Fresh install on RaspberryPi has sound issues (PA system-wide mode)

Hi all,

what a great project which I can’t wait to get my hands on! 😃 I still havent managed to make it work on a Raspberry PI Model B+.

1. Fresh install of Jessie
2. Went straight to clone the latest repo and installed it (that happened yesterday). Today I checked again to see I am on the latest changes

pi@raspberrypi:/opt/AlexaPi $ git status

On branch master
Your branch is up-to-date with 'origin/master'.
nothing to commit, working directory clean

Yup!

So I installed PA in system-wide as some other posts suggested. What happens now is that I get:

alsa audio output error: cannot estimate delay: Input/output error

when querying the AlexaPi service.

pi@raspberrypi:/opt/AlexaPi $ sudo systemctl status AlexaPi.service -l

● AlexaPi.service - Alexa client for all your devices
   Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/AlexaPi.service; enabled)
  Drop-In: /etc/systemd/system/AlexaPi.service.d
           └─restart.conf
   Active: active (running) since Sun 2016-12-04 20:44:34 GMT+2; 4min 11s ago
     Docs: https://github.com/alexa-pi/AlexaPi/wiki
 Main PID: 1733 (python)
   CGroup: /system.slice/AlexaPi.service
           └─1733 /usr/bin/python /opt/AlexaPi/src/main.py

Dec 04 20:44:34 raspberrypi systemd[1]: Started Alexa client for all your devices.
Dec 04 20:44:41 raspberrypi python[1733]: [02097cf8] alsa audio output error: cannot estimate delay: Input/output error

and I also get the following when querying the PA service

pi@raspberrypi:~ $ sudo systemctl status pulseaudio.service -l

● pulseaudio.service - PulseAudio Daemon
   Loaded: loaded (/etc/systemd/system/pulseaudio.service; enabled)
   Active: active (running) since Sun 2016-12-04 20:54:45 GMT+2; 1min 8s ago
 Main PID: 432 (pulseaudio)
   CGroup: /system.slice/pulseaudio.service
           └─432 /usr/bin/pulseaudio --system --realtime --disallow-exit --no-cpu-limit

Dec 04 20:54:45 raspberrypi pulseaudio[432]: W: [pulseaudio] main.c: Running in system mode, but --disallow-module-loading not set!
Dec 04 20:54:45 raspberrypi pulseaudio[432]: N: [pulseaudio] main.c: Running in system mode, forcibly disabling SHM mode!
Dec 04 20:54:45 raspberrypi pulseaudio[432]: N: [pulseaudio] main.c: Running in system mode, forcibly disabling exit idle time!
Dec 04 20:54:45 raspberrypi pulseaudio[432]: W: [pulseaudio] main.c: OK, so you are running PA in system mode. Please note that you most likely shouldn't be doing that.
Dec 04 20:54:45 raspberrypi pulseaudio[432]: W: [pulseaudio] main.c: If you do it nonetheless then it's your own fault if things don't work as expected.
Dec 04 20:54:45 raspberrypi pulseaudio[432]: W: [pulseaudio] main.c: Please read http://pulseaudio.org/wiki/WhatIsWrongWithSystemMode for an explanation why system mode is usually a bad idea.
Dec 04 20:54:46 raspberrypi pulseaudio[432]: W: [pulseaudio] authkey.c: Failed to open cookie file '/var/run/pulse/.config/pulse/cookie': No such file or directory
Dec 04 20:54:46 raspberrypi pulseaudio[432]: W: [pulseaudio] authkey.c: Failed to load authorization key '/var/run/pulse/.config/pulse/cookie': No such file or directory
Dec 04 20:54:46 raspberrypi pulseaudio[432]: W: [pulseaudio] authkey.c: Failed to open cookie file '/var/run/pulse/.pulse-cookie': No such file or directory
Dec 04 20:54:46 raspberrypi pulseaudio[432]: W: [pulseaudio] authkey.c: Failed to load authorization key '/var/run/pulse/.pulse-cookie': No such file or directory

Alexa doesnt respond to my calling its name. I have searched lots of similar tickets in this project but to no avail. Any ideas?

p.s. not sure if this helps but it also stopped saying Hello on launch

[shreyasubale]

I was getting choppy audio with PA ( initially i thought it wasn’t working at all, but when i played some music i found out that the audio is actualy very choppy ) until i installed vlc manually with apt-get install vlc

[revere521]

@spo0n you will need to elevate permissions with sudo to create a directory outside the home dir (/home/pi) - so that command should be sudo mkdir -p /var/lib/AlexaPi/.config/pulse then run sudo cp /etc/pulse/client.conf /var/lib/AlexaPi/.config/pulse/ that copies the pulseaudio config files to that new directory.
then you may need to set the permissions of the AlexaPi as a home folder if its still complaining - like this: chown -R alexapi:alexapi /var/lib/AlexaPi/ usermod --home /var/lib/AlexaPi alexapi

@idimitrakopoulos the PS3 Eye seems to work really well as an array mic - and its cheap enough that if its too much of a hassle to get it working - no big deal. You may have to do some additional playing around with it - but I have had it running for a few weeks now and AlexaPi has no issues hearing me from pretty good distances.