Blinkstick Pro & Boblight

Rico · February 13, 2016, 12:56pm

Hello!

I have a Blinkstick Pro with a 2m WS2812 led strip and my Blinkstick is in mode 2. With the blinkstick client the ambilight mode works fine, but it just calculate a desktop mixture color, which is displayed on every led.

So I want to have a “real” ambilight, so every led displays the corresponding display border color. I tried to realize it with Boblight, so I downloaded GitHub - arvydas/boblight · GitHub this, copied the hightlighted files:

Additionaly I installed the Kodi Boblight Addon to run Boblight when Kodi plays a movie.

I tried to run the start.bat with the following command:

C:\boblightd\boblightd.exe -c c:\boblightd\conf\blinkstick-ws2812.conf -f

but the cmd window closes superfast and Kodi couldn’t connect to Boblight. I am pretty sure that the command window has to stay open as long as I want to run boblight.

Where is my fault?`Thanks in advance!

arvydas · February 13, 2016, 1:25pm

Can you add “pause” without quotes at the end of start.bat file and post the output here with the error message.

Rico · February 15, 2016, 8:56am

thank you @arvydas for your answer, here it is:

C:\boblightd>C:\boblightd\boblightd.exe -c c:\boblightd\conf\blinkstick-ws2812.conf -f
0 [main] boblightd 7420 find_fast_cwd: WARNING: Couldn’t compute FAST_CWD pointer. Please report this problem to
the public mailing list cygwin@cygwin.com
ERROR: unable to make directory /home/Rico Morgenstern/.boblight/:
No such file or directory
(PrintFlags) starting /boblightd/boblightd -c c:\boblightd\conf\blinkstick-ws2812.conf -f

C:\boblightd>pause
Drücken Sie eine beliebige Taste . . . (CConfig::LoadConfigFromFile) opening c:\boblightd\conf\blinkstick-ws2812.conf
cygwin warning:
MS-DOS style path detected: c:\boblightd\conf\blinkstick-ws2812.conf
Preferred POSIX equivalent is: /boblightd/conf/blinkstick-ws2812.conf
CYGWIN environment variable option “nodosfilewarning” turns off this warning.
Consult the user’s guide for more details about POSIX paths:
Chapter 3. Using Cygwin
(CConfig::CheckConfig) checking config lines
(CConfig::CheckConfig) config lines valid
(CConfig::BuildConfig) building config
(CConfig::BuildDeviceConfig) ERROR: c:\boblightd\conf\blinkstick-ws2812.conf line 12: unknown type blinkstick

seems as boblight doesn’t find the blinkstick - what is the correct type and output?

If I use the boblight.conf in the main directory:

C:\boblightd\boblightd.exe -c c:\boblightd\boblight.conf -f
pause

the output is:

C:\boblightd>C:\boblightd\boblightd.exe -c c:\boblightd\boblight.conf -f
1 [main] boblightd 6664 find_fast_cwd: WARNING: Couldn’t compute FAST_CWD pointer. Please report this problem to
the public mailing list cygwin@cygwin.com
ERROR: unable to make directory /home/Rico Morgenstern/.boblight/:
No such file or directory
(PrintFlags) starting /boblightd/boblightd -c c:\boblightd\boblight.conf -f

C:\boblightd>pause
Drücken Sie eine beliebige Taste . . . (CConfig::LoadConfigFromFile) opening c:\boblightd\boblight.conf
cygwin warning:
MS-DOS style path detected: c:\boblightd\boblight.conf
Preferred POSIX equivalent is: /boblightd/boblight.conf
CYGWIN environment variable option “nodosfilewarning” turns off this warning.
Consult the user’s guide for more details about POSIX paths:
Chapter 3. Using Cygwin
(CConfig::CheckConfig) checking config lines
(CConfig::CheckConfig) config lines valid
(CConfig::BuildConfig) building config
(CConfig::BuildConfig) built config successfully
(main) starting devices
(CClientsHandler::Process) opening listening socket on *:19333
(CDevice::Process) ambilight1: starting with output “/dev/ttyUSB0”
(CDevice::Process) ambilight1: setting up
(CDeviceRS232::OpenSerialPort) ERROR: ambilight1: /dev/ttyUSB0: open() No such file or directory
(CDevice::Process) ERROR: ambilight1: setting up failed, retrying in 10 seconds

arvydas · February 15, 2016, 9:45am

Did you download boblight executables for Windows from here?

http://www.blinkstick.com/system/releases/windows/blinkstick-boblight-0.1.zip

If you used standard Boblight binary files, they do not have support BlinkStick, but the one in the link above has support for BlinkStick.

Rico · February 15, 2016, 11:57am

thank you @arvydas! now it works and the kodi plugin connects to the boblightd.exe

but: it works only for the first led however I defined 10 leds (30 channels) in my conf and my blinkstick is set mode 2.

[global]
interface 127.0.0.1
port 19333

[device]
name device1
type blinkstick
channels 30
interval 20000
debug on #turn this on to see what is sent over the serial port

[color]
name red
rgb FF0000

[color]
name green
rgb 00FF00

[color]
name blue
rgb 0000FF

[light]
name Left1
color red device1 1
color green device1 2
color blue device1 3
hscan 0 10
vscan 80 90

[light]
name Left2
color red device1 4
color green device1 5
color blue device1 6
hscan 0 10
vscan 72 81

[light]
name Left3
color red device1 7
color green device1 8
color blue device1 9
hscan 0 10
vscan 63 72

[light]
name Left4
color red device1 10
color green device1 11
color blue device1 12
hscan 0 10
vscan 54 63

[light]
name Left5
color red device1 13
color green device1 14
color blue device1 15
hscan 0 10
vscan 45 54

[light]
name Left6
color red device1 16
color green device1 17
color blue device1 18
hscan 0 10
vscan 36 45

[light]
name Left7
color red device1 19
color green device1 20
color blue device1 21
hscan 0 10
vscan 27 36

[light]
name Left8
color red device1 22
color green device1 23
color blue device1 24
hscan 0 10
vscan 18 27

[light]
name Left9
color red device1 25
color green device1 26
color blue device1 27
hscan 0 10
vscan 9 20

[light]
name Left10
color red device1 28
color green device1 29
color blue device1 30
hscan 0 10
vscan 0 20

p0ke · February 15, 2016, 2:30pm

What happens if you try the original blinkstick-ws2812.conf? Only uncommenting the lines you dont neet and set the channels to 30…

Rico · February 15, 2016, 2:38pm

Then also only the first led works. but there is actually no difference between the two conf files…

p0ke · February 15, 2016, 3:24pm

It was only a try. I thought it could have to do with the tabs in the conf file. Sorry if it did not help

p0ke · February 15, 2016, 3:32pm

What color is the first LED? Does it really change the color regarding to the screen color at the given location? Can you check again if the wiring between BlinkStick Pro and your LED strip is OK?

Rico · February 15, 2016, 3:53pm

yes it does. I checked it with several movies in kodi. When starting kodi the first led goes through all colors once and rest them at a background menu color defined in the boblight addon settings. So the first led behaves completly correct, but just the first
The wiring also seems to be correct regarding the fact that blinkstick client software (2.0-rc5) is able to control all 60 leds (for instance moodlight, test notification, etc…)

It is wired like that:

I think the blinkstick integration for boblight is not ready for ws2812, although it is stated as so.

Nevertheless thank you for your effort

Rico · February 15, 2016, 7:51pm

If I turn debug on in my conf file, the batch file prints:

Is the error at the very beginning the fault?

It seems after boblight found the first led, it tries to reach the others (attempting to resend)

any idea @arvydas?

p0ke · February 16, 2016, 9:55pm

I think you are right. I´ve tried to get boblight working with a BlinkStick flex tonite. I´m not really sure if it should work with a flex but it is like in your case: Only one LED lights up in mode 2.

arvydas · February 18, 2016, 6:08pm

@rico I have an identical setup running with Kodi on a Linux machine, but it’s been a very long time since I got it working. I just tried to set it up on my development system with Kodi on Windows and binary files in the link I gave you above and it seems to crash when Kodi connects to the server. I will look into getting this working tonight. My initial plan was to integrate Boblight directly into BlinkStick client application.