waveOS

What is waveOS?

A free OS image. The Pi boots straight into WaveLoop X1 — tape, effects, MIDI, live waveform.

• Record, overdub, and destroy loops in real-time
• 14 built-in effects (reverb, delay, bitcrush, chorus, and more)
• Full MIDI mapping — works great with Arturia MiniLab
• Generative boot splash and screensavers
• WiFi config from the on-screen menu
• Plugin screensaver system — write your own

What you need

Installation

1. Download the .img.gz file above.

2. Flash it to your microSD card using Raspberry Pi Imager, balenaEtcher, or dd:

gunzip waveos-v1.0.1.img.gz
sudo dd if=waveos-v1.0.1.img of=/dev/sdX bs=4M status=progress conv=fsync

Replace /dev/sdX with your SD card device. Use lsblk to find it. Be careful — this will erase the card.

3. Card in, interface and display on, power. It boots into the looper.

4. The partition auto-expands on first boot to fill your SD card.

Keyboard Controls

WiFi Setup

Settings (Enter, or press the encoder) → WiFi. Ethernet just works.

Custom Screensavers

Five idle minutes and a screensaver takes over — even mid-playback. Write your own:

// my-screensaver.c
const char *screensaver_name(void) { return "My Saver"; }

void screensaver_render(SDL_Renderer *r, int w, int h, uint32_t t_ms) {
    // draw with SDL2 — called ~30fps
}

// Build:
// gcc -shared -fPIC -O2 -o my-saver.so my-screensaver.c $(pkg-config --cflags sdl2)

Drop the .so file into /opt/waveos/screensavers/ and restart.