[zarboz]

Xbian with Boblight support

Supplies needed:
LPD8806 LED strip from http://www.adafruit.com (i used 50x on a 32" tv)
Arduno Uno (I had one laying around)
Raspberry Pi (35$)
5v psu



I started by tackling the hardware part before the software so lets get into that.
First off take your Led strip and cut it in pieces!!
haha i have a "floorplan" for the TV i used but remember you can make any combo youd like even up to 120 leds or more!

# __17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34
# 16 _____________________________________________35
# 15 _____________________________________________36
# 14 _____________________________________________37
# 13 _____________________________________________38
# 12 _____________________________________________39
# 11 _____________________________________________40
# 10 _____________________________________________41
# 09 _____________________________________________42
# 08 _____________________________________________43
# 07 _____________________________________________44
# __06 05 04 03 02 01________________50 49 48 47 46 45

So you will need
2X 6LED strips
2X 10LED strips
1X 18LED strip

Cut accordingly and solder into shape

you will want your last LED on #50 to end with the DO/CO symbols on the solder pads to indicate out (remember we must keep a flow in one direction for the circuit to be happy)

Now to arrange the LEDs your prolly looking at that diagram going "huh?"

If you were to stand in front of your tv with an image playing on the screen
#1 will be the first LED in your chain closest to the arduino
in turn #50 is furthest away

Next grab your Arduino and solder lead wires from #1LED's CI/DI/Gnd pins
also wire up the 5v PSU to the 5v/GND pins

the pinout for arduino is as follows
GND -> GND
DI -> 13
CI -> 11

I used an old pin header for easy plugin then i mounted the leds to the TV with my pin header

Next you need to program the arduino the accept the Boblight input for cool colors
plug the arduino into your PC and download the arduino IDE as well as
the LEDSTREAM arduino sketch found here:
https://github.com/adafruit/Adalight/blob/master/Arduino/LEDstream_LPD8806/LEDstream_LPD8806.pde

write this file to your arduino unplug it and mount it to the backside of your tv plugged into your LED strip with the USB chord handy

Next we need to grab your raspberry pi
I chose Xbian because well.. it works and fast too

I downloaded the Xbian Image found here:
https://sourceforge.net/projects/xbian/files/release/XBian_1.0_Beta_1.1.7z/download

i installed it following the directions here:
http://elinux.org/RPi_Easy_SD_Card_Setup#Copying_an_image_to_the_SD_card_in_Linux_.28command_line.​29

once installed i enabled the SSH server and started setting up boblight


login to your pi via ssh and run the following in terminal to setup boblight and enter password when prompted (raspberry if you havent changed it)

su
apt-get update
apt-get install make gcc g++ subversion
cd ~
svn checkout http://boblight.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/ boblight-read-only
cd boblight-read-only/
./configure --without-portaudio --without-x11 --without-libusb
make;sudo make install
wget https://github.com/brooc/boblight-rpi/raw/master/src/boblight-dispmanx
cp boblight-dispmanx /usr/local/bin/
ln -s /usr/local/lib/* /usr/lib/
wget https://www.dropbox.com/s/1uza2b9yz1qff5r/boblight.conf
cp boblight.conf /etc/


Then I edited some items to start boblight on boot do that by editing /etc/rc.local file and inserting the following lines before exit 0;

nano /etc/rc.local

sudo /usr/local/bin/boblightd -f
sudo /usr/local/bin/boblight-dispmanx -b on -o interpolation=1 -o speed=110 -o threshold=35 -o autospeed=0 -o saturation=1 -o value=1 -p 128 -i 0.1 -f /dev/null &

^^^
put that right before exit0
press ctrl+x to close then y then enter to save


then reboot your xbian distro and enjoy your new boblight enabled xbian build



DONT EVER INSTALL THE BOBLIGHT ADDON FROM XBMC IT WILL BREAK ALL THIS HARD WORK!!!!!



as an extra i went ahead and booted from a USB card to OC to 1ghz

you can do that by
format a thumb drive as brtfs
plug it into pi while booted into xbian
ssh into your xbian box
run following

su
dd if=/dev/mmcblk0p2 of=/dev/sda1

once thats done run
nano /boot/cmdline.txt

find the root= entry and replace the stuff after = with /dev/sda1
so it will go from root=SOMETHINGBRTFSFOLDERBLAH to root=/dev/sda1

then reboot
voila usb card boot




Ill post some pics / videos soon next time i plug my phone into the PC or get a chance to share them to a cloud service i can link from :-P

[rikardo1979]

thank you for your contribution and good tutorial. Im sure many users find it helpful.
I have moved your thread under different forum section.
-thx-

[zarboz]

(12th Nov, 2013 05:53 PM)rikardo1979 Wrote:  thank you for your contribution and good tutorial. Im sure many users find it helpful.
I have moved your thread under different thread.
-thx-

Thanks didnt know where to stick this :-p

ill update the guide later with some more in depth information about how to identify partitions and write the image directly

make it more n00b friendly

but im getting flawless playback at 1080p on mkv files with bob light running 50 leds

i got a video im posting later today to for you guys to check out

[IriDium]

Many thanks for that - any chance of a few images just to wet our appetite.

[zarboz]

(13th Nov, 2013 02:28 AM)IriDium Wrote:  Many thanks for that - any chance of a few images just to wet our appetite.

This evening I can post pics of the LED rig unmounted / mounted
a short 1-2 minute HDR video of the rig in action (forgive the mis coloring on my video ive been playing with some V4L camera stuff on my HTC One's kernel so dark colors dont use my ZSL chip properly silly htc! :-X)

I have a strip of WS8211 NeoPixel LED's I think i might change over to on my arduino


just a quick question
does xbian support the raspi's SPI library?
I ask because I would like to eliminate the arduino from this setup as i want it for my other desktop monitor (lightpack isnt cuttin it any more)
and the WS8211 require fast_spi1/2 to work on Arduino and from some tinkering with Rasbmc/boblight i know that the the pi based builds require the SPI library enabled

The end goal would be to move the LPD8806 based LED strip to run JUST off the Pi and eliminate the need for the arduino (even tho IMO its much smoother than just running everything off of the Pi)
and run my arduino on my PC using the WS8211 strip (unless i can figure out how to port over the LEDstream code for ws8201 to work for A)the raspi B) the ws8821 controller)

[mk01]

(13th Nov, 2013 05:28 AM)zarboz Wrote:  does xbian support the raspi's SPI library?

if this is a debian / raspberian library deb package then of course yes it does !

mk

[zarboz]

(13th Nov, 2013 09:46 AM)mk01 Wrote:  

(13th Nov, 2013 05:28 AM)zarboz Wrote:  does xbian support the raspi's SPI library?

if this is a debian / raspberian library deb package then of course yes it does !

mk

nice ill play with this when i grab a second Pi and see how feasible using JUST the pi for this setup would be

as promised guys

---

PPS
"in theory"

this mod would work using the on board SPI interface (GPIO pins on pi) using the SPI lib broadcom provides wich can be installed as so:

wget http://67.192.60.197/mikem/bcm2835/bcm2835-1.5.tar.gz
tar xvfz bcm2835-1.5.tar.gz;
cd bcm2835-1.5;
./configure;
make;
sudo make install

then wire the LPD8806 Chain to the Pi as we find here:


make sure you only power your pi using the 5v pin on GPIO not 5v + micro USB

quick way to fry it

i personally dont like using that 5v pin when i tried that setup on a different distro i left the 5v pin unattached and just left it running from power->leds and not to pi

change boblight.conf to the one found here
https://code.google.com/p/boblight/source/browse/trunk/conf/LPD8806.conf

( you can replace the LED part starting at the first LED#1 entry with your old conf so you know its layed out for 50 leds the way you've mounted them according to the guide)

[nsviper]

Zarboz, is that last post JUST the Pi running XBian Beta and the LED's ???

If so I'm doing this!

[pipes]

i cant pu this work on xbian... https://github.com/tvdzwan/hyperion/wiki

can you help me?

thanls

[zarboz]

(21st Nov, 2013 11:13 PM)nsviper Wrote:  Zarboz, is that last post JUST the Pi running XBian Beta and the LED's ???

If so I'm doing this!

my setup uses my arduino Uno but digging through xbian sources it should support the SPI libs needed to run the entire setup off your pi

[nsviper]

Copy paste from the Hyperion forums - i'll be giving this a go:

http://forum.stmlabs.com/showthread.php?tid=11053&pid=88864#pid88864

Quote:Yes, Hyperion runs on the same RPi as Raspbmc/XBian. Hyperion captures the video output of the RPi, then processes the images to determine the led color values and writes them to the led device.

[zarboz]

(27th Nov, 2013 01:06 AM)nsviper Wrote:  Copy paste from the Hyperion forums - i'll be giving this a go:

http://forum.stmlabs.com/showthread.php?tid=11053&pid=88864#pid88864

Quote:Yes, Hyperion runs on the same RPi as Raspbmc/XBian. Hyperion captures the video output of the RPi, then processes the images to determine the led color values and writes them to the led device.

hyperion setup was cake man
i LOVE their config tool it made LED mapping a breeze
and its 100x more efficient than boblight

[nsviper]

Yeh i've got all the bits now apart from a PSU, looking for one now.

So this will be home experiment over xmas

[zarboz]

(21st Dec, 2013 12:11 AM)nsviper Wrote:  Yeh i've got all the bits now apart from a PSU, looking for one now.

So this will be home experiment over xmas

Hyperion in action


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZtBBlczMkaQ&feature=youtube_gdata_player

[zarboz]

(21st Dec, 2013 12:11 AM)nsviper Wrote:  Yeh i've got all the bits now apart from a PSU, looking for one now.

So this will be home experiment over xmas

Hyperion in action


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZtBBlczMkaQ&feature=youtube_gdata_player