Pi Zero and WS2812B (cabled)

Hi,

I'm trying to controll my WS2812B (3 cables) strip which is directly connected to my Pi Zero - configured anything correct so far, the USB grabber is working (the grabber is shown under remote control) but the LEDs won't work as ecpected.

Here's what i did:

• the LEDs are powered by an external power supply - the LED strip also gets ground from the Pi Zero
• enabled GPIOs:
  sudo systemctl disable --now hyperiond@pi
  sudo systemctl enable --now hyperiond@root
• connected GND to Pin6 and CLK to Pin12 (GPIO18)
• Instance Settings:
  Controller type: ws281x
  Hardware LED count: 70
  Maximum LED count: 256 (default)
  GPIO Number: 18
  DMA Channel: 5 (default)
  PWM Channel: 0
• i also enabled all interfaces over Pi Desktop
• tried the Effects Generator
• checked all Settings (capturing hardware, component control: usb capture and led device both active)

the leds are displayin a stable color pattern but i don't know where it comes from, it also shows up again when rebooting.
Any ideas what could be wrong?

PS: i read that people are using Hyperion both with a Pie plus an arduino .. what's the deal about using the arduino additionally?

Quote from ahmed-shehata

Which version of hyperion are you using? I've been having problems with hyperion-ng alpha 9, try alpha8.

Also try running hyperiond as root.

I'm a newbie I'm aware that hyperion will run on startup but how would i set it to run as root?
Thanks

PS: i meanwhile found out that the Pi Zero is way too slow for Ambilight - i was just curious (and will try again)

thanks for your reply - i'm using https://www.amazon.de/gp/product/B08GR1LWT2?tag=hyperioforum-21&ie=UTF8&psc=1
what's your latency with the pi zero?
(i already lowered the resolution to the minimum of 640x480)

I'll try root asap - thanks

you can see the device latency on hyperion startup but haven't tried it.
a good technique for testing it is: loading a youtube video and manually skip frames (to next scene) where the colors change.
with german keyboard it's "," for previous frame and "." for next frame.
last time i tested with the pi zero, i had 1 second latency which is way too much .. i wil try again soon

Quote from NeeeeB

Playing with size decimation will help with the latency too.
set it to 8.
Also, 640*480 is 4/3, would be better to use 720*480 to achieve 16/9 ratio !

Thanks, will try it!
About 16/9 is a great point!
Btw. one thing i figured out: my grabber doesn't like certain settings / custom resolutions - it will completely stop working! Took me days of hair pulling until i figured it out I don't know how it resets / starts working again but the lowest resolution which works is 640x480.
I'm using https://www.amazon.de/gp/product/B08GR1LWT2?tag=hyperioforum-21&ie=UTF8&psc=1 - should try to find out the supported resolutions.
I also ordered an EZcap 269 which runs on USB3 and was recommended by the coder of HyperHDR. It should be really fast.

lol honestly i didn't understand how you reset the grabber
my approach is completely different - i thought it's broken and verified it via OBS Studio - i found out that you can reset the device which helped.
the problem was, that i tweaked the hardware settings of brightness/contrast and messed up and using OBS studio i could reset it.
that way i also found out that the device doesn't like custom resolution settings.