DACBerry 400 Series Quick Start Guide

Introduction

This guide contains all the information you will need to run the OSA Electronics DACBerry 400 Series Boards.

Summary

1. What we need
2. Assembly
3. Board Layout
4. Quick install for Raspbian / Raspberry Pi OS
5. Recording Audio files

What we need

• Raspberry Pi 400
• DACBerry 400 S or DACBerry 400 M
• A MicroSD Card (may not included with your Pi 400)

Assembly

For a proper assembly of the DACBerry 400 Series Boards together with the Raspberry Pi 400, follow the next steps to avoid any board damage:

• Make sure to connect it correctly. Audio jacks should point the Pi 400 right corner, and not obstruct the micro SD slot.
• Make sure all the 40 pins are aligned. Missalignement could cause a board / Pi malfunction or damage it.

Connect it as shown in the image below:

Board Layout

DACBerry 400 S and DACBerry 400 M are almost the same, however the board layout is a littlbe bit different, in terms of connections. Please, take a look to the following images for your reference.

DACBerry 400 S layout:

DACBerry 400 M layout:

DACBerry 400 GPIO use:

Quick Install for Raspbian / Raspberry Pi OS

There is an easy way to install support for DACBerry 400 Series Boards on an existing Raspbian/Raspberry Pi OS installation.

Open the Terminal, located on the top left corner:

Then, run the following code from your Raspberry Pi with Internet connectivity:

Follow the steps on the screen until the installation process has completed succesfully. You may need to reboot once. After rebooting, everything should work!

Recording Audio files

We can use Audacity free software to record and edit audio files on Pi 400. To install it, use “Add/Remove software” and search for “Audacity”. Select the packages and install them. That’s it already. You should now be able to start Audacity from the menu under “Sound and Video”:

Audacity already opens a new project and you only have to click on the record button – that’s it. Hit the stop button when you’re done.

You can zoom in and have a look at the waveform. Yes, a sine wave doesn’t look very interesting, but we’re using this always as the standard signal to verify everything is working fine.

Now comes the fun. Get creative! Have a look at the Audacity documentation. The possibilities are endless. You can even add plugins to Audacity to have even more effects available.