Hyperion with RPI3 & APA102

    I have a RPI3, APA102 LEDs, video capture card and 10 Amp power supply. Video capture works and I can see video when clicking the "monitor" button in Hyperion's upper righthand corner. Using 2020-09-014-HyperBian-lite.


    The LEDs are wired with a logic converter per this diagram:

    I also tried it without the logic converter for simplification.


    In Hyperion>Configuration>LED Hardware>LED Controller>Controller type: is set to apa102. Hardware LED count set to 150.
    In Hyperion>Configuration>LED Hardware>LED Layout: I have Top: 50, Bottom: 50, Left: 25, Right: 25. for my layout.


    I also have dtparam=-spi=on in /boot/config.txt. It is not REM'd out and was like this by default.


    I know Hyperion work because I can get it working with WS2812 LEDs and Arduino. I have flicker with this setup so want to change to APA102s.


    I tested the 102s with an Arduino sketch and they work just fine.


    Can anyone tell me what I could be missing for the APA102 setup?


    Thanks!

    If i see your setup then i would ditch the separate powersupply on your Raspi, just use the 10A 5v powersupply for that and ground everything on GND. Speaking of that, i would use a much more powerfull 5v then only 10A max, if possible ditch also the arduino you don't need it for 5v LEDS. I use for my setup a 35A on a ATX powersupply. Hope this helps

    I forgot to mention that I do have a common ground between both the RPI and APA102. I also tried powering 5V to the RPI from my main power supply but had the same result.


    I don't have the arduino in my setup. I just used it to test the APA102s to make sure they work correctly as a troubleshooting step.

    Try upgrading to hyperion alpha 8.


    Are you able so somewhat control your APA102 leds, even by choosing another controller type under "LED Hardware Configuration"?


    Try testing your leds with https://github.com/tinue/apa102-pi and the runcolorcycle.py script ;) Does the script work?



    /edit btw 10A power supply should be more than sufficient

    indeed, normally 5v 10A powersupply should be enough.
    I have a digital meter in my setup so i can check how much V/A the setup is using, with only 96 leds its quite high already> with the PI and leds its 6,5 Amps.


    so you see it uses more then you think :) combined with sometimes poor powersupplys which will cave in voltage if you use full power then you see what i mean.
    The PI alone uses around 1 Amps when its full running.
    Also the leds don't like any voltage below 5 volts, this can happen when current is [too] high on powersupply ( which is not strong enough) and thus voltage will drop..



    decide what you do with this, hope it helps. :)

    Thanks everyone, I had my clock and data signals swapped. Now it is flickering badly so suspect I have a bad LED chain. I did test my leds with https://github.com/tinue/apa102-pi and it worked but they were erratic. I tried another logic converter to no avail. I am going to try another LED strip.


    Thanks again.

Participate now!

Don’t have an account yet? Register yourself now and be a part of our community!

Register Yourself Login