July 14, 2014November 19, 2017 by michiel

An .asoundrc ALSA config for the PS3 Eye

It took quite some fiddling for me to get ALSA setup to record sound from my PS3 Eye USB camera and to play back sound using my onboard Intel PCH sound device.

Here’s the result:

# ps3 eye
## Suggested by http://julius.sourceforge.jp/forum/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=66
pcm.array {
  type hw
  card CameraB409241
}

pcm.array_gain {
  type softvol
  slave {
    pcm "array"
  }
  control {
    name "Mic Gain"
    count 2
  }
  min_dB -10.0
  max_dB 5.0
}

pcm.cap {
  type plug
  slave {
    pcm "array_gain"
    channels 4
  }
  route_policy sum
}

pcm.!default {
    type asym
    
    playback.pcm {
     type plug
      slave.pcm {
	@func getenv
	vars [ ALSAPCM ]
	default "hw:PCH"
      }
    }
    capture.pcm {
        type plug
        slave.pcm "cap"
    }
}

References:

PS3 Eye microphone array config: Raspberry Pi forums
Output sound device config: Arch Linux wiki entry on ALSA
Correctly setting separate default capture and playback devices: Arch Linux wiki entry on ALSA
Also interesting: PS3 eye 4 channel audio tests

6 Replies to “An .asoundrc ALSA config for the PS3 Eye”

Ole says:

September 20, 2015 at 12:12

Hi,
I’m struggling to get to work PS Eye microphone array to work with RPI B+. Would you mind to share your sd card image with working PS Eye?

Best regards
Ole

Reply
1. michiel says:
  
  September 20, 2015 at 13:08
  
  Hi Ole,
  I set this up on my desktop PC, so I’m afraid not..
  Best regards,
  Michiel
  
  Reply
Alexey says:

January 12, 2016 at 23:35

Have you by any chance gotten the microphones to capture 48kHz audio instead of 16kHz?

Thanks,

Alexey

Reply
1. michiel says:
  
  January 16, 2016 at 13:41
  
  Hi Alexey,
  I haven’t tried that, sorry.
  
  Reply
Mark says:

July 25, 2016 at 20:29

So I have currently no asoundrc file on my Orange Pi pc (running Armbian – Debian Jessie derivative)…If I would use this file, would the speaker still work? Would they both work then,, the speaker and the ps3-eye microphones?

Do you have maybe an audio sample of how the quality is?

Reply
1. michiel says:
  
  July 27, 2016 at 21:06
  
  Hi Mark,
  I unfortunately don’t know if the output device configuration will work on the Raspberry Pi out of the box, you’ll need to look into the output config (I’d start with looking at the playback.pcm config block, and specifically the “hw:PCH” bit – most likely you’ll just need to change the bit after the “:” there.). There should be quite a few resources online on getting ALSA to work on Raspberry Pi, such as this one on the Raspberry Pi Stackexchange. I hope this at least points you in the right direction.
  I now use Pulse Audio on my desktop PC, so I don’t have this exact config running anymore – I think I moved because Skype at some point started requiring PulseAudio…
  
  Reply

6 Replies to “An .asoundrc ALSA config for the PS3 Eye”

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