Autoload PD patch makes Bela unresponsive

dvvi

Hi!

I have been working on a PD patch for the Bela and having a great time. However, I seem to have done something wrong with that patch, which I unwisely set to load automatically, and now it is overloading the Bela and making it unreachable on the IDE or Terminal. I can reset the patch with the reset the button on the Beagle Bone, but of course it will load the buggy patch and become unresponsive again.

Any suggestions on how to bypass the autoload?

Thanks!

dvvi

Ok, I found the Troubleshooting guide on the Knowledge Base and managed to interrupt the automatic load process by repeatedly pressing the Bela button very quick.

This is what I got on the console when I was able to access it on the IDE:

-- Logs begin at Thu 2016-11-03 17:16:43 UTC. --
Nov 03 17:18:39 bela stdbuf[1854]: Button pressed, quitting
Nov 03 17:18:39 bela stdbuf[1854]: Underrun detected: 1 blocks dropped
Nov 03 17:18:40 bela stdbuf[1854]: make: warning:  Clock skew detected.  Your build may be incomplete.
Nov 03 17:18:40 bela stdbuf[1854]: make: Leaving directory '/root/Bela'
Nov 03 17:18:40 bela systemd[1]: bela_startup.service: Service hold-off time over, scheduling restart.
Nov 03 17:18:40 bela systemd[1]: Stopped Run Bela at boot.
Nov 03 17:18:40 bela systemd[1]: bela_startup.service: Start request repeated too quickly.
Nov 03 17:18:40 bela systemd[1]: Failed to start Run Bela at boot.
Nov 03 17:18:40 bela systemd[1]: bela_startup.service: Unit entered failed state.
Nov 03 17:18:40 bela systemd[1]: bela_startup.service: Failed with result 'start-limit-hit'.

I SSH'd into the bela and manually deleted the _main.pd file for my project, and then set the "run project on boot" to "none." I think I'll leave it like that until the patch is foolproof!

Now let's figure out why the project is crashing, hm!

Update: I added two bob~ filters which brought the patch's CPU usage over the top. Now looking for more efficient filters.

giuliomoro

dvvi Update: I added two bob~ filters which brought the patch's CPU usage over the top. Now looking for more efficient filters.

At some point I had enabled some optimisations for [bob~], which greatly reduced the CPU usage, but also affected the way it sounded with specific settings. These are not enabled right now. Not sure if you are interested in trying it out.

dvvi

giuliomoro Hi! thanks for your reply. I might be interested if it's not a big deal (for you)! Thanks!

giuliomoro

Download this file to your computer: http://files.bela.io/bob~.pd_linux.
Then in the Bela IDE create a new project called pd-externals and place the file there (drag-and-drop should work ) *. Go back to your project. Using Pd, edit your _main.pd file so to add the following to the patch which uses [bob~] :

[declare -lib bob~]

To verify it worked OK, when you start the patch you should get a printout that says bob~ - fast in the Bela console. This external can now be used by all projects Each project which wants to use it will still need the [declare -lib bob~] statement.

*: older versions of the Bela IDE may rename this file to bob_.pd_linux (i.e.: replacing - with ~) and also prevent you from renaming it back to ~ via the rename function. It is crucial that the name is correct for the [declare] statement to work. Two fixes are possible:

either update the Bela IDE to the most recent version

or use the console at the bottom of the IDE to rename it:

mv projects/pd-externals/bob*.pd_linux projects/pd-externals/bob~.pd_linux

dvvi

giuliomoro Thanks so much for this! I finally had a chance to try it out but unfortunately it's not working for me at the moment.

The installation seems to have worked well since I get the confirmation bob~ - fast in the console, but I have no output from the filter in a patch that otherwise works correctly on my machine. I'm not sure what else I can do to troubleshooting at the time.

If this is something you'd like to develop I'd be happy to keep trying; if it's not a priority, I can look for alternatives such as settling with vcf~ or something else.

Thanks~

giuliomoro

OK I found a bug in the source of bob~, now fixed it and it should work. Try the procedure above again: same link, different file. This one should print bob~ - fast2 so you can verify everything went as planned

dvvi

giuliomoro This works perfectly! (sorry again for the delay; busy week...).

You are a hero @giuliomoro. Thanks for all your support here.