Sunday, October 28, 2012

PixelPi Update

So lots has been going on with PixelPi since my last update:


Rearchitecture:
I've forked (https://github.com/mostley/PixelPi) github fork into the PixelPi/PixelPi trunk.  It significantly changes the architecture of the project.  Now there is a simple controller.py file which simply receives pixel data (currently raw (pixel invaders) type;

DMX/Artnet/OLA Support:
 I have added on proper IP protocol support using OLA Open Lighting Architecture.  This allows support of standardized lighting protocols and allow you to control your pictures from many more applications.

There is now a shim layer which interfaces the output of OLA to the pixels; I'm still learning about the OLA package; its quite impressive and I think it will suite these needs perfectly.

Pixel Grouping:
I've added support for grouping pixels so they can be controlled with a single group of RGB DMX data.


Getting organized:
So right now the new pixel pi implementation is missing much of the test mode stuff in the original.  I'll be adding it over time.


Issues and contributions:
I've added an issues page to  the PixelPi github page; please feel free to make a new issue for any changes, bugs, enhancements.

17 comments:

Shawbum said...

Sweet!! Can't wait to mess around with it this weekend. Just finished putting together a temporary 16x16 matrix while waiting on the other half of my WS2801 pixel strings to get here. Keep up the great work!

Luis said...

Great job. I dont know yet how to make work the ola script. About the site, to make it work you have to run server.py and controller.py at the same machine?

Scott Gibson said...

I tested it with running the scripts on the same machine; but really only the controller.py script needs to run on the rPi. A

luis said...

So where do you run the server.py to make the site work, the pong? I tested and I run the server and the control and the same rasbpi.

otipohc said...

great job,

I have a question. I'm now able to control one pixel led (LPD6803) with your code pixelpi.py . but i dont understand how to get it work with ola.
I installed ola and was able to patch one universe as an input and send dmx values via artnet. My question is how to configure ola and your plugin to have one side ola receiving and if i understood your plugin listening to ola.
NB : I changed also the value in controller.py of self.chip_type = 'WS2801' to self.chip_type = 'LPD6803', is it correct ?

otipohc said...

wonderful,

I finally managed to get it work, i just didn't enable the controller.py at the same time to listen and then send the values...

Thank's for the work and keep it up

François said...

Hi, I'm trying to see if PixelPi would be suitable out-of-the box for a little personal project. Is it possible to use more than one universe from OLA with it in order to get more than the 170 addressable LEDs that fits in the 512 channels? Thanks for your help.

Scott Gibson said...

Hey Francois;

So right now it only works with one universe but it could be made to work with more; I can help with it if you want to take on some python programming

Unknown said...

hi, thanks to you i have tested my 50 leds ws2801, works with the fade and chase option. Can I control individual leds? How? I need for example:
pixelpi.py led 30 --rgb 100,33,23
to turn the led 30 in thats rgb values, It's possible? or simillar thing?.

Alessandro Grechi said...

Hello,
could you explain how to set-up and use artnet protocol ?
I would like to use Glediator software... is now possible?
Thank you so much ! Great job!

Unknown said...

Hi!
Same here!
I would like to use it with Glediator, but I really need some help setting it up.

Thanks in advance!

Jonas said...

Hey there,
Somebody got experience with p9813?
Would love to try the with PixelPi.
Thanks in advance,
Jonas

dschoni said...

Hi Mr. Gibson,
I tried my best to follow all your instruction sets and ran into one big issue:
My first LED pixel is flickering and blinking like crazy, even when not connected to the GPIO of the Raspberry. When I touch the clock and data cable, the flickering stops. Nevertheless the problem remains when I plug the LED strip into the pi and the colors turn on and of with uncontrollable patterns. As soon as I touch the plugged in cable, everything starts to work normally. Does that have something to do with unstable ground connection? Nevertheless thanks for your great work on that whole thing!

Anonymous said...

Hi!
I try controller.py with glediator 2.0.2 but only 7 LED of my 100 LED strip are blinking.
all_off, all_on, fade and chase work fine.
Please help me configure glediator.
Thanks.

Unknown said...

Hi!

Are you still working on this?

Scott Gibson said...

Hey David; I haven't done development on it a while other than a few bug fixes. I'm continuing to support it as needed.

Simon Newton said...

Can you please update the link to OLA, the new site is at http://www.openlighting.org/ola/