microphone input?....on rasberry pi

[vinceAPPLE]

Hello,

i did not notice any microphone input on the Rasberry Pi.?

is this a design target or an oversight?

Luckily for me, i already know how to get a micrphone input
by using a cheap 50 pence USB soundcard. But not many people
will know this.

http://cgi.ebay.com/USB-5-1-Au.....2a133a1ec5

These are very good cards. ALthough the mic input is at Line level so needs
a powered mic. (high power mic)

But i feel that the Pi is sadly missing the MIC input feature itself. This limits
the multimedia aspect of this computer quite a bit. No skype calls, no video conferencing. No messing with audio samples and sound. No recording of live
I mean i was just thinking it's the one thing that is missing from the Pi which would otherwise make the Pi a totally 100 percent useful PC. That's in terms of multimedia and the internet. Lets face it, many children learning IT are into design and multimedia, right

Vince.

[Svartalf]

You could use a USB microphone to do that. Anything USB that Linux supports should have support on the Pi.

[vinceAPPLE]

hello

like this one?

http://cgi.ebay.com/Mini-USB-2.....4cee42b2db

i see what you mean.

V.

[Svartalf]

Yep. The main drawback to making a device that will weigh in at the $25-50 range price-wise, is that each and every little tidbit you add to the device makes the price balloon real quick. Unless you're going to be making tens of thousands of the R-Pi's, you're not going to add a mic- because it doesn't incorporate that functionality on the SoC and you'll be adding the guts of a USB hub AND that microphone you linked on the board.

If you want it, it's cheap and easy enough to add- but to add it for everyone, including most that wouldn't want the functionality, it would run the price up. Think of it being like the core of a special set of magic lego-blocks that can string together quite a few amazing things on the cheap with it.

[obarthelemy]

Isn't there a BIG difference between "linux support" and "right version of linux for ARM support" ? Isn't the ARM V6 restraining us to older versions of Linux, which may be incompatible with newer drivers requiring newer features ? Aren't the architectural differences of ARM apt (pun intended) to break non-ARM-validated drivers ? And.. I personally couldn't compile and integrate a driver to save my life.

My take is that "Linux" being listed in the list of compatible OSes on a gizmo's spec sheet will NOT mean that it is Raspeberry.Pi-compatible, just that it might be, with luck and/or a lot of hard work ?

[jeicrash]

I'm not 100% on this, but I doubt for the most part of the ARM versions are going to be so outdated they won't support generic devices such as usb audio input. There are very few projects in which I can think of that would require a mic, aside from possibly security system with audio, voice chat, or live radio stations. But the great thing about all this is, once it is released there seams to be plenty of people who will be testing and with that I think we will see more and more linux based apps ported to ARM as well as kernel support for newer devices.

[Thorn]

USB mic should be fine. It'd be really great to have a raspberry pi setup as a speech handling node connected to a bunch of relays, so I can finally nerd out and go 'Computer, Lights on!'

[jzu]

Quote from vinceAPPLE on August 16, 2011, 04:06

http://cgi.ebay.com/USB-5-1-Au.....2a133a1ec5

These are very good cards. ALthough the mic input is at Line level so needs
a powered mic. (high power mic)

I beg to differ... These are entry-level usbaudio soundcards. Perfect for prototyping and not-so-demanding applications, but you don't want to use them with a PA, for instance. I have tested them for two projects (guitar effect, sample player) and the sound quality is not suitable even through a guitar amplifier. And we're not talking hi-fi there. Basically, there's no free lunch in audio processing, although the Behringer UCA 202 could fit the bill at a very reasonable $25.

[gerits]

A mic input would be great for musicians who would like to have a small PC standing on their piano. I now use a pocket pc for sheet music (chords), but that doesn't have a input either, so it's only for the viewing part. And real musicians probably need better audio quality then an on board input port.

For video chat you could buy a usb webcam with build in mic.

[David Calvo]

A idea, Add ADC to SPI (or a small microcontroller) to get a audio input.
How hard be to make the driver

[lingon]

If the SoC was originally designed for mobile phone use, then it seems a bit strange that no microphone input was included? Or is the microphone on a mobile phone supposed to be connected to the SoC DSP core which is not supported on the Raspberry Pi?

[toxibunny]

It's to keep costs/size to a minimum. Raspi is a computer, not a phone. At least, that's the way I see it...[map][/map]

[pixeltricks]

Is there a list anywhere of what pins will be made accessible to the user ? Will we have access to any GP I/O pins ? If so there is a place you an add many different i2c or SPI devices easily to do what you want.

[liz]

You can chain I2Cs together if you want to add a number of them. We've got I2C, SPI and GPIO, all at 3.3v - can't tell you exactly how many pins, because we're still working through optimising the schematics, but we should know in a couple of weeks.

[IDE]

Are there any versions of the schematics available.

[tufty]

No, ARMv6 is not restricting us to older versions of linux. It"s stopping us using distros (like ubuntu) who aren"t providing prerolled images compiled for ARMv6.

You"re probably right that any (rare) linux drivers provided binary only by the manufacturer probably won"t work, and using ARM may help "tickle" bugs in existing open source drivers, but in theory pretty much anything that works under x86 linux should work under ARM linux.
Simon