I'm making some patches using both Raspberry Pi and Bela boards. Is anyone able to tell me how I can access sound files in PD that are located on a USB stick plugged into these devices? On PD on my computer I can just use readsf~ or soundfiler to look for the files using the path /Volumes/USBSTICK/filename.wav.

However this doesn't work on the Bela or Raspberry Pi, the files can't be found - is there a different address to use? Or do I need to mount the disk somehow? I imagine the solution is very similar for both the Raspberry Pi and the Bela systems, but maybe I'm wrong?

(cross posted on the Bela forum)

@amazingrolo You do need to mount the drive first....... https://www.instructables.com/id/Mounting-a-USB-Thumb-Drive-with-the-Raspberry-Pi/ should make it auto-mount although it might need to be plugged in as you boot..... unsure....
The address will not be /volumes/....... though.
It will be I think /usbdrv/ and Pd will probably need the complete path from root in order to find it.
David.

ok cool this looks promising! I'll have a try when I'm back in my studio later this week.

How about using [ggee/shell] to get a list of devices on /media/pi? If you have only one USB stick plugged in, then ls /media/pi should return only that. Then you can use the returned name and search files there, like open /media/pi/usb_drive/file1.wav for example.
Though you probably won't be able to use [shell[ in Bela, as it's not vanilla.

For anyone reading this running into the same problem: I got this working! The Instructables thing linked above didn't work on a Bela, mainly because of my own silliness. The instructions on the Bela Wiki are a bit clearer and easier to follow, in my opinion: https://github.com/BelaPlatform/Bela/wiki/Accessing-a-USB-drive

I made one small change to the file path to make it work properly in PD: https://forum.bela.io/d/814-read-files-from-usb-stick

thanks for your tips!