Need help tearing apart AmbiVision to (hopefully) run Hyperion instead

    Hi,

    First off, very new, very first "DIY" project so expect every stupid question. Sick of the problems with AmbiVision in general and now that it's no longer under warranty, I decided to open the camera from the AmbiVision and realized it's just a orange pi zero with some other board that seems to rule the camera (picture below). I was wondering whether it would be possible to install Hyperion in the orange pi? I believe the orange pi is lacking an SD card so I wonder where the firmware might be running from? I'm willing to build a camera setup with Hyperion, I've seen pretty promising results in the forum, but I'm not sure Hyperion will be able to use this camera? I'm really lost here, hopefully somebody will be able to shed some light before I ruin my current system. If you need more picture let me know. Thanks in advanced.

    Quote from Lightning-guy77

    Welkome back ! So ambivision wasnt that great huh 8|8|:whistling:

    First off, when I bought AmbiVision there wasn't the option of a camera setup with Hyperion. I'd still go AmbiVision or Govee 100 times vs hdmi route with Hyperion, no doubt, with Hyperion it's expensive and ugly. AmbiVision excels in some things, it's rubbish in some others... when it works I very much doubt a camera setup with hyperion will match the results, it may though. However, the device has too many problems and worst thing is, if you ask too much, support ends up ignoring you. So the thing's been unusable for maybe 2-3 months over the last year. When it works, I have to reset the system maybe an average of 3-4 times a month. The company is just a piece of shit and I'm positive that with Hyperion I'll have a much more reliable system. I'm sick of reseting and redoing the whole config time and time again... they didn't even make it easy to restore a config, you have to do everything manually.

    In the end some guy around here was right, he said something like "with hyperion you needn't deal with companies which might be a roll of a dice", or something like that...

    it's been bad but all in all I'm happy. I paid 150€ (they told me not to spread it online but yeah, squeeze them through e-mails and you can get a much better deal than the one they offer in their website) for an orange pi pus zero, a fisheye camera with mic and IR, power supplies, an RGBW ledstrip and beautiful casing I can repurpose for Hyperion. It's not that far from what Hyperion would've cost me if I bought everything new a year ago.

    But yeah, I learnt it the hard way, I would never recommend AmbiVision as of today. Get the parts, learn, spend some time and go Hyperion. If you aren't that kind of guy, then Govee.

    Edited 6 times, last by Obaldius (May 31, 2022 at 6:23 AM).

    The camera option with Hyperion was always there, only the way how you want the camera position to be that have to be pointed at the screen. Not how the ambi and govee systems do it by have it on the tv itself. I have Hyperion running in HDMI route which quality be always better than any camera route. The question is is it easier?? And I have to say no, but the results is worth it by a long shot. If there isnt a way to implement a SD Card then you cant run hyperion directly. Maybe you can use a second device like a pc

    I was misinformed:

    Post

    RE: Help with RPi camera and Hyperion

    no,

    Ambivision has special software/hardware to filter out the distortion from tv refreshrate, also a special camera thats capable of weird angles.
    Hyperion doesn't work that way and only purpose is to directly project video image into grabber or PROTObuffer.



    so how i see it you will never have the same effect with only a camera into hyperion.
    Its laggy and slow/ colours is off, and camera has to be right in front of the tv to get a image for the leds,
    Ambivision doesn't need that and you can put…
    Ambient_theater77
    February 28, 2021 at 12:19 AM

    it's not either laggy nor much more off than AmbiVision, several users have proved it in this thread during this last year.

    Thread

    Adjust Camera in Hyperion - Color - Help required

    Dear Friends,

    I try to setup Hyperion with my Pi Cam, but I have issues calibrating. I took a picture to show the problem on a white screen.

    Due to capturing the screen image via camera and the viewing angle the camera detects a certain "gradient" where it should be white.

    I mean I can related why this happens but I dont know if I can compensate it.

    Is there any option in hyperion how to correct for this or any other suggestions? Is the Camera the problem?

    Any help would be appreciated.
    piperion
    March 12, 2021 at 11:18 PM

    If I hadn't been misinformed, I would've gone the Hyperion + camera setup to begin with. In fact, that thread arouse right 1 month after I purchased AmbiVision, which made me hate my purchase.

    Quote from Lightning-guy77

    I have Hyperion running in HDMI route which quality be always better than any camera route. The question is is it easier?? And I have to say no, but the results is worth it by a long shot.

    I just meant that between spending 600€ for the hdmi in Hyperion and spending 600€ for philips, I'd go philips. It's expensive and ugly. Hyperion isn't cheaper and it can get ugly easily from what I've seen in the pictures in this forum.

    Yes, there's a SD card slot, not an SD card in though. I wonder where the AmbiVision's firmware might be running from? I've seen a guy installing hyperion in a orange pi using this though:

    Anyways, I'm very excited I'll have hyperion running with AmbiVision's casing, I love it.

    Edited 4 times, last by Obaldius (May 31, 2022 at 8:51 AM).

    will it be possible to use the insta360 camera??. the camera has the ability to be used as a webcam

    Edited once, last by nc21 (June 9, 2025 at 3:55 PM).

    Hi all,

    First post here. I joined to say I have been digging into how the Ambivision Pro system works (I have 2 of them) and comparisons to my woodenshark Lightpack Kit.

    There is next to nothing of support from the manufacturer or technical analysis as we know.

    I have gained root access to console over ttl serial & ssh to the OS and many more.

    My aims are to use possibly Prismatik for faster PC capture and send over UDP, Upgrade Armbian OS (from Linux AmbiVisionPro 3.4.113-sun8i)

    Is there any community interest here .. if not I can find somewhere else to post?

    • New

    AmbiVision36 hardware teardown notes and Hyperion migration progress

    I currently have the embedded OV5640 camera working and Hyperion running on the device.

    For the LED output side, I’m planning to use a WLED LAN device rather than the original AmbiVision LED controller; Not impossible to use, but the original system appears to use a custom RFCOMM Bluetooth link to an HC-05 Bluetooth module to simulate a wired connection to the LED ribbon so a translation layer to these custom frames will need to be created. If required, Bluetooth support is possible to be enabled on the 5.10.x kernel with tweaking.

    There is an AmbiVision application folder located in /home/lufa which is around 1 MB in size + swap. The application appears to be a C-based program using OS event handlers to control the system and small code base. However, it is quite invasive: it modifies system settings, including resetting the root password and overriding WiFi credentials, so replacing it with a cleaner Hyperion-based setup is preferable.

    Hardware observations

    Obaldius identified that the device appears to be essentially an Orange Pi Zero Plus 2 with an additional custom board responsible for controlling the camera interface.

    The extra daughterboard seems to handle signal conditioning/protection for the CSI camera input, likely cleaning up or regulating the overvoltage present on the CSI connector (blows cams). This explains why the OV5640 camera setup differs from a standard Orange Pi configuration.

    The base hardware appears to be:

    • Orange Pi Zero Plus 2 (H3)
    • Custom AmbiVision daughterboard
    • OV5640 CSI camera module
    • Original AmbiVision controller software

    Reference:

    Orange Pi Zero Plus 2 — Armbian
    Download Armbian for Orange Pi Zero Plus 2 by Orange Pi. Community support, 2 images available including Resolute, Trixie.
    armbian.com

    Boot and OS notes

    It is very straightforward to test alternative operating systems.

    The Orange Pi U-Boot bootloader gives priority to the SD card over the onboard eMMC, so a new Armbian image can simply be written to an SD card and inserted for testing.

    It would also be worthwhile to make a full backup image of the original eMMC installation before making changes. The AmbiVision36 application contains a unique licence key generated from the CPU serial number. This key is not required for running Hyperion, but preserving the original image may still be useful for archival purposes.

    Future possibilities

    If there is enough community interest, it should be possible to create a complete polished SD-card ROM image containing:

    • Working Orange Pi H3 Linux environment
    • OV5640 camera support
    • Hyperion installation
    • Replacement LED output configuration
    • Removal of the original AmbiVision application dependency

    For now, I will continue adding notes and discoveries to the repository rather than creating a full image immediately.

    The goal is to document the hardware and make it possible to repurpose these devices with open software instead of the original AmbiVision stack.

    Screenshots







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