Lattepanda 3 Delta Recording Rig

While the project log updates have not been regular, work on this project has been ongoing - and it's doing well! I have made great progress with my portable recording endeavours, and have used the LattePanda to record a full track!

The track is a song I helped my 9 Year old son Isaac to write, and consists of Vocals, Brass and guitar. It is a lovely song we wrote for his mother, and I have released it on Bandcamp and Spotify:

https://isaachissett.bandcamp.com/track/your-baby
https://open.spotify.com/track/1cWpDu2MLdMeMSLRDZb2ui?si=23e6f235659541f4

For recording I paired the LattePanda with my Rode NT-USB Microphone mounted to a small tripod mic stand, with a phone holder mounting the Lattepanda and a tablet holder mounting the screen to the stand.
It provided me with a fantastic, all-in-one setup that only required one cable running to the Lattepanda to be up and running.

The board was great with recording raw audio but I did notice some latency when trying to record with any kind of audio processing attempted on the board, so I opted to record the audio without ant effects for a better experience. This wasn't bad, as using OneDrive meant all audio was available seconds later on my laptop or desktop to edit on a more powerful rig.

This presents a fantastic vocal rig for quick jobs, so I'm really impressed with it.

I've done some messing around with software over the last few weeks, and now it was time to take a look at finally putting together the hardware. It has, today, been strewn across a cupboard in no sensible formation.

I've mulled over many options for the build, and was pretty keen on procuring a rack flightcase to put the items together; the interfaces occupying 1U space each using some rackmounts I've had printed, and a further 1u drawer for the lattepanda, tablet and control surfaces etc.

That becomes quite unwieldy when drawers need sliding out and will take up a great amount of space. It also leaves no room for mic storage, so would require another case for those. Not ideal.

I have put together the following items above; one interface, the lattepanda, the control surface and a surface 3 plus dock. It fits together so snuggly and retains an almost laptop-like form factor. I'm going to look to build a board with shelf to fit this guise.

I'm currently looking at options for the physical control aspect of this build.

While my makeproaudio device is brilliant, it is reliant on a network connection in its current guise, which complicates the plan. My original thought was to run an ethernet cable directly between the lattepanda and the Pi in the MPA, but I also want to test out usb midi control too.

To that end I've ordered a few midi controllers to try out over the next week or two. Exciting!

Apologies for the lack of updates on this one!

There has been a great deal of progress with this one:

Lattepanda - I've added a 500gb m.2 SSD to the board to increased storage, and I will be installing Windows 11 as my base OS for the project. Some time had been spent playing with Windows 10 initially, and then I've spent some time using Ubuntu on it. Ubuntu was great and really responsive and for the last few weeks was going to be my OS of choice as I would have been more comfortable with it for using VNC for remote access, but my new plan for display and control will work just as well with Windows, so back to Windows I go, ha ha! It will be my first dalliance with 11 rather than 10, so if it isn't what I'm hoping this will change once more.

Last change with the lattepanda is I've picked up the Titan case for it, which is really frigging cool. It looks awesome.

Audio Interfaces - I've added a second UMC404HD to my arsenal for this. Under windows I have ran both as one aggregated interface using the ASIO4ALL driver. Once I've got Windows 11 installed I'll be aiming to get the latency down as much as I can without causing jittering performance in Reaper, my DAW of choice.

8 mic inputs, a tonne outputs and two dedicated headphone outs makes this setup really quite useful for my plans. Really happy with the interface choices.

Display - While looking for the Lattepanda case on the dfrobot site I landed upon a link cable they sell for the Lattepanda. This cable is a USB A-USB-A cable, which acts as a virtual network between the board and a host device. I've ordered one and when it arrives I will look to use an old iPad 3 with a camera kit as the screen and input device. If I can get it to work the way I want I will be absolutely buzzing, as it'll give me the exact control I need, with also the ability to disconnect the iPad and use it wirelessly with the Reaper web interface once the session is set up.

Auxiliary control - the final hardware part I want to integrate is a MakeProAudio controller I have from another project. Powered by a Raspberry Pi 4, it brings 4 motorized faders and a whole selection of encoders and buttons to the party, and can connect to Reaper via Wi-Fi using OSC to interact with Reaper. Between the iPad and the MakeProAudio unit I will have the perfect mix of software control and a physical interface to mix in Reaper.

Once I have these last few bits and pieces ironed out in January I can finally plan my assembly.

My thoughts so far are to stack the two interfaces, position the MakeProAudio device to the right side of it, and create a slot for the iPad to sit above the interfaces and level with the control device.

Power will need to be considered, with the Lattepanda and MakeProAudio device requiring wall power, with the iPad also needing a charging point in there too. We also have three devices needing networking together, so a space for a switch/hotspot type device may come in handy. 

Cheers!

While I scour for a reasonably priced Zoom R24 for this I have managed to get a great deal on a Behringer U-PHORIA UMC404HD interface for me to get some more testing done with the Lattepanda.

This interface is an ideal candidate for this, as it features four XLR/Jack combination ins, four outs, input padding and phantom power for condenser mics; all the things I'd like.

While the interface lacks the ability to control a DAW physically I will be using a custom device from MakePro Audio as a substitute for now.

The control device contains a Raspberry Pi 4, and can communicate using OSC via wifi/ethernet and let me introduce four motorised faders and a smattering of buttons and encoders to use with my recording software.

If I can combine the two boards to work reliably together and also sit nicely in an enclosure/case I'll be tempted to crack on with this setup in all honesty.

I have completed my first test, and added the output to the files section. 

To test recording I connected a portable monitor to the Lattepanda 3 Delta, with a USB and hdmi lead for power and display respectively.

I added a mini keyboard/trackpad using USB again for the receiver.

Last of the three USB ports I connected my Rode NT-USB microphone. This mic is a solid condenser mic which connects directly via USB without the need of an interface. Perfect for a single mono tester.

I installed Reaper as my DAW of choice, enabling the Web UI for it to allow for some control via my phone. I'm  blown away how fast and snappy the Lattepanda is. I wasn't sure what to expect with Windows 10 being such a large OS, but I was really impressed. Adding the WiFi antenna was a fiddly affair but I suspect it was my large fingers causing the issue there, but once connected it held its connection to my network well.

Next up will be to switch the mic for an audio interface and try tracking a few channels at once. I would also like to add an m.2 ssd to give more storage for recorded audio.

The Lattepanda 3 Delta has arrived!

The DFRobot hiys have kindly sent their 8gb RAM, 64gb onboard storage variant, which will be the best platform to attempt to run a stable DAW on.

I will get this unbowed later and pair it with an audio interface to get some testing done. Still looking to secure an interface/DAW controller for my final build but that will not halt my progress.