Kodi Ambilight not working but Hyperion remote ok

  • Hi All,


    I have a Raspberry Pi3, running OSMC and kodi (was 18.6?) with Hyperion (NOT NG!!!) using W2801 LED's and all was working fine- I could use Hyperion remote to set colours, if i played a video from Kodi, the LED's changed and matched the video.


    Everything is running on a single pi, led's are connected via the spi pins, and tv connected via the hdmi port.



    The SD card died, so I built a new card with the latest OSMC image (kodi 19.1) and installed Hyperion.ng. Set the LED's up as w2801, set the number of led's counts for top/bottom/left/right etc and that now works fine with the Remote - i can set effects and they work. Reboot shows the rainbow effect as is set in the web interface.


    What i can not get working is the screen grabbing from kodi.

    Under Capturing Hardware I have ticked the box, but the only device i have to pick is Framebuffer.

    Under led instances if i select LED Output and enable the Live Video, i can sometimes see a black screen with some white boxes (i presume text) in the top left corner, and a hand full of LED's are lit in that corner of the TV. I suspect that this is the Linux console?


    The display on the TV however is the full Kodi homepage.


    So can anyone guide me or point me to a guide on how to change the output to capture or correct me on where I have gone wrong?

    In terms of changes, I'm still using the same PI, psu, and wiring has not been removed - only changes are software so is there an issue with compatibility?


    The old Hyperion was just to point it to the kodi install and off it went!


    For ref, the system info is:

    • Offizieller Beitrag

    milhouse34521 The app outlines , that is does not work on rpi, too.

    If you run Matrix on a e.g. Ubuntu, Hyperion can grab the screen.


    Hyperion currently cannot do screen capture, if run on LibreElec.

    CoreElec works…


    So it is not purely related to Kodi, but to the hosting OS.

  • Hmm.


    It's working for me on an Intel NUC running LibreELEC 10.0 (Kodi 19.1 / Linux Kernel 5.10.x) and Hyperbian on a Pi Zero W with WS2811 LEDs. Not using hardware/USB capture, just the kodi Hyperion plugin that I linked above.

    • Offizieller Beitrag

    That is good to hear. I was just referring to the statement on the site „. Note that this plugin will not work for Kodi running on the Raspberry Pi, because the video capture interface is not (yet?) supported on this device.“ If that is not applicable, even better…

  • This issue seems to be unresolved.


    Today i reinstalled OSMC with KODI 19.1 (August 2021 image) since the November update brought massive playback issues. While doing this i also wanted to reactivate my Ambilight build (WS2801 strip, no external video grabber). I configured hyperion.ng via the web interface and couldnt get the internal screen grabber to work properly. But the Hyperion Remote App worked like a charm.


    One thing i did notice: Hyperion seems to be grabbing one of the desktop instances, but not the one where the video playback happens. One time i had some blue LEDs light up, and a Live Screen grab in the Web interface showed me an error screen with the frowning osmc smiley, but simultaneously console text on the right side of the screen with a black background. The text was a bunch of undervoltage error messages, and this screen is also displayed when i reboot/power down KODI and the main Desktop is closed.


    Sorry i cant be any clearer, i am not versed well enough in the necessary jargon. I hope this helps with solving the issue, because all in all hyperion.ng seems a big step up in user-friendliness from the old system. Especially the web-config is much appreciated.


    One last thing - in the old hyperion config tool it was possible to define edge LEDS, is this still possible? The current config preview for my setup shows 4 LEDs overlapping in the corners.

  • Hi from Spain.


    - Raspberry Pi 4.

    - LibreELEC 10.0 (Kodi 19.3, Linux Kernel 5.10.x): LibreELEC-RPi4.arm-10.0.1.img.gz

    - Add-on: plugin.program.hyperion.configurator-master.zip

    - LED strip ws2801.

    >>> IT DOES NOT WORK.


    - Raspberry Pi 4.

    - LibreELEC 9.2 (Kodi 18.9, Linux Kernel 4.19.x): LibreELEC-RPi4.arm-9.2.8.img.gz

    - Add-on: plugin.program.hyperion.configurator-master.zip

    - LED strip ws2801.

    >>> IT WORKS.

  • I already used different raspberry's 3 and 4 but same result hyperion works, but it doesn't seem to grap video from kodi.

    what am i missing.. staring my self blind here

  • Did you read the thread ?


    Internal grabber with LE10 doesnt work yet.

    Did you read my post ? version Kodi 18.9, that is LE9.2...


    But anyway i got it working using old hyperion installing with Hypercon, have the enable menu lights first.

    then load the config, restart hyperion.

    load config without menu lights, restart hyperion and it works.

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