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Tangara setup questions - attacus - 2024-12-24

Hey folks! I am very excited to play around with my Tangara! I had a couple of things that cropped up when getting started, that I am asking here in the hope that a) I might get some assistance, and b) if anyone else has these problems, they can find this thread and fix theirs, too!

Firstly, is there a way to turn down or disable the haptic feedback? The sound is quite a bit louder than I was expecting, and I was hoping to use the Tangara in the radio studio to queue upcoming tracks, so I need it to be quiet. Here's a short video to demonstrate the sound, in case it's not what you were expecting: https://user.fm/files/v2-01eba28d5b3d6ff3477b3b185b1a478e/IMG_7863.MOV

Secondly, are there any recommendations for SD card setups? I forgot I needed an SD card for this, so when it arrived, I formatted two separate SDHC cards to FAT32 (one standard, one micro-with-adapter) that I had kicking around in some old RPis. I loaded tracks on to both, and can read the data on them on two separate laptops, but both of them end up messing up the display on the Tangara when it boots. Here's a picture for reference of what it looks like with either card: https://user.fm/files/v2-92a80df9373791c23351199b6ada0599/IMG_7866.jpeg

RE: Tangara setup questions - jacqueline - 2024-12-24

Hi! Welcome!

For the first question, we haven't implemented haptic feedback 'volume' yet, but it has been mentioned: https://codeberg.org/cool-tech-zone/tangara-fw/issues/120
It's a good idea and should be easy to implement. Hopefully we can get to it soon.

That issue with your display is wild however! I've never seen that, it's quite concerning. Is it just these SD cards, or does it also happen with an empty micro sd adapter inserted? I wonder if it's some kind of electrical fault with your unit that we've not seen before. If you email support@cooltech.zone then I'll be happy to work with you on sorting this out after Christmas.

RE: Tangara setup questions - attacus - 2024-12-24

(2024-12-24, 05:40 AM)jacqueline Wrote: Hi! Welcome!

For the first question, we haven't implemented haptic feedback 'volume' yet, but it has been mentioned: https://codeberg.org/cool-tech-zone/tangara-fw/issues/120
It's a good idea and should be easy to implement. Hopefully we can get to it soon.

That issue with your display is wild however! I've never seen that, it's quite concerning. Is it just these SD cards, or does it also happen with an empty micro sd adapter inserted? I wonder if it's some kind of electrical fault with your unit that we've not seen before. If you email support@cooltech.zone then I'll be happy to work with you on sorting this out after Christmas.

No worries, and thanks for the swift response! I don't know much about the firmware but I will be a keen tester for switching the haptics off or turning them down if/when people propose patches.

The empty SD adapter doesn't have this issue; the Tangara boots normally with it in there. When it tries to read data from either of the cards, though, it alternates between the pixellated display or a white screen of death (a new development!). I'll order some new SD cards and see what happens with those after Christmas, and flick you an email if a brand new card doesn't fix it.

RE: Tangara setup questions - attacus - 2025-01-11

Hello! I've come back to this post-Christmas with a new 128GB Samsung micro-SDXC (and adapter) and tried again. I loaded one album of mp3s onto the card, put the card in the Tangara, and booted it. It scanned! Although it told me the files were incompatible with the Tangara, it allowed me to browse to the album and select an mp3, which began to play. When I plugged a set of headphones into the jack so I could hear it, I got about half a second of audio and then the Tangara rebooted and told me there was no SD card inserted. I haven't been able to get it to read again.

This behaviour, in addition to the loud, buzzy-sounding haptics (as demonstrated in the video on my original post) leads me to believe that maybe some of the components are loose. What steps would you recommend I take here? I wasn't planning to do any hardware modding, but I can give it a shot if you are able to point me at what to look for.

If you think there might be something else going on, let me know and I'll test a few other things.

RE: Tangara setup questions - emily - 2025-01-11

(2025-01-11, 01:37 AM)attacus Wrote: This behaviour, in addition to the loud, buzzy-sounding haptics (as demonstrated in the video on my original post) leads me to believe that maybe some of the components are loose. What steps would you recommend I take here?

That one's easy to check, at least: remove the four front screws and look on the back of the faceplate board. The haptic buzzer is this bit, and should be attached to the board. If it's not, it might be hitting the shell of the SD card slot?

[Image: o2tjsi4.jpeg]

RE: Tangara setup questions - attacus - 2025-01-12

That was the entire problem! The haptic buzzer was loose inside the case and bumping on lots of different stuff. Pressing it firmly to the back of the faceplate so that the adhesive did its work was all it needed. With that out of the way, the SD card was able to read enough to build the database for the first time 🥲

Thank you so much!

RE: Tangara setup questions - emily - 2025-01-13

:o I did not expect that to fix your other problems. I assume it was actually shorting some pair of terminals in that area and breaking SPI communication.

RE: Tangara setup questions - attacus - 2025-01-13

After ~half a day of use since I made sure the buzzer was affixed to the faceplate, the Tangara has been completely usable and none of the problems I was experiencing earlier in the thread have appeared again.

I suppose that having a component rattling around in the case is going to cause all kinds of havoc depending on what it's making contact with at any given point in time, which would explain the variability in and variety of the issues I experienced.

Anyway, the little machine is now happily dispensing my tunes successfully via both wired and Bluetooth options, has handled multiple database changes and updates quickly and effectively, and now my only real issue so far is to do with rendering some subsets of special characters in track names, which is in a realm I'm probably more equipped to debug by myself, and doesn't impact the core functionality of the device at all.

Thanks again!

RE: Tangara setup questions - jacqueline - 2025-01-13

Oh huge!! So glad you got it fixed, that's a really nasty failure case. Will need to see if we can do anything more to prevent it with the next assembly batch. Also thank u emily for helping out!

RE: Tangara setup questions - emily - 2025-01-13

it's me, I'm the level 2 tech support