What is the Device parameter in Mix_OpenAudioDevice ( SDL2 ) - audio

While I know how to use MIX_OpenAudio.... I wanted to know the use of MIX_OpenAudioDevice function
It takes several arguments... Device name is one of them
So, I want to know that how can we know what the device name is
It says we can use a function i.e. SDL_GetAudioDeviceName()
But how would we know which audio device to choose on every system....
Or is this function only for working with specific audio systems such as realtek or something?

So from how I understand it, MIX_OpenAudio() is already using MIX_OpenAudioDevice(), just using a NULL value for the device parameter (which then defaults to whatever the system uses for sound). The only reason you would need to specify an actual device in that function is if you are expecting your audio data to be in a specific format. Therefore you should already know what it is.
From the docs: (link)
If you aren't particularly concerned with the specifics of the audio device, and your data isn't in a specific format, the values you use here can just be reasonable defaults.
This function allows you to select specific audio hardware on the system with the device parameter. If you specify NULL, SDL_mixer will choose the best default it can on your behalf (which, in many cases, is exactly what you want anyhow). SDL_mixer does not offer a mechanism to determine device names to open, but you can use SDL_GetNumAudioDevices() to get a count of available devices and then SDL_GetAudioDeviceName() in a loop to obtain a list. If you do this, be sure to call SDL_Init(SDL_INIT_AUDIO) first to initialize SDL's audio system!
As the doc says there, SDL_GetNumAudioDevices() will allow you to loop through SDL_GetAudioDeviceName() to see if it exists on the machine.
This would allow you more control over your audio and can save CPU time from converting the data to the exact device. You also must have that device already opened as well.
Also a link to the SDL2 docs.
Hope this helps explain that function.

Related

How can I determine what MTD flash device is installed (e.g. get the ID or serial number)?

Using uClinux we have one of two flash devices installed, a 1GB flash or a 2GB flash.
The only way I can think of solving this is to somehow get the device ID - which is down the in the device driver code, for me that is in:
drivers/mtd/devices/m25p80.c
I have been using the command mtdinfo (which comes from mtdutils binaries, derived from mtdinfo.c/h). There is various information stored in here about the flash partitions including flash type 'nor' eraseblock size '65536', etc. But nothing that I can identify the chip with.
Its not very clear to me how I can get information from "driver-land" into "user-land". I am looking at trying to extend the mtdinfo command to print more information but there are many layers...
What is the best way to achieve this?
At the moment, I have found no easy way to do this without code changes. However I have found an easy code change (probably a bit of a hack) that allows me to get the information I need:
In the relevant file (in my case drivers/mtd/devices/m25p80.c) you can call one of the following:
dev_err("...");
dev_alert("...");
dev_warn("...");
dev_notice("...");
_dev_info("...");
Which are defined in include/Linux/device.h, so they are part of the Linux driver interface so you can use them from any driver.
I found that the dev_err() and devalert() both get printed out "on screen" during run time. However all of these device messages can be found in /var/log/messages. Since I added messages in the format: dev_notice("JEDEC id %06x\n", jedecid);, I could find the device ID with the following command:
cat /var/log/messages | grep -i jedec
Obviously using dev_err() ordev_alert() is not quite right! - but dev_notice() or even _dev_info() seem more appropriate.
Not yet marking this as the answer since it requires code changes - still hoping for a better solution if anyone knows of one...
Update
Although the above "solution" works, its a bit crappy - certainly will do the job and good enough for mucking around. But I decided that if I am making code changes I may as well do it properly. So I have now implemented changes to add an interface in sysfs such that you can get the flash id with the following command:
cat /sys/class/m25p80/m25p80_dev0/device_id
The main function calls required for this are (in this order):
alloc_chrdev_region(...)
class_create(...)
device_create(...)
sysfs_create_group(...)
This should give enough of a hint for anyone wanting to do the same, though I can expand on that answer if anyone wants it.

Is MMAP what I need from ALSA to play simultaneous, immediate sounds in my game?

I'm new to ALSA and I've managed to get PCM sound played in SND_PCM_ACCESS_RW_INTERLEAVED mode. My problem is that I just can't find a way to make that mode useful for what I'm trying to do. (If someone can tell me how, I'll be glad to read). I've been reading there is this MMAP mode, but it's not as easy to find simple examples for it. I wonder if it is what I need and how I could implement it.
What I want to do is have my little game (a simple space shoot-up) to immediately play a sound when I shoot or get shot. If an enemy shoots while another sound is being played, the sounds should add up and saturate as necessary, but no sound event should be interrupted. In other words, I need to be able to edit the very byte that's about to be played.
In my useless attempts to try MMAP (without really knowing how it works in practice; just following vague theoretical instructions), I set up everything just like for SND_PCM_ACCESS_RW_INTERLEAVED, but change it to SND_PCM_ACCESS_MMAP_INTERLEAVED. Then I call snd_pcm_avail_update, which seems to work and returns a large number of available frames. After that, I call snd_pcm_mmap_begin, passing the parameters, previously filling "frames" with a reasonable number (a 10, for example). The function fails and returns an error code -77. I haven't been able to find what that means. The areas array remains unmodified.
What does that error mean? Where can I get a list of the errors? How can I overcome it? Is there a good, simple, example of how to use MMAP (or some other thing) to perform something more or less like what I'm trying to do?
I appreciate your help :)
ALSA returns negative values on error. 77 is most likely EBADFD which indicates that the device is in an invalid state (under/overrun or not running at all). In case of underrun you're probably using a too low buffersize.
In any case, there's no way to modify audio data that you've already submitted to the alsa driver (snd_pcm_mmap_commit/writei/writen). The trick to have audio sound immediately is just to use very low buffer sizes, < 10ms will do. For this you'll want to use hw: devices, other device types usually add latency.
You still have to mix sounds together manually before you pass them to alsa.
There's a nice mmap example in the comments on this question: Alsa api: how to use mmap in c?.
That being said, ALSA is a valid choice for this kind of application but you don't necessarily need to use memory mapping. Read/write access doesn't introduce additional latency, it just copies audio around a bit more.

Is there any way in LLRP to configure antenna switches?

Rfid Readers perform switches between antennas while using multiple antennas. Reader runs one antenna while others sleeping and switches one by one. It makes it fast so running one antenna at a time doesn't matter. According to my observations, the time for every switch is 1 second.
(After sometime I realised this 1 second is only for Motorola FX7500. Most other readers do it the right way, light fast like in miliseconds)
That is what I know so far.
Now, in my specific application I need this procedure to run faster, like 200ms instead of 1s.
Is this value changeable? If so, which message and parameter in LLRP can modify this value?
Actually the 1 second problem is with MotorolaFX7500 reader. By examining LLRP messages that Motorola's own library generates between FC7500, I discovered there are vendor specific parameters that can be used via custom extensions fields of LLRP. These params and settings can be found in Motorola Readers' software guide. This switch time is one of these vendor specific parameters, it's not a parameter of generic LLRP. A piece of code generating LLRP message including the custom extension with the proper format, solved my issue.

PulseAudio: Get current volume of source (microphone)

I need a way to get the current "loudness" of a microphone via PulseAudio (via bash). And I mean the volume of the sound that is picked up by the mircophone.
I want to replicate a volume meter, like you see it in pavucontrol.
search on github for the raspberry-vu project as it can help you with this. i changed src/impulse.c to use the device alsa_input.pci-0000_00_1b.0.analog-stereo, you may need to change this for your setup.
i then linked the GNU GSL lib to analyze the FFT array returned by im_getSnapshot() using gsl_stats_sd() and gsl_stats_mean() both of which return a double. you can then react to the value returned.

Reading Microphone Data by Polling using ALSA [or V4L2]

I am trying to read data from multiple microphones in Linux (ubuntu 14.04). I have a specific constraint that the reading from microphones should be via polling(so no waiting until there is data, although the data comes in high frequency). I wanted to know if that is possible in Linux? Unfortunately audio capture is not the area of my expertise and I would like to know if the choice of using Alsa is a good one. To better understand the problem, here is a pseudo-code that I had in mind:
open_the_audio_device();
set_the_parameters_of_the_audio_device();
while (!done)
{
poll_result=poll_the_devices(); //other non-audio devices are also polled here preferably, something like using select on all different file descriptors of audio, video, socket, etc.
if(poll_success_for_audio_device)
receive_audio_from_the_device_that_has_data();
else
do_some_other_very_fast_stuff_and_start_loop_again();
}
close_the_device();
My questions are 2 fold:
Is Alsa a good choice for this?
Can it be done somehow with some library that gives me a file descriptor so that I can use it with select function? if so this is optimal because there are other non-audio devices also working with select.
Thank you for your attention.
To prevent the snd_pcm_read*() calls from blocking, enable non-blocking mode with snd_pcm_nonblock().
To get pollable file descriptors, call snd_pcm_poll_descriptors_count() and snd_pcm_poll_descriptors().
It is possible to have multiple descriptors because some plugins might implement notifications differently.
To translate the result of a poll() on those descriptors back into a POLLIN/POLLOUT value, call snd_pcm_poll_descriptors_revents().

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