Hi Samuel
At the risk of sounding very dumb. Just how is Alsamixer going to help trouble shoot the problem of “It either works or it doesn’t”
I agree that checking the power availability at all the points where it should be present is a good idea. This should be the first thing that happens anyway as it is no surprise that a good percentage of faults originate at the power supply. If you don’t eliminate this you could be going in circles forever. And take everybody else with you.
Cheers Bob
Get rid of that connector problem first. It might not stop there. That sort of misalignment could have damaged any female socket but as I said it is a bit hard to tell exactly how that whole thing goes together and which is female and which is male.
Cheers
The third photo shows the male headers and the electrolytic that is causing the mounting problem.
Hi Jeff.
I see it now. what I thought was a spacer is the light coloured part of the electrolytic.
In that case the connector on the top board (facing down) would be female and a pretty low profile one. One row of pins would be lucky to make any connection at all or at least be pretty iffy.
The solution here would be longer pins or change the electrolytic and lay it on its side which might not be practical.
Irrespective what the solutions are, the angle the pins are entering the female socket is unacceptable. In all probability the female part has been damaged and might have to be replaced. This connector would be forever suspect to me and I would replace it anyway. There again I don’t think I would have done this in the first place.
Cheers Bob
If its the female that is shallow, maybe something like this?
(Note: needs checking for size, spacing etc, just an idea)
That may then get the clearance (?) you need.
Thanks guys for all your concern … but the top board in the first 2 photos is the Adafruit Voice Bonnet; and yes, adding another header would have given enough clearance to get above the capacitor. The Voice Bonnet was later removed when I realised that both boards were trying to own the i2s.
Are you saying that having the Voice Bonnet HAT on top in the 2nd photo has destroyed the DigiAMP+ card ?
Apart from the sudden jump to full volume, the problem of DigiAMP+ not detected started when both HATs were connected and presumably conflicting - but became much more frequent after removing the Voice Bonnet (as shown in 3rd photo).
I was using a laptop power supply (Amacrox laptop N9) DC output 19.0V 4.74A max (90W) connected to the DigiAMP+. I did NOT connect the RasPi’s power connector.
I have tried using alsamixer previously, but (a) it doesn’t show anything when the device is not detected, and (b) I don’t understand what most of the values are.
Sorry, I have a software rather than electronics background … so do I just check that the 5v and 3.3v GPIO pins have the appropriate voltage ? Are there other GPIO pins or test points on the DigiAMP+ that I should also check ?
Hi Donald
Not at All. My comment was directed at the WAY it was connected. I know almost nothing about Rpi and don’t intend to find out much. Far too flakey for my liking. It was just so obviously mechanically incorrect that I commented. In fact having this connected in such a manner might (and I stress “might”) have done anything.
All things being equal I don’t see how this scenario could have done any damage except to the connector but I have come to believe that when it comes to Rpi anything could happen. It just starts me wondering what else could have happened along the way.
That could be a worry. Can you use and interpret what you see on a multimeter.
That would be a start but make sure the voltages are on the correct pins and be aware that some pins will be voltage outputs not inputs.
You might have to do a bit of hardware basic learning.
Cheers Bob
Edit:
“I don’t see how this scenario could have done any damage”
Added “except to the connector”
Sorry for the delay. I took the DigiAMP+ off and went with “plan B”; the Adafruit Voice Bonnet … the one that was poorly mounted in my photos … since it also has 1W amps built-in. Working pretty well, except that it doesn’t like playlists, which seems to be a Home Assistant music_player and MPD issue.
My intention is to get back and give the DigiAMP+ another go … but it won’t be this weekend as my landlord informed me friday afternoon that I have to clear all my stored stuff out of the garage before monday so strata can replace the roof. A week or two’s notice would have been nice.
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Back again, having given up trying to get Home Assistant’s Voice Assist and a music player to play nicely on the same RasPi 4B.
FYI, I found that the Adafruit Voice Bonnet did the arecord/aplay test OK (though with the high pitched whine that others reported previously) - however after installing the wyoming-satellite (voice assistant) software there was a repeated popping 
Whisper on the HA server did a wonderful job of removing the pops and cleaning the audio … but the popping stopped Voice Activity Detection from recognising the end of spoken command, which required it to always time out after 15 seconds
Anyway, starting again to install media player on RasPi4 with IQaudIO DigiAMP+. You will be pleased to know that after putting the hardware and microSD card aside for a month, the hardware is detected and seems to work great now.
Hi Donald
Oh great. I just love these faults that seem to just go away and fix themselves. maybe you upset it and it wanted a little rest.
I have found that a genuine fault does not just “go away”. It will re surface at some time.
However if it were an “accidental” fault like a poor or intermittent connection you could have accidentally “fixed” it albeit sometimes temporarily.
I am just pointing out that some problem might re occur at some time down stream and don’t be too surprised. Believe me this sort of thing can be very difficult to pin down sometimes (read nearly always).
Cheers Bob
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Bob, after working 30 years in IT I am well familiar with intermittent faults 
Having rebooted the same hardware several times before putting it aside, I was surprised that it ‘just worked’ without even re-installing the microSD card. But I did say “seems to work great” because there’s still time for it to go south
On the other hand I have found that sometimes putting a challenging project aside can give me time (a) to do a bit more research and (b) for the reading I have done to ‘fall into place’ and make sense when I get back to the project. Thankfully I am now retired, so can get away with a bit of procrastination
For example, I have since learnt that ALSA and PulseAudio are not incompatible standards, but that PulseAudio in an extra layer on top of ALSA.
Edit: Looks like i spoke too soon. Came back yesterday evening and the RasPi is powered off, despite power on at the wall socket.
This morning with a multimeter it seems that the power supply brick is producing 0.000vDC … so at least not the DigiAMP+ faulty.
I’m getting too old for all this sort of mucking about
Edit: replacing the laptop power supply has got it running again … but there’s always opportunities for Murphy
Me again
I gave up on the previous idea to use my RasPi4 as both a voice assistant and music player - they don’t seem to work together nicely - and instead have focussed on the music player function.
I have RasPi with IQaudio DigiAMP+ in a HighPi Pro Case, and a 7" HDMI touch screen with the whole lot powered by an ex-laptop power supply.
I tried a couple of music player packages, and ended up adapting a python program as a MPD client. Yes I know there are already plenty of MPD clients - but they are all designed for audiophiles who want to select each track (or at least album) individually. I want something as simple as a radio for my partner to start predefined playlists and internet radio stations for background while she’s cooking in the kitchen.
It’s been years since I did programming, and I am new at python, so its taken me several weeks - but I am happy with the result, which I have published on github.
But that’s not the reason for this post.
While developing the program I was listening to one speaker connected to the DigiAMP+. Then one day I came in and there was no sound. I hadn’t physically changed anything … but I just connected powered speakers to the audio jack and continued development.
Now that I am ready to deploy, I would like to go back to the DigiAMP+. I have swapped alsamixer and MPD back to the DigiAMP+ and still no sound.
What suggestions before I return the DigiAMP+ as faulty ?
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Hi Donald
Is that “power supply brick” one of those Power “Banks” meant to charge up other cells like phones etc.
If so is it possible that it has shut down when the current demand gets too low. Most of these devices will shut down when the demand gets to 50 or 100mA or so as I think this is how they detect “end of charge” when charging another device. which is what they are designed to do. Not act as a power “supply”.
Afraid I personally have no idea. I am not familiar with that device and without having it in front of me so I can wield DMM, Oscilloscope and generally play swapsies etc I don’t know how I can help.
Cheers Bob
Ahh Bob, that post stated that the laptop power supply “brick” died totally and was replaced 3 months ago. So before everyone here jumps on the “it must be the power supply” bandwagon, the current power supply has run the RasPi, DigiAMP+ and HDMI screen for 3 months without any low power overlay appearing.
My current thinking is that I may have updated something in alsamixer (maybe the DSP setting?), and so am now reinstalling on a fresh new microSD image.
Edit: yes, that does seem to be the problem. Re-imaging the microSD card and reinstalling and re-configuring took much of a day, but it is working again now, and my partner seems pleased. FYI, this is what it looks like on the 7" touch screen.
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Hi Donald
It would seem that an apology might be in order. I apologise.
But
I did not immediately associate
with
as you did not combine the two until
which you did in your last post just now.
As quite a lot of people refer to a “Power Bank” as a “Power Brick” I assumed you had done the same. Just a bit of naming confusion.
The result looks good, Well done.
Cheers Bob
