Beocreate 4 Channel Amplifier v1.2 is not recognized, unable to reach support

[Laptopmini]

I'm posting here because I'm out of ideas on how to get the Beocreate card working, and I cannot find a way to reach support. I recently bought a Beocreate Amplifier which has been a frustrating $200 piece of equipment. I tried posting in the forum, but the signup is broken, hence my presence here. (please dont be mad)

Please I beg you, do not just close this issue. I really need help.

TL;DR

Beocreate 4 Channel Amplifier v1.2 is not recognized by Raspbian Linux 5.10.103-v7+ on Raspberry Pi 3 Model B Rev 1.2 Forum does not work, unable to reach support Need help turning a $200 paperweight into a soundcard

Documentation needs to be maintained

First, I'd like to mention that the documentation for Beocreate is not up to date, some links are even dead. I lost a lot of time going down the wrong rabbit hole following outdated guides. For example, the following fails to mention the need for force_eeprom_read=0 in certain case. It should reference the following page to be more accurate.

I tried using the Beocreate Tools, which clearly are outdated given the archived state of the repo. Why not refer to the updated/maintained tools under hifiberry-os here? I found these after much digging.

Not only that, but detect-hifiberry bricked the Pi into a reboot loop polluting the config.txt in the process, as seen in this line where it will continuously write to config.txt and loop reboot as a service triggered on startup.

Beocreate not found

Following the default guide and using the asla config found in asound.conf.dmix_softvol, I setup my Pi to detect the Beocreate soundcard

config.txt

# Hifiberry Beocreate
dtoverlay=hifiberry-dac
dtparam=i2c1=on
force_eeprom_read=0

I also made sure to change existing related configs

config.txt

dtparam=i2c_arm=on
...
#dtparam=audio=off
...
dtoverlay=vc4-fkms-v3d,audio=off

Note, I enabled i2c_arm as I could not get i2cdetect -y 1 to return anything. As I understand it, this needs to be enabled for the card to work. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

$ sudo i2cdetect -y 1
     0  1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9  a  b  c  d  e  f
00:          -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- 
10: -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- 
20: -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- 
30: -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- 
40: -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- 
50: -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- 
60: -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- 
70: -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- 

Unfortunately, after reboot, I cannot get the card to be detected, as seen here

$ aplay -l
aplay: device_list:272: no soundcards found...

I even downloaded readhat utility on advice from one of your forum posts I found to get some kind of output but to no avail

$ sudo sh readhat.sh 
readhat.sh: 23: readhat.sh: cannot create /sys/class/i2c-adapter/i2c-/new_device: Directory nonexistent
readhat.sh: 28: readhat.sh: /usr/bin/eepdump: not found
:

I saw on the forum this post from you guys about Beocreate having detecting issues, which sounds extremely familiar. Unfortunately, being that I do not use Hifiberry OS, this post does not tell me what to do to improve detection for 3rd party software.

• Where can I find the source code of the updates so I can hopefully cherry pick and apply a fix?
• Do you see anything wrong with my setup? Did I miss anything?
• Am I using the right alsa config?
• Do you have ANY advice on how to get this card working?

Anyways, sorry for the frustration. It's just been a real pain in the a$$. I'm hoping you guys can help.

[Laptopmini]

I've managed to get the card detected by adding [all] to the config.txt portion. If someone has a better understanding of why that makes it work, I'm interested.

# Hifiberry Beocreate
[all]
force_eeprom_read=0
dtoverlay=hifiberry-dac
dtparam=i2c1=on

[npmstart-pray]

This is where you should've come in the first place. HifiBerryOS is what's needed to use the beocreate board you've bought - it's not a paperweight, but if you're expecting to have a 4ch sound card for a RasPi running RasPiOS, let me be the first to disappoint you: you're on your own trying to make that work.

[Laptopmini]

Understood