It consists of a small plus a bunch of bits that can convert a Pi 3 into a mini-desktop with on/off switch, real-time clock and an optional internal solid-state drive.

Yes please.

However, on deeper reading I got a little worried.

Twice bitten

Several years ago now I tried one of the early Wolfson audio cards from Farnell – later replaced by the very similar Cirrus audio card.

It sounded absolutely brilliant – really nice – but it did not run with standard Raspbian. Neither did it run with an app that could be downloaded on top of standard Raspbian. Instead, a whole string of sudo-apt-get.. and such-like was required.

This sort of thing is fine if you are familiar with Linux, but fraught with potential errors if you are not – make a single mistake with a dash or comma and a best you wasted a step, at worst you have changed something that only a real expert can recover.

That, and the step-by-step instructions provided are seldom spot-on, because some part of the process has been improved and the documentation has not yet caught up.

This is not unique to the Wolfson/Cirrus card, time and time again I have had the same situation with the many Raspberry Pi audio products I have tried – which is a shame, because you really have to hear how good they are to believe the sound that can be be achieved.

Often, to simplify set-up, the add-on board supplier provides a modified Raspbian build that works out of the box, but do a single ‘update’ and they are broken again, and it is tough for the supplier to ensure they always modify and offer the latest Raspbian.

My understanding is that the eeprom associated with the Raspberry Pi HAT standard was supposed to automate these customisation steps, but I have not seen this in action – examples welcome (comment below if you have one, please).

Back to the Pi Desktop.