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Software updates and Raspberry Pi 3

A project log for eXaDrums

Electronic drums for Linux

jeremyJeremy 03/01/2016 at 19:270 Comments

Hi guys,

I took some time this weekend to implement most of the changes that were discussed in the previous log. Those changes partially broke the software at some point, which is why I decided to commit everything in a new branch in the Github repository. So far there are 9 commits, and 27 files affected by the update, so that's not a tiny change.

It's now possible to have more than one sound per Instrument, and that part of the software is already working pretty well. The next step, is to fix a minor bug that I've found yesterday, and then to allow each Instrument to use more than one sensor. If everything goes well, I should be able to create a hi-hat and test it with my sensor, so that's a good news.

Another good news is that I ordered a Raspberry Pi 3, and received it today. I've already played with it, and installed Ubuntu MATE 15.10. It works quite well, and is a bit faster than the Pi 2, which makes it more usable. The wifi is definitely making a difference, but it's also interesting to know how much faster the Pi 3's CPU is. To me the fastest and easiest way to compare Pi 2 and 3 was to compile eXaDrums, and see how long it takes.

The result isn't bad to be honest. It took 60 seconds to compile on the Raspberry Pi 2, and 42 seconds on the Pi 3. That means that, the Pi 3 was 43% faster to compile eXaDrums (note that I used 4 threads to compile the software on both Pis). For now my plan is to develop eXaDrums on the Pi 2 anyway, as it works pretty well, and doesn't need more processing power.

That's it for this week.

Cheers.

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