous interval. We operated the system with at peak 45 simultaneous voices on the line and the server remained lightly loaded. While we were using a Linux laptop to host the server, a Pi could easily handle this load (Mumble just routes streams, it doesn't do any real processing on them).

I've also done the Pi route for testing, but since I help maintain a Linux distribution I've been willing to do some more... interesting... things with my system images. Right now I've got it down to a 15 second boot before the server is available and I'm almost happy with that, but I'd like to get it a little faster.

Bottom line: If I was back working with a high school/middle school group tomorrow with no budget and a stage in a gym, I would not bother with telephone based intercoms or even the surprisingly cheap Que-Com system, I'd bring a junk laptop and a wifi router.


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## jtweigandt (Apr 3, 2018)

Thanks for some more real world data. No problem at all using the dusty laptop for a one off. Reason for doing it on the pi was that for 70 bucks, it's there and running all the time, even if the dusty laptop guy graduated or moved on. Theres something to be said for having some permanant infrastructure, especially in settings where documentation and training is often generational folklore, rather than the printed word.


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## darinlwebb (Apr 3, 2018)

Please keep working on this! Doing a write-up on Instructables, or maybe even a github repo, could get you more feedback from beyond the theatre community.

I've got a Pi 2 laying around, I might give this a go too.

Regarding the power-cycle issue, that problem has been solved before, and there are plenty of guides for setting up a simple power switch that triggers a soft-shutdown.


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## jtweigandt (Jun 7, 2018)

So just an update.. I completed the run of "Catch me if you can" in the spring quite nicely. No problems at all with the pi router/mumble server. I had a mix of pc and pi stations with Logitech H820e dect wireless headsets.. the logitech headsets are da bomb. flawless.. I had a bit of trouble with my pi stations when re booting would hang at the GUI load sometimes and have to be re flashed. The pc thin client stations were perfect. Finally cracked the reboot hang the other day.. I designated 128 meg instead of 64 meg to the video memory. I think it was testing various video configs headless and over ran it's capacity. I also designated "wait for lan" on the boot sequence. Now I've had them up and down probably 20 times.. no problems.. Tonight I'll be running the parking lot with a battery pack pi zero in a little case on my belt. Here we go Mame!! we go comm on the cheap, because indeed Life is a banquet, and most of us poor bastards are starving. have had 7 stations running 500 seat theatre, and the picom server never so much as blinked.


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## Rob Kettridge (Jun 7, 2018)

I'm still fighting with this issue of hearing yourself back from the wired comms a delayed time later. I'm using a standard Tecpro comms pack to do the interfacing between the two networks and using the sidetone control to null out the echo which is working to some extent but not enough. The other thing I'm finding is that a lot of cheaper phone headsets leak audio from the speaker lines to the mic line, which is usually fine if all your audio is in sync but it's causing people on the wired comms to hear an echo of themselves as it leaks across. Unplugging the offending headset or disconnecting the mic line removes this issue.


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## jtweigandt (Jun 7, 2018)

I ran into the cheap earbud echo as well.. read about how they are wired/ supposed to be wired and the evolution of the phone earbud plug definition, but still couldnt wrap my head around why they leak. 

If you have a friend with really good skills you could make an electronic switch.. It detects out going mumble signal, and you could set it to clip the return during the duration of the mumble transmit plus x milliseconds (tunable) 

could even do it in software with a pi 

I don't have the skills.. but someone does..


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## Doug Lowthian (Jun 8, 2018)

Do you have the documentation for this available somewhere? Not able to find it on this site, but I could be looking in the wrong place. 

Thankls in advance!


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## jtweigandt (Jun 8, 2018)

Doug Lowthian said:


> Do you have the documentation for this available somewhere?



Documentation is on this site under the resources tag at the top. (forums wiki media resources) Picomm document 1.1 There's also a link to my google drive of the pre configured
sd image to burn for your pi3.. Google will throw an error, since you can't preview it, but you can go ahead and hit the download button
It's big... a couple gig, but it's a complete machine image.

Literally plug and play from there. Burn the image to a micro sd (google can help you with the burn) Plug in to a pi3 boot up, and the wifi will be picomm wifi password ... theshowmustgoon all smalls The doc also has enough info for you to "roll your own"
if you wanted to mod it or just wanted to DIY

you can communicate with it over the wifi, or via ethernet wired if you are plugged in. 192.168.0.1 address.. Can access with mumble app on iphone brumble app on android., or any device running a mumble client.. linux, windows, mac.

Would love to hear back if we get more of these rolling.


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## Jay Ashworth (Jun 8, 2018)

BTW, all: I was looking for other things on Amazon the other day... and I found a whole bunch of boom-mic bluetooth headsets that would probably work well with this setup... including active noice cancelling ones...


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## jtweigandt (Jun 8, 2018)

Jay Ashworth said:


> BTW, all: I was looking for other things on Amazon the other day... and I found a whole bunch of boom-mic bluetooth headsets that would probably work well with this setup... including active noice cancelling ones...


Unfortunately, until they change the firmware/software bluetooth headsets won't work with the pi :-( One guy did some very heroic investigation/programmng/trials. Bluetooth out OK bluetooth in nope... however it works with just about any usb headset. Or bluetooth with a dedicated dongle like the logitech H800 .. the difference is that the dongle presents itself as a usb device, and the bluetooth stuff is all handled pre pi in the dongle itself. Like your cordless mouse. I also can't get bluetooth wireless headsets to work with the mumble app on the phone... which was a real bummer as well.


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## Jay Ashworth (Jun 8, 2018)

jtweigandt said:


> Unfortunately, until they change the firmware/software bluetooth headsets won't work with the pi :-( One guy did some very heroic investigation/programmng/trials. Bluetooth out OK bluetooth in nope... however it works with just about any usb headset. Or bluetooth with a dedicated dongle like the logitech H800 .. the difference is that the dongle presents itself as a usb device, and the bluetooth stuff is all handled pre pi in the dongle itself. Like your cordless mouse. I also can't get bluetooth wireless headsets to work with the mumble app on the phone... which was a real bummer as well.



Crap; really? Bummer.


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## jtweigandt (Jun 8, 2018)

The logitech H820 usb/wireless headset is absolutely da bomb.. 300 foot range from base. Works with the pi.
I have gotten some used for 50 bucks a pop Normally about 100 bucks new. Total theatrical freedom for us. You run the mumble audio wizard, and it will seem like the mic is working but the 
audio isn't, until you shut down mumble, and reboot.. then all is happy from that day forward.


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## jtweigandt (Jun 8, 2018)

link to the whole rundown on bluetooth and pi https://www.hackster.io/youness/connect-bluetooth-headset-to-raspberry-pi-3-a2dp-and-hsp-56ec2f


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## Jay Ashworth (Jun 11, 2018)

Ah... Lennart Strikes Again.

Will no one rid me of this troublesome programmer?


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## jtweigandt (Jun 11, 2018)

I just googled him He cost me 2 days of my life once. I see he was a major contributor to avahi, and various zeroconfig schemes that work like apple's bonjour. They use a domain name called .local Turns out that some ISP DNS servers expose you to a non local .local domain.. If that happens, suddenly your printers will drop out of sight, along with other network browsing mischief. 2 days of digging to see why my network worked disconnected from the internet, and would go to hell in a handbasket connected to the internet. ISP gave me an alternate DNS address once I googled and cursed enough to figure it out.


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## Jay Ashworth (Jun 12, 2018)

I can beat that.

I had a couple of Windows networks go Tango Uniform a few years ago, when -- without warning -- Verizon DSL's DHCP servers started supplying a domain name to the modem (and hence, my router's DHCP server and my workstations), where they never had before.

Took me almost 2 hours to figure it out, and come up with a solution.

Well, ok, maybe it doesn't beat 2 days... ;-)


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## jtweigandt (Jun 15, 2018)

One more piece to the puzzle of making a pi zero into a reliable headless station. Turns out if I left the zero on a long time the OS screen blanking would evidently kick in. Then some setting would keep it from re booting
with the GUI active. Setting higher vid memory seemed to help.. but eventually would go into no gui mode. I installed xscreensaver, which disables the native screen blanking, and then set the screensaver to none..off.. Voila. Up now for a week.. no drops. did sucessful reboots multiple times just to torture test them. Mame is going well.. up to 8 stations logged in at a time. Mostly just booth SL and SR actually active and talking The server Pi3 has yet to show any stress or problems running since this winter. Now with all the clients reliable, I"m having some great fun. I have a tablet with all their vnc logins pre entered, so we can check the status of any station from the booth... or even reboot.


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## jtweigandt (Jul 18, 2018)

Got through Mame and Chorus line. More real world experience. I caused myself a little grief with the repeater wifi I was using for the parking lot.. Took that out of the equation and the backbone was totally stable. I had the same ssid for both the base and the repeater, and some things were not transitioning smoothly. seperate ssid for parking works fine. I now have a very stable image for the pi zero's that I am using as stations as well. I have one thin client embedded win7 unit that will not reboot unattended without user interaction.. I have moved some of the thin clients over to raspian running from a thumb drive, and that is rock solid. The logitech h820 headsets are still the bees knees for total roaming freedom. Cell phones running mumble work well, but don't transition smoothly between wifi access points. If you work in one sphere, and don't move say from stage to parking lot, mumble on the cell phone works well. But the base Raspberry pi 3 running the mumble server/router image has been up well over 7 months now. Powered continuously with occasional reboots, power down/up, and I have not had to re flash, or repair.. IT JUST WORKS


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## benthecat (Jul 19, 2018)

Since the Pi is operating headless without a keyboard or mouse and you have no easy way to power it down, I believe you could use the GPIO headers to add a power button to it that’ll tell the Pi to shutdown nicely. This would help prevent memory card corruption from an abrupt power off and could be useful in a permanent install.


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## Jay Ashworth (Jul 23, 2018)

Concerning wifi and SSIDs:

It is the nature of consumer 802.11 wifi that it will hang on for dear life to the AP it's currently associated to, even when a closer one as a better signal, even on the same ESSID.

This is why commercial systems like the Ubiquiti gear have a controller which runs on a utility PC -- it watches every visible client from every AP, and if one has a notably better signal on an AP it's not talking to, it *tells the current AP to drop it*.

It will then reassociate to the one with the best signal.

Getting that roam to happen quickly enough is the fun part.


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## jm_in_tx (Jul 31, 2018)

benthecat said:


> ...I believe you could use the GPIO headers to add a power button to it that’ll tell the Pi to shutdown nicely...


You absolutely can do this and the interwebs are full of examples, like this. 
I have several headless RPIs running in an escape room and my next upgrade is to add a power-loss battery backed shutdown so they will gracefully shutdown when the power goes away and then restart when power comes back. Another way to minimize the chance of SD corruption is to minimize the logging that goes on. Since my units (and the Mumble units as well) are pretty much single-function devices, the vast majority of logging the Linux does under the hood can be safely dispensed with. I've done that on all of my devices (both Pi3 and Pi0W) and in the last 8 months of sporadic power-downs I haven't had a problem (knock on wood). Unfortunately, this kind of thing is not my day job...

Cheers,
--Jeff


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## jtweigandt (Aug 9, 2018)

wahoo... serendipity. In my early experiments, I could only get the iphone app to work with my wired earbuds. The bluetooth version (2 different brands) would not work
with the mumble app on the phone. I recently ordered some totally wireless "in the ear" from amazon. Litexim for an upcoming trip. THEY WORK WITH MUMBLE.. so I can have the phone in my pocket, and only take it out to "push to talk" also works voice activated, but that's much too annoying in the theatre during the show.. triggers with the stage sound. Unfortunately, the ones listed under litexim right now look slightly different, so it's a bit of a crap shoot. One clue is that the telephone function on these only feeds the right ear, and the others were trying to deliver stereo even for phone conversation.


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## jm_in_tx (Aug 9, 2018)

A couple of years ago, I resurrected/refreshed an old pushbutton cue system for a theatre I was working with at the time. I found out over the weekend that they finally broke it and there is nobody (repeat: nobody) who can fix/replace it that's currently working there. [to quote Hugh Fennyman: "Actors are ten a penny...", but technical people are rare indeed]. I mentioned the Mumble system to them and they practically wet themselves salivating over it.

What they need is bluetooth headsets with boom mikes for backstage and the booth, and maybe only the app on the phone for the lobby/concession stand.

I have RPis comming out of my ears, I should throw something together and see what they say. But if I do that, I'm probably on the hook for all eternity to maintain it. :-(


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## jtweigandt (Aug 9, 2018)

The logitech 820 DECT headset will let you go about a quarter-mile line of sight and is the bees knees about 150 bucks new but I found them in groups used for 50 bucks each. On the Bluetooth side the logitech H 800 is the most comfortable and highest fidelity headset you will ever wear. They can be had on the secondary market in on eBay new in the 50 back range or about 80 bucks new. You’re only going to get your 30 feet from base with those though.

If you need I can resend the link to the picomm image. It’s literally burn and go on an eight gig SD. I also now have a very stable 16 gig image for the belt pack/stations. You can run them on a battery pack or better set them up stationary and use with the headsets. 

In my experience so far your maintenance on the base router mumble pie three will be about zero. I burned a spare SD and taped it inside the case last fall. And have not had to touch it. If you wanted the lowest maintenance configuration, then I would set up your cluster of pi zeros near the main pi and let the DECT headsets do the heavy lifting for all your roaming. They are less prone to drop outs than trying to Roam with Wi-Fi.


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## blallik (Aug 23, 2018)

Thanks for all the work you have done on this! I am in the process getting the hardware together to implement this system in a high school auditorium. Will each logitech 820 need its own pi zero, or can several be used from a single base station? Also, I should be able to use the school's ethernet network to place a pi zero at a remote access point, correct? 



jtweigandt said:


> The logitech 820 DECT headset will let you go about a quarter-mile line of sight and is the bees knees about 150 bucks new but I found them in groups used for 50 bucks each. On the Bluetooth side the logitech H 800 is the most comfortable and highest fidelity headset you will ever wear. They can be had on the secondary market in on eBay new in the 50 back range or about 80 bucks new. You’re only going to get your 30 feet from base with those though.
> 
> If you need I can resend the link to the picomm image. It’s literally burn and go on an eight gig SD. I also now have a very stable 16 gig image for the belt pack/stations. You can run them on a battery pack or better set them up stationary and use with the headsets.
> 
> In my experience so far your maintenance on the base router mumble pie three will be about zero. I burned a spare SD and taped it inside the case last fall. And have not had to touch it. If you wanted the lowest maintenance configuration, then I would set up your cluster of pi zeros near the main pi and let the DECT headsets do the heavy lifting for all your roaming. They are less prone to drop outs than trying to Roam with Wi-Fi.


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## jtweigandt (Aug 23, 2018)

Both sides of the pi3 Networking are active so it can be it’s own Wi-Fi router but also bridge to a physical ethernet. You may have to do some tweaking of IP addresses. Image for the pi three is set to 192.168.0.1. For the Wi-Fi side. And it’s pretty easy to set your own fixed IP for the ethernet side. My ethernet is in the 192.16 8.1.*Range.You do have to have an individual device for each headset running a Mumble client. Doesn’t have to be a pie zero. Could be an OLd pc Thin client etc But in your environment it’s probably best to standardize, and as cheap as the pie zeros are yes kind of a no brainer. They can connect via Wi-Fi even if they’re sitting right next to your base, or they can connect via ethernet but they don’t have an ethernet port like the three. They would need an adapter for wired Cat 5. so it’s probably easiest if you have to have part of your client farm away from the base to use either a pie three, or what we do is we have a Wireless repeater that the pi zero talks to. 

I have all of my stations set up for VNC access. That way I can see status or if I need to repeat the headphone set up and calibration it can be done without having to attach a keyboard and monitor. I used fixed IP addresses throughout. 

It took me a while to get a nice stable zero client image. I have one now. Part of the problem was I created one on an eight gig card and burn it to a 16 and the system would run out of space because some of the file handling is wonky. So I have a 16 image That works now and I would only burn it to a 16 SD card. Similarly the base pay three image I believe Is an eight gig. I keep one inside the cover as a spare pre configured But have never had to use it

I have been using the SanDisk SD cards I hear there’s some real crap out there.


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## jtweigandt (Aug 23, 2018)

Also when you go to set up and calibrate the headset first time it may look like it’s not working because for some reason you won’t hear the demo audio. You will see the VU graphic working as You test the microphone. After you make it all the way through set up wizard. You need to physically close mumble, and then reboot the pie, and it should wake up happy.

There is also a good chance that if you power up a pie without the USB headset Attached, it may drop back to default and you might have to do the set up sequence again with the audio wizard.


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## blallik (Aug 23, 2018)

Appreciate the info, just a little confused on the SD images. You have one picomm image on your drive--is that the image for the pi 3 and the pi zero, or are there two different images, and if so are you sharing both? 


jtweigandt said:


> Both sides of the pi3 Networking are active so it can be it’s own Wi-Fi router but also bridge to a physical ethernet. You may have to do some tweaking of IP addresses. Image for the pi three is set to 192.168.0.1. For the Wi-Fi side. And it’s pretty easy to set your own fixed IP for the ethernet side. My ethernet is in the 192.16 8.1.*Range.You do have to have an individual device for each headset running a Mumble client. Doesn’t have to be a pie zero. Could be an OLd pc Thin client etc But in your environment it’s probably best to standardize, and as cheap as the pie zeros are yes kind of a no brainer. They can connect via Wi-Fi even if they’re sitting right next to your base, or they can connect via ethernet but they don’t have an ethernet port like the three. They would need an adapter for wired Cat 5. so it’s probably easiest if you have to have part of your client farm away from the base to use either a pie three, or what we do is we have a Wireless repeater that the pi zero talks to.
> 
> I have all of my stations set up for VNC access. That way I can see status or if I need to repeat the headphone set up and calibration it can be done without having to attach a keyboard and monitor. I used fixed IP addresses throughout.
> 
> ...


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## jtweigandt (Aug 23, 2018)

The image that is up now is for the back bone that is the all in one Wi-Fi router and mumble server host. It will run on a three or a zero. But the Wi-Fi is better on the three and the three gives you a bridge to your wired ethernet backbone. I am at the theater today and will snag the image that has been bulletproof for the station for the pie zero and upload it soon. I also have an image for a station that can be burnt to a USB thumb drive to boot up in raspian. That would let you use any old thin client or old PC you happen have sitting around as a station. So yes the server and the station images are two different things.


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## blallik (Aug 23, 2018)

That would be amazing, thank you so much! Let me know if it would be easiest for me to mail sd cards and thumb drive, or if you can put the images on your Google drive. I can't wait to get this going, we have had no com in our theater since the renovation...


jtweigandt said:


> The image that is up now is for the back bone that is the all in one Wi-Fi router and mumble server host. It will run on a three or a zero. But the Wi-Fi is better on the three and the three gives you a bridge to your wired ethernet backbone. I am at the theater today and will snag the image that has been bulletproof for the station for the pie zero and upload it soon. I also have an image for a station that can be burnt to a USB thumb drive to boot up in raspian. That would let you use any old thin client or old PC you happen have sitting around as a station. So yes the server and the station images are two different things.


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## Jay Ashworth (Oct 19, 2018)

I just ran across this on Amazon; would it solve the BT problems?

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01KVZB3A4/?tag=controlbooth-20


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## jtweigandt (Oct 19, 2018)

In theory yes... there is info on the web on getting one of those up and running.. unfortunately it's not plug and play with raspian.
you have to hand install the drivers and do a lot of config. I tried one, but didn't have the time/ patience to get it to work. 
So for the best wireless headset experience I'm still sold on the logitech DECT units that I have picked up as refurbs for about the 50 to 60 buck range. 
One set up they work and keep working, as long as you boot up the pi with the headset base connected. 

I have now found at least one wireless earbud that works with the IOS app on the iphone. The first 2 I tried did not.


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## AudJ (Jan 9, 2019)

Looking for help - was experimenting with getting a picomm setup on a Pi3, and when I get the image on an 8g card, the Pi3 shows a blank screen and nothing available otherwise.

I've tried multiple cards, 16g and 8g, all with the same results. The devices i have to download/ copy the image are all networked and filtered through a school network. Win32 is what I am using. Tried Etcher, but that couldn't even identify the image. Since I was having difficulty, I took it to the resident computer guru, who programs Rasberry PI stuff for fun all the time. He also had the same issues. The Pi3 operates with other cards.

Any thoughts where we might be going wrong? Could the school district filtering be the issue? Am I missing a basic step? Any help is greatly appreciated!


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## jtweigandt (Jan 9, 2019)

Are you doing a simple copy or actually using a disk imaging utility. https://sourceforge.net/projects/win32diskimager/files/latest/download

I work mostly from linux, and havn’t actually burned one from the windows side. The r pi sites have various
tutorials as well. I dont want to assume anything about your experience with the pi, but thats the first thing that comes to mind.

oops I just re read about your pi guru... I think I need to check for corruption. 

If push comes to shove, you could send me a 16 gig sd and I could burn one for you.

when I get a chance, I’ll do a fresh download as well, to make sure nothing got corrupted on the storage end.

I have had a couple folks do this successfully though.


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## AudJ (Jan 9, 2019)

jtweigandt said:


> Are you doing a simple copy or actually using a disk imaging utility. https://sourceforge.net/projects/win32diskimager/files/latest/download
> 
> I work mostly from linux, and havn’t actually burned one from the windows side. The r pi sites have various
> tutorials as well. I dont want to assume anything about your experience with the pi, but thats the first thing that comes to mind.
> ...



- Yes using the disk imaging utility - Win32 and tried Etcher also. I am suspicious that the District web filtering is the issue. My guru took it all home tonight to attempt a clean download from home - I'll report on the results when I get it back from him in the next couple days. Good to hear others are having success - this would be great to get up and running. Thanks so much!


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## AudJ (Jan 11, 2019)

So -update. No progress. Guru took everything and tried several clean downloads of Picomm, and got the same blank-screen results. He thinks it could have something to do with the compression google uses, but if others have gotten it to work, I stumped.

Any suggestions if there is something we missed? 

We do have the instructions to build from scratch, so we’ll get there eventually.


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## jtweigandt (Jan 11, 2019)

I downloaded today at work, and will take the image home to try it out again. 
And yeah.. the do it yourself stuff isn't too hard either if you have worked with the pi or linux 

The build in wifi router setup stuff was cookbook that I lifted from elsewhere, but I think the instructions are complete.

After that the Main thing is getting the startup delay built in to allow the audio components to load before mumble starts. 

Will let you know if the image fails... I can re upload in case google broke doing maintenance or some such.


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## jtweigandt (Jan 11, 2019)

OK was poking around... perhaps a big duh here.... the image is compressed as a tar.gz needs to be uncompressed/unzipped in order to make it expand to 
img file.. were you using it raw?


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## AudJ (Jan 11, 2019)

jtweigandt said:


> OK was poking around... perhaps a big duh here.... the image is compressed as a tar.gz needs to be uncompressed/unzipped in order to make it expand to
> img file.. were you using it raw?


Ha - I was, I don't know what the other guy tried - I'll try that - Thanks so much!


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## jm_in_tx (Jan 12, 2019)

AudJ said:


> Ha - I was, I don't know what the other guy tried - I'll try that - Thanks so much!


I can confirm that anything that has the extension "tar.gz" is a compressed file. Uncompress to the .img file and then burn to the SD card.
...but a Linux Guru should know that??? For me it's Live and Learn...


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## jtweigandt (Jan 12, 2019)

So sorry to have put you through that. I will either have to re load as a zip to protect those in the Windows world
or include what a tar.gz is in the instructions. Many a time, I have been working on a project, and the special sauce is obvious
to the person who wrote the cookbook, but I spent hours trying to figure out what I did wrong. I think most modern zip programs will
undo a tar for you (short for tarball)


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## jtweigandt (Jan 12, 2019)

I just updated the instructions so that others need not die in vain


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## steine (Jan 13, 2019)

Apart from the rogue tar.gz files, when "burning" an image from Windows, I have changed to usung Rufus 99% of the time, as that has been the most stable for me.
( https://rufus.ie/ )


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## AudJ (Jan 13, 2019)

I appreciate all the help - admittedly, I’m not even a windows guy, only owned macs; even took classes programming them decades ago... The “guru” I referred to and I have been limited by the software the school lets us put on the computers, he did mention something about a compressed file, but my suspicion is he tried to open it with the universal can opener, instead of the right tool for the job, only because we didn’t have the ability to pick what we used. 

I appreciate the advice as I learn my way through this. I have actually been having fun with the pi, and hope to build up a little Linux knowledge. Thanks!


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## AudJ (Jan 16, 2019)

Joy. Finally got this up - the problem was with the school network, file size etc. Turns out my Guru friend did decompress the file, and then encountered other issues. I hadn’t even gotten that far because of the limitation of the memory allocated toward our individual user accounts.

Anyway, thank you @jtweigandt! After minimal tweaking, we are hoping to run 8 wireless stations. 4 up so far. All are happy with the quality, and we are in for less than $200 for the pi3, Logitech headset, and a few extra micro SD cards. Quotes for a similar clearom setup stalled for purchase when they went over 5 figures. This is perfect for our middle school. I can’t express my appreciation enough!


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## jtweigandt (Jan 17, 2019)

Absolutely great to hear. We have run 5 musicals now on the picomm. The Dect headsets beware that you need to “exercise” the lithium ion batteries.. If you keep them offline months at a time, you may have them fail to charge later. If you keep them online “trickle”, without using them, you may lose some talk time. I try to make sure I take them off the hook at least once a month for a couple of hours. My main little unit just runs 24/7 for over a year now. Have had to restart a few times to handshake with a flaky router that I have it connected to for a secondary backbone. Make sure before you get too far along to use the utility provided in the raspian desktop to directly clone your working sd card. I just keep a spare taped to the inside of the case. I havn’t had to use one on the picomm, but I have when I was doing something wonky with an xray storage system that I have using the pi. Make sure not to cycle power during the boot sequence and you should be good. There are minimal writes to the sd once everything is up. Powering down during a write is the most susceptible time. Interestingly I also use a company that makes our Lab equipment using a pi under the hood to run results reporting link to our PC’s Its been running on my countertop for a year or more now.


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## Jake Schwartz (Jan 19, 2019)

Today I installed your image for the pi zero stage communication system. The networks show up and will connect. When I try to connect to a mumble server running on a laptop I get the error "Server connection failed: Network unreachable." I also cannot load a page in a web browser or ping a local or external address. I am having the same problem on both a pi zero w and a pi 3. I have no network problems using mumble on a pi zero w or pi 3 with a clean install of Raspbian. Using mumble on a pi 3 or zero 2 I can not get the headset working and only the mic works. Any suggestions?


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## jtweigandt (Jan 19, 2019)

am guessing you need to reset the ip address of the zero to something in your network address range. Your router should have some low addresses reserved for fixed ip devices. i created the image with an address in the 192.168.0.* range most home networks are 192.168.1.*, and therefor you won’t see machines in opposite ranges. 

I used fixed ip addresses, so I can administer them headless using VNC 

I used the 0 series addresses to avoid someone putting something else on one of the computers in the closed net and screwing me up. 

if you have the zero connected to a keyboard and monitor, you can click or right click on the netork status icon in the upper right to get access and change the ip.

I forget what name I gave the pizero, but it’s probably beltpack1 in the mumble setup. You have to edit a config file to change or give a unique name to each of the pi zero’s 

You have to run the audio wizard from within the mumble session on the pi, and you will not hear the example text read... just punch through. You might or might not hear yourself during the mic test, but the VU meters should work to set your range. I’m working from memory, and cant remember which but you have to load the logitech usb default driver from the dropdown for the audio and the mic during the wizard. 

Then you have to close mumble and reboot the pi, before the settings will take and let you use the headset. It took me hours and trying every driver before I realized that. 

The address of a picomm base is 192.168.0.1 Some routers will let you talk to both address ranges 0 and 1 So you can have regular network traffic, and have your mumble net not browseable by the normal, but you can still ping and connect using the direct address if you know it. Some routers you have to mess with routing in order to let the 0 range pass over the ethernet or the wifi. 

But I believe the base images.. picomm and the beltpack image will automatically find each other over the picomm wifi automatically as is. 

Most usb to 1/8 jack sound dongles work out of the box using the most basic driver in the mumble setup. So wired headset to pizero is a pretty simple setup. I have put a zero on a small cell phone battery charger pack with a wired headset and used it as a mobile beltpack as well. The connection of the logitech dect is more reliable than moving around connected to the wifi.. but if it drops, it does automatically re aquire and connect to the wifi


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## Jake Schwartz (Jan 31, 2019)

Your suggestions for the network fixed the network problem. I still have no audio though. I am using a UGREEN USB to TRRS adapter and apple earbuds. I have tried all of the microphone input options but none of them work and the VU meter does not move. Any suggestions? Thanks for your help.

Is there something I have to do to get the drivers to appear in the drop down menu?


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## jtweigandt (Mar 3, 2019)

Update.. I had another member attempt to set up on a pi3b+ It turns out the + demands a more modern version of the operating system, and we were tearing our hair out
trying to get it to work. I even burned and sd for him... then finally I ordered a new pi3 which came as the + model and I had my duh moment. the plus has enhanced ethernet, wifi, and bluetooth
so I will try to build an image from scratch. sigh.... that said, my install at Music Guild is over a year old now and soldiering on just dandy. stay tuned.


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## jtweigandt (Mar 5, 2019)

I just uploaded picomm2.img.zip along with some newer documentation to my google drive. Link to the forum resource that has a link to the google drive 
https://www.controlbooth.com/resources/picomm-version-2.126/ The google folder gives you access to both the base and client images. Client images are 
for the pi and for a bootable thumb drive for a pc or thin client that boots to a clean linux environment running the mumble client to connect to the picomm base
documentation is also in the folder.


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## jtweigandt (Mar 10, 2019)

I just uploaded a new image for the station/client that works with the pi3b+ as well as the 3b and the pizero w. Also there is a station image for a bootable usb thumb drive that will let you boot your old windows computer or thin client to linux with the picomm client already loaded and ready to log into the picomm server. The link and new documentation are in the resources section here.


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## jtweigandt (Apr 16, 2019)

Full disclosure. I have another member trying to replicate the project with the new pi3+ compatible images. We have been having some stability problems on reboots 
My original on 3 is still rock solid for me at the theater, and we are trying to find the magic sauce on the newer images. Just in case there was anyone else out there working 
with the new images.


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## blallik (Apr 16, 2019)

For what it's worth I got a system working with the pi 3B server and several pi zeros, all jt's images and techical advice... even vnc'd in with an IPad to tweak the settings. I also put the client image on a laptop and was going to try to access the network from farther away over ethernet, but that's when the school year got busy (I am a full time art teacher) and the project is on ice for a while!

I actually ended up outfitting my entire classroom with pi 3b+ machines, replacing old Fedora USB thin clients, and they work great for that application...

Regards, and thanks for all the help,
Will






jtweigandt said:


> Full disclosure. I have another member trying to replicate the project with the new pi3+ compatible images. We have been having some stability problems on reboots
> My original on 3 is still rock solid for me at the theater, and we are trying to find the magic sauce on the newer images. Just in case there was anyone else out there working
> with the new images.


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## jtweigandt (May 2, 2019)

Rainy day progress. The new 3b+ station images are fine (though I have a slightly refined one to load yet) BUT... the 3b+ is a different beast when it comes
to making it the self hosting router. All the newest boards and OS and mumble work still quite well in a conventional setup using an existing wifi router, but something in the new 3b+ dual band wifi changes the requirements for having it be an access point/ self hosted wifi. So if you want to do that right now you have to buy a 3b not a 3b+ and use my original picomm image to achieve self hosted one box wifi and mumble server. Bottom line Mumble is still a viable and useful option for comm. The holy grail of one tiny box to rule them all is stuck in version 3b for now.


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## herbiethemisfit (Jan 16, 2020)

JT - got your server up and running on a Raspberry Pi 3B+ for use at our 80-seat theater. Install was super simple and no issues with that part. Thank to you for putting it out there.

Wondering if you have run into any latency issues. I am using older Android phones running Plumble connected to an inexpensive headset with a mic mute switch. Plan was to leave the app in voice activity trigger mode and just unmute using the switch as needed. If no one is talking, obviously no issues. As soon as one person unmutes and starts to talk there is a significant (2+ seconds) lag, or sometimes doesn't even get through. Monitoring the latency on the Plumble app shows 2000ms and higher. Tried turning down all the quality settings on the clients to use less bandwidth, but doesn't seem to have much effect. Any ideas?


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## jtweigandt (Jan 16, 2020)

After much hair pulling and testing, bottom line. If you want to use cell phones the server needs to be a B. Not a B+. For some unknown reason the WiFi handshaking with phones on the B+ is really flakey. Pi connections are fine. So unfortunately need to use a B. Or can plug into an old router and do your phone access through the router. It will auto config with the router.


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