Getting started
To use Pushpin, you need the following things:
- A Raspberry Pi 5
- An Ableton Push 2
- An audio interface of some variety
- A way to burn disk images to SD card
1. Download Pushpin image
Please see pushpin-images.kinga.dev
2. Burn to SD card
The Raspberry Pi Foundation has a good tutorial for doing this here:
https://projects.raspberrypi.org/en/projects/raspberry-pi-setting-up/2
During this process, you can also configure network settings, which you’ll need to do if you don’t have a keyboard and mouse plugged into the Pi.
3. Plug everything in and hit power
Connect everything together; how you do this depends on what sequencer and soundcard you’re using.
Insert the SD card into your Raspberry Pi 5 device and hit power; the Linux distribution will boot and
you will automatically be logged in as the user ladmin
(default password: numark234
).
Power on the Ableton Push 2 device if you have not yet done so.
You should hopefully now be running Pushpin!
4. Configure MIDI devices
You can optionally connect a MIDI sequencer to sequence instead of using the built-in one. To select this:
- Press the “Setup” button twice. This will bring you to the MIDI setup page.
- Twist the first encoder to set your “in” device to your MIDI sequencer.
# Troubleshooting
This is very in-development software so usually the easiest way to resolve an issue is to update the latest version.
You can change the version of Pushpin by navigating to /s/music_devices/pushpin_groovebox
and typing:
$ git stash save && git pull origin main
You can also use the “Update to latest version” button in SETTINGS on the Push 2.
To check out a different version, type:
$ git checkout <version>
Pushpin has a Wayland-based graphical user interface you can use if you’re connected via a screen and keyboard.
To load it, type:
$ wayfire-pi
This includes a number of useful tools for hacking on, troubleshooting, and extending Pushpin. Chief amongst these is qpwgraph
, which you can use to visually troubleshoot Pipewire connectivity.
“Raspberry Pi” is a trademark of Raspberry Pi Ltd. “Ableton” and “Ableton Push” are trademarks of Ableton AG. “Elektron” is a trademark of Elektron Music Machines MAV AB. All trademarks used with permission. Nothing on this page is intended to imply any association with the aforementioned trademark holders.