Pico breath pipe repair

I’m in the process of fixing up a slightly busted Pico I found used. Current problem is the breath control.

Troubleshooting:

  • When blowing into the Pico through the breath pipe, no expression is shown on the breath CC.
  • When removing the pipe and blowing (awkwardly) into the Pico, breath CCs show normally.
  • When covering the end of the breath pipe and blowing, (as shown in the image below) no air escapes.
  • When (gently) poking a paperclip into the small holes on the side of the bottom bottom of the pipe, I can tell the holes there are blocked by the rubbber gasket inside, thus preventing air from making it to the sensor tube inside the Pico.

wiki_34_faq-breath2

My sketchy diagnosis:

That clear rubber gasket in the bottom part of the breath pipe tube got twisted at some point and is now blocking air out of the holes on the side.

The fix…?

No idea. I think I need to twist that gasket around somehow. Or maybe pull it out and put it back in in the correct orientation? But not sure what the best way to go about it is, and don’t want to do anything rash given the non-existance of replacement parts.

Anyone have a situation like this or have tips on how to best approach it?

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ok, so I double checked … indeed if you hold as you show, then you should hear air coming out of the small hole. so something is ‘blocked’.

Im not sure whats inside, it looks bit like some kind of sleeve… as you say, perhaps this has an orientation where it aligns with the hole to let air out, and thats turned?! hard to say, as we cannot really see inside.

perhaps you can do some close up pics and we can see if anything looks different?
e.g. does the inner sleeve/gasket protrude or is it inset, and by how much?
(this might give us a hint to if its moves or not)

as you say, tricky to know if to poke it around, or try to pull it out - and how to do that, with damaging it.

like you, I’d be cautious, as I think they are designed to allow a certain amount of air through… and ensure the spittle passes thru… not sure how ‘critical’ this is.

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Thanks for checking! Here’s the best angle I could get on it. The macro on my phone isn’t great.

The clear rubber insert on the inside is more or less flush with the bottom of the pipe. It’s definitely not recessed at all. You can also see some scuffing or something on its surface. That’s not from me. So maybe normal wear from brushing along the interior as the pipe is turned, or a clue to how it got twisted? ¯\(ツ)

I’d appreciate any examples of how this is supposed to look in a working Pico pipe. Thanks!

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Here is my breath pipe from 1st Pico:
(also iPhone with some zoom…)

This might be just from the cut of this inner tube - more or less similar on mine.

-.-

If I remember John Lambert “brief” explanations; this is a tube inside a tube design and measurements are actually done on the small holes on the sides at the base, so the. bottom hole is for excessive air and condensation/liquid to pass thru.

what are you using to see this?? no reading?

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Super helpful! Thanks so much!!

Something I hadn’t considered is the actual orientation of the holes on the pipe. When I set mine “flat” on a table like so, the holes are more or less parallel to it:

from your photo, it looks like the holes on yours are more perpendicular to the surface it would rest on.

This shouldn’t matter — the rubber rings are there to seal off a part of the air inlet so that air blown through the small holes will reach the “sensor” port of the Pico while the pipe is in any angle. But it makes me wonder if, instead of the inner plastic getting twisted, if maybe the outer housing did? If it’s threaded and screwed on there, that’s a real possibility. If it’s welded, though, not so much.

This aligns with what I’m seeing. If you lookin into the hole of the Pico that you insert the pipe into, there are two exits. One straight back, where the majority of air and moisture goes that is simply a direct path to the “exhaust” on the bottom of the Pico next to the USB port. But there’s also a tiny hole “down” into the body of the Pico. This is the one that has the breath sensor in it. The only way for air to get to this tiny hole is for it to come out of the tiny ports on the side of the pipe. And these are the ones that are blocked for me :frowning:

I’m using Bitwig as a DAW. I put EigenCore and ECMapper on a channel, then route that to the Grid where I’ve got CC modules plugged into oscilloscopes to “see” what’s going on. When I insert the pipe and blow through it, I get no activity on CC #2. When I remove the pipe and blow directly into the hole of the Pico, I see CC #2 move.

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so I tried to get some close ups… to see if we could see what was ‘inside’.
not super clear, but does seem to be a tube insider, perhaps being held by an outer grommet?
(though id not place bets on this ;))




my understanding is same as Antonio and yours…and I think this is detailed in one of Eigenlabs ‘developers’ video - most of air/spittle goes straight thru, and a small portion of it is syphoned off.

inside the pico we have the sensor, and the two rubber seals on the outside of the breath pipe form a tight seal…so that air flows over the sensor.


Id also look at the software as my first port of call for an issue BUT the fact you say covering the bottom hole and not the side holes makes it air tight, seems its more the holes are ‘blocked’

ofc, it might not be the mechanism, it could just be something that needs cleaning out?
have you tried to clean it, perhaps with just warm water intiially?

its mechanical, so no issue with liquids, though I dont know about the plastics/rubber inside… so id be wary of anything too ‘chemical’ e.g. alcohol… but might be worth a shot, before more ‘drastic’ action ;(

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Ive tried to compare mine to both yours and Antonios pictures, and I’ll say its very hard to compare… I think because the holes (for me) don’t line up with the pipe/mouthpiece so hard to get a ‘reference’

if anything, mine looks closer to yours than Antonios, but it could just be a trick of the angle of view.

also… it could be there are variations… its fitting into a sealed tube, so I doubt the hole placement matters for the design, so perhaps not something that is purposefully aligned during manufacturing.

that said, I do get your point, that if it later moved, then this could twist the inner tube and so be the cause of an issue.

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Sorry, I should have said:

When I (gently) probe the tiny holes with a dulled toothpick, I find the hole is physically blocked by something slightly bouncy (probing it feels squishy).

When l do this while looking down through the hole at the end of the pipe (the one with the gasket), I see the rubber on the inside deform as I push the toothpick in. So I’m really very confident that the physical holes in the metal are blocked by the clear rubbery gasket on the inside. Not gunk or something. I can see the rubber is what’s blocking the holes.

What I’m not clear on is whether this is because the gasket is misaligned (it got twisted at some point so now its holes are not in alignment with the holes in the metal) or wether it’s deformed in some way and never had holes in it in the first place or what.

And, whichever the case, what’s the best way to fix it? My options are, I think:

  1. Assume the gasket got twisted, and try to turn it to get it realigned.
  2. Pull the gasket out to inspect it, and then put it back in aligned (maybe after adding some holes if they’re not there)
  3. Assume the gasket is stuck in there, and drill some new holes through it.

With the possible exception of #1, these are all potentially destructive operations, though :frowning:

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ok, so I took some pics of the Alpha’s pipe, which is a bit bigger… but Im sure uses the same basic principle. (Pico came after, so likely there are some differences/refinements)


so you can see here, I dont think we are expecting a hole thru… rather there is an inner and outer pipe… and the air flow between the two. but the holes will ‘seem’ blocked, if you ‘prod’ them. but really its the channel inside that may be blocked. (or as you said, the tube twisting?)

also the alpha looks a bit like I mention before.
that there is a ‘grommet’ on the end, then behind this, there is a tube… what form that takes we cannot tell, as it gets too dark to see inside.
(but you can see the two ‘ring’ in both the pico and alpha picture.


hard to know what to do…

Id first try soaking it, frankly, Id even be tempted to use alcohol.
ie id work on the assumption it hasn’t been physically damaged/abused, just not used - so has ‘gunked up’
its a long shot… but no damage and easy to do.

then yeah, id see if I could remove the bottom grommet, perhaps this will ‘free’ up the inner tube, if some how its become twisted.
also as you say, it may be there is something inside that will come loose…
(we can kind of assume this, as I think thats what the grommet is doing, holding it in place)

If that inner piece will come out, then I assume you’ll then know how it works :wink:

I dont think drilling blindly into the holes will help… also id be worried, that it’ll allow too much air thru the holes, more than the sensors are designed/calibrated for.

BUT this is all speculation on my part, Ive no more facts than you have :slight_smile:

btw: id definitely review the eigenharp dev video… whilst I dont think it showed how the breath pipe was constructed, all this talk of inner and outer tubes, and allowing spittle through is all sounding very familiar - and thats the only place Id have got this ‘info’ from… and there maybe stuff Ive forgotten :slight_smile:

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OHHHHHHHHHH!

Okay, so in the pipe itself there are two channels. One that’s the main hole through (the big hole at the top and bottom of the pipe) and the other that is completely isolated from this channel. It’s output is small holes on the bottom, just as we’ve been discussing. But I assumed it shared its input with the big hole at the top. That is, air would go in at the top and would fork at the bottom via holes in the gasket.

This is not the case. There are (even smaller) holes on the side of the intake as well. These are what feed the holes on the side of the output.

So all this time my pipe has been fine, and what’s busted is the wonky 3d-printed mouthpiece I made. It only provided air to the big hole on the front of the intake and completely blocked the tiny hole on the side.

If I discard the (wonky) mouthpiece and blow with my lips past the tiny hole on the side of the intake, everything works fine!

Whew, thank you all so much. Totally would have ruined this thing if I’d gone through with any of the steps I outlined above.

Last question, then. Anyone know where to find real replacement mouthpieces?

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:rofl:

I feel so stupid … I had known this, but had completely forgotten it… and as soon, as you mentioned it, I remembered the two channel on the outer part of the mouthpiece.

Id love to know where this info was ‘published’ ,so we could refer back to it… as Im now starting to think, I might even have seen the pipe dismantled and seen the pipe within the pipe !
(sorry to digress… but bugging me, that ive forgotten this :))

replacement mouthpiece - so these were sold as spares, so I guess you could try to order one?! only 5 gbp… see if their site is working.

other than that, perhaps someone has a spare ? I think the pico came with two.
(I bought mine used… and didn’t get a spare, at least, I cannot find it - lol)

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Hey, we got there in the end! And, thanks to this lovely forum, my ignorance can maybe serve to enlighten one or two future googlers. So… worth it :wink:

And yeah, I’ll dive into those dev videos. They might give me some hints as to what to do with making a new mouthpiece that actually works.

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Currently the Eigenlabs website is reachable via HTTP, although not the root itself:

The Eigenharp Pico Breath Pipe in either black or silver is £31.00 (including VAT).

(post deleted by author)

Yeah, you can actually just get the mouthpiece too.

BUT , not sure if the checkout still works to take payment.
( I previously noticed some bits of the site reliant on SSL cert were not working, expired cert?)

For the £5 it is for a mouthpiece might be worth a try. I’d guess is if it’s not working it’ll fail before debiting anyway.

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Right, here is the page with the aforementioned mouthpiece: