Hyperion NG - Extreme flickering LED's

  • I switched yesterday to Hyperion NG (alpha 8) and since today I have a digital converter. With booth solutions (analog and digital) I have the issue, that the LEDs (APA102) are flickering very much when I having an Input from any source.
    Also on the Effect "Rainbow Swirl" I have that extremly flickering (other effects working good)


    In the time who I worked with the classic Hyperion there was no problem, so it can't be something with the powersource for the LEDs.


    Any hints or ideas, what I can check to solve that. Because it's unusable yet.

  • Well, I think I found a solution by myself, but I have no Idea why this is the Problem..


    I'm using a good Power Suply for my APA102 LED Stripes with 384 LEDs.
    1. I need to rearange my existing Setup completly after I moved, so my first Mistake was, that I forgotten feed the Stripes with Power at the beginning and at the end, because it's around 7 Meters with LEDs. It was now looking a bit better, but still with lot of flickering.
    2. After I fix that of Step one I reduce the power output over a tiny "wheel" on my Power Suply (A dodocool S-100-5 with 5 Volt and 20 Ampere) and finally the bad flickering was reduced much more. It's still there a little, but better.


    I have no Idea why it works better before with Hyperion Classic (I also play with the power) but well...


    If you have now any tip for me, how I can connect an external power reducer to make the performance hopefully better, pls. let me know.

  • I think so. I can't see any connection issue. But I will recheck that in the next days.
    The only thing what can be special is a very long distance between the Pi and the Ambilight. I bought a 20 Meter Cable to connect the LED's with the Pi.
    The reason for that is, that my Media Center is in Front of my projection screen.
    But the data cable didn't meet any other cable or power supply.


    I also noticed... If I reduce the brightness of the LED over Hyperion, the flickering will be a bit stronger.
    So I think it's a bit to much Ampere (20A) or Voltage.

  • In the past I had also flickering issues. In my case the problem was: drop low voltage of the power supply.
    Also long cable from the pi gpio’s to the led strip. Try an another power supply if that does not help then try to use short cables between the led and gpio

  • I think so. I can't see any connection issue. But I will recheck that in the next days.
    The only thing what can be special is a very long distance between the Pi and the Ambilight. I bought a 20 Meter Cable to connect the LED's with the Pi.
    The reason for that is, that my Media Center is in Front of my projection screen.
    But the data cable didn't meet any other cable or power supply.


    I also noticed... If I reduce the brightness of the LED over Hyperion, the flickering will be a bit stronger.
    So I think it's a bit to much Ampere (20A) or Voltage.



    power of GPIO pins will approxmately be until 3.3 volts, i doubt you will be having enough datastream power left when it has to travel 20 mtrs. Even when used a ethernetcable of CAT5 or CAT6 and use green/white green then very much doubt it will work. If you want to travel distances with GPIO bitstream to the strip i would suggest a level shifter which will upgrade the 3.3 volts to 5 volts, but there's no quaranties it will work even then.


    Amperes can NEVER be too strong or big from a powersource, the device only use Amps to his needs. Overkill doesn't matter, in fact its the best way to go.
    Voltage have to be exactly 5 volts though to have the best results, and; don't forget too ground everything, LED's too PI, PI to powersource, powersource to LED's


    you get my drift :)

  • @harun I think you are on the right way. I try to connect the pi directly on my stripe and can't recognize any flickering. But I also try to reconect the LED's with the long cable and got different results in any test over the last days. Sometimes I have lot of flickering / blinking lights like an thunderstorm.
    I try now different positions of the Pi in my room and must noticed, that it working better also with the long cable. So I think it must be something around my Mediacenter and all the power supplys / cables around that area.


    @jeroen warmerdam That tip remember me a bit on the past, who I start to play with my own Ambilight. Thanks to bring that up in my mind around tha part with the CAT5 Cable. Sadly I'm not understand, what you mean with the colours of the cable. I have three connections to the pi, Pin 9 (GND), Pin 19 (SI - (DI/SD)) & Pin 23 (CK - (CLK)).
    So how are the differences between the colours of a Cat5/6 cable? Never know that they are differences :-X.


    Around the Level Shifter I also hear somerhing. At the moment I think I would prefer that way, because I have buyed the long cable short time ago with connectors and the shifter is cheaper than a long cat5 Cable.
    So if I understand it correctly, this shifter will power up the 3,3 Volt Output of the the GND Pin (Nr. 9) to 5 Volt. Around that I have some questions:


    1. I think I need to place the shifter directly on the Pi, right?
    2. Is this the right manual to get it to work? -> https://www.raspberrypi-spy.co…th-the-raspberry-pi-gpio/
    3. Did I need on the end of the 20 Meters a second Level Shifter who will power down the 5 Volt to 3,3 Volt?

  • read this>> https://hackaday.com/2017/01/2…-to-use-a-3-3v-data-line/


    ethernetcable works with twisted pair, for the two datalines DATA/CLOCK you can use a twisted pair of that cable, lets say the green pair.
    there's diffrence in the twisting, normally green is the most twisted but doesn't matter that much.
    so take a pair to transport the clock and data signals to the strip.
    It has to be FTP foiled twisted pair (best) to keep distortion out. Use GND for outher ring, also called mass of the cable.


    No you don't need a second level converter. ( i don't have one myself) never used also but its just basic electronics.
    if you take the sum of 5v x 0.7= 3.5 thats the voltage the ledstrip wants to have for data, if you use the GPIO SPI controller then maximum output of data is 3.3 volts.


    so IT CAN WORK, but some ledstrips have problems.


    in your case the distance is way to far, you can do a test yourself> just measure the voltage on a dataline DATA and GND after 20mtrs i will bet you its lower then 3.2 volts.



    so;
    1. I think I need to place the shifter directly on the Pi, right?
    2. Is this the right manual to get it to work? -> https://www.raspberrypi-spy.co…th-the-raspberry-pi-gpio/
    3. Did I need on the end of the 20 Meters a second Level Shifter who will power down the 5 Volt to 3,3 Volt?


    1; yes
    2; you can use several just browse the forum, you need to boost the signal not lower it. Your example will take inputs to GPIO pins but in our case we use GPIO only as output.
    3; NO thats is the purpose of the level shifter, it will boost the data signal.

Jetzt mitmachen!

Sie haben noch kein Benutzerkonto auf unserer Seite? Registrieren Sie sich kostenlos und nehmen Sie an unserer Community teil!