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Lightpack, RaspberryPi, XBMC, Boblightd and Hyperion - not finished business ;-)

Because of a "wow", I ordered an package from lightpack. Paying and receiving the order from hongkong went smoothly and even the unboxing as well as the installation went pretty well (the manual is worth to order one package :-)).
Next step was the installation of the hardware on the tv. Thanks to the manual again, it went quite well (for insiders, I'm using the andromeda setting).

Soft is often followed after hard (boys will know it) and so I went on to add the new hardware to my software. I'm using openelec on my pi, so my first tryout was a xbmc plugin called boblight.

I found two usefull pages for boblight, a blog entry and a wiki page.
Usefull information for this tryout. You can get your lightpack serial by using:

lsusb -d 1d50:6022 -v |grep iSerial

You will find the configuration for boblight at the following path:
cd /storage/.xbmc/userdata/addon_data/service.multimedia.boblightd

As an advice, backup the existing configuration by executing "cp boblight.conf boblight.conf.sample" on your command shell.
My notes for the configuration adaptation are the following:
name    LP1
type    lightpack
channels    30
#comment out the line starting with "output"
#comment out the line starting with "debug"

But at the end, boblight was not working stable on my pi. Either a freez after 43 minutes or red light after the same time. Both sucks ;-). As remark, as long as the number of "[light]" section does not fit, you get strange erros. I found usefull example configuration files on code.google.com and on github.com

After this, I switched to hyperion. Installation is simple, login via ssh and execute following simple steps.

cd /storage/downloads
mkdir hyperion
cd hyperion
curl -L --output install_hyperion.sh --get https://raw.githubusercontent.com/tvdzwan/hyperion/master/bin/install_hyperion.sh
sh ./install_hyperion

echo "/storage/hyperion/bin/hyperiond.sh /storage/hyperion/config/hyperion.config.json > /dev/null 2>&1 &" >> /storage/.config/autostart.sh

Usefull links are a blog entry and a possible usefull github page.
To bad for me, I configured all (also using the HyperCon.jar) but was not able to configure all leds at the right position. In general, the backlights are working and the background colors are fitting mostly to the video but not 100 percent.
I created some full hd test images and videos. Particularly the "moving squre" video shows my problem. First square creates the right background colors, the second square let shine my lower right led strips. And then, the rest is fitting nearly again. I could not find any logic behind (tried it clockwise, counter clockwise, starting from 0 to 9 and vice versa) and I will upload my final working config (and if existing, a logical howto). Hopefully, at least the test images and videos can help you to adjust your lightpack.

Just thought I found the missing led mapping by changing the settings for each "index" section in the hyperionconfig to:

0:0
1:1
2:3
3:4
4:2
5:5
6:7
7:6
8:8
9:9

Next try was to use the command line utility, load each of my test pictures ("./hyperion-remote.sh --image /path/to/the/image.png", try "./hyperion-remote.sh --help" if you want to know more). After trying a lot, I reached the area where it starts hurting from inside the brain^^, so even this is not a doable way :-(.

I tried to use bobdroid and even hyperion. Both are android apps to configure boblight or hyperion via an android device (you have to uncomment the boblight server section in your hyperion configuration). Also without a result. The apps are nice for demonstration but you can not setup things.

By the way, some maybe usefull links I found searching for a solution.

web - Raspberry Pi alternatives

Following is an uncomplete list of maybe alternatives for the raspberry pi (if it fits to your needs). The common intersection of all listed items is "usb, hdmi out, linux driven". It should be clear that the raspberry pi has a philosphy that differs from the rest :-).

Entries since 2012-06-27

Entries since 2014-03-04

web - raspberry pi - exact date for first batch released

Ladies and gentlemen, set your alarms! The Raspberry Pi Foundation will be making a big (and very positive) announcement that just might interest you at 0600h GMT on Wednesday 29 February 2012. Come to www.raspberrypi.org to find out what’s going on.
source

That is early in the morning :-( :-D.