Failed to access audio device

[rawcomposition]

I just did a fresh install of Raspberry Pi OS (64 bit) on my Raspberry Pi 4 with 4 gb memory and I bought a Rode NT-USB mic to use for this setup.

I used the install.sh script, but I'm running into the following error:

❌ Failed to access audio device
This could be due to:
  • Device is busy
  • Insufficient permissions
  • Device is not properly connected
❌ Failed to validate audio device

I've confirmed that I can record audio using the device on the raspberry pi and it works just fine. I've also verified that the user has audio permissions by running groups. ChatGPT suggested that it might be related to the pipewire and wireplumber processes taking over the audio device, but after quitting those, the setup script still returns the same error.

Is there anything else I can try? I'd love to get this working, it's my first attempt to do so.

Full terminal output:

mockingbird@mockingbird:~ $ bash ./install.sh
 ____  _         _ _   _ _____ _____    ____      
| __ )(_)_ __ __| | \ | | ____|_   _|  / ___| ___ 
|  _ \| | '__/ _` |  \| |  _|   | |   | |  _ / _ \
| |_) | | | | (_| | |\  | |___  | |   | |_| | (_) |
|____/|_|_|  \__,_|_| \_|_____| |_|    \____|\___/ 

🐦 BirdNET-Go Installation Script
This script will install BirdNET-Go and its dependencies.
Note: Root privileges will be required for:
  - Installing system packages (alsa-utils, curl, bc, jq, apache2-utils)
  - Installing Docker
  - Creating systemd service

🌐 Checking network connectivity...

📡 Testing HTTP/HTTPS connectivity...
✅ HTTPS connection successful to https://github.com (HTTP 200)
✅ HTTPS connection successful to https://raw.githubusercontent.com (HTTP 301)
✅ HTTPS connection successful to https://ghcr.io (HTTP 301)

📡 Testing GitHub registry connectivity...
✅ GitHub registry is accessible

✅ Network connectivity check passed

🔧 Checking system prerequisites...
✅ ARM 64-bit architecture detected, continuing with installation
✅ Debian 12 found
✅ Docker found
🔧 Adding user mockingbird to required groups...
✅ Docker is accessible by user mockingbird
🥳 System prerequisites checks passed


🔧 Updating package list...
117 packages can be upgraded. Run 'apt list --upgradable' to see them.

🔧 Checking and installing required packages...
✅ alsa-utils found
✅ curl found
✅ bc found
✅ jq found
✅ apache2-utils found
✅ netcat-openbsd found

🐳 Pulling BirdNET-Go Docker image from GitHub Container Registry...
dev: Pulling from tphakala/birdnet-go
Digest: sha256:476a624cc85c2182e07380de883ba44695cc8c24cd6633c0e772c9a7bdf9352d
Status: Image is up to date for ghcr.io/tphakala/birdnet-go:dev
ghcr.io/tphakala/birdnet-go:dev
✅ Docker image pulled successfully

🔧 Creating config and data directories...
📁 Config directory: /home/mockingbird/birdnet-go-app/config
📁 Data directory: /home/mockingbird/birdnet-go-app/data

📥 Downloading base configuration file from GitHub to: /home/mockingbird/birdnet-go-app/config/config.yaml
✅ Base configuration already exists

🔧 Now lets configure some basic settings

🎤 Audio Capture Configuration
1) Use sound card
2) Use RTSP stream
❓ Select audio input method (1/2): 1

🎤 Detected audio devices:
[1] Card 3: NTUSB RODE NT-USB
    Device 0: USB Audio [USB Audio]

Please select a device number from the list above (1-1) [1] or 'b' to go back: 1
✅ Selected capture device: USB Audio
❌ Failed to access audio device
This could be due to:
  • Device is busy
  • Insufficient permissions
  • Device is not properly connected
❌ Failed to validate audio device

🎤 Audio Capture Configuration
1) Use sound card
2) Use RTSP stream
❓ Select audio input method (1/2): 

[tphakala]

Can you try workaround documented here? #384

Sound like same issue, I will update install script at some point to fix this.

[tphakala]

I modified install script to skip audio device validation for now, also added option to skip audio device configuration during install. #405

Please download new copy copy of install.sh and try again.

[rawcomposition]

Thank you!! Choosing the audio device worked perfectly and it's now set up and working great! Super stoked.