Support for Raspberry Pi 5 ws2812-pio (/dev/leds0)

I’m a new Hyperion user on a Raspberry Pi 5 (LibreELEC) with an SK6812 RGBW strip.

On the Pi 5 the provided ws281x driver doesn’t work (This came by on this forum too). Hyperion gives:

Device disabled, device 'ws281x' signals error:
Failed to open. Hardware revision is not supported

That makes sense—the Pi 5 removed the old DMA/PWM path that the ws281x backend relied on. What does work, is the newer ws2812-pio overlay.

I enabled the kernel overlay:

dtoverlay=ws2812-pio,gpio=18,num_leds=210,rgbw

The kernel creates this device:

/dev/leds0

I can write RGBW data to it manually and the LEDs work fine:

for i in $(seq 210); do printf "\xFF\xFF\xFF\xFF"; done | dd of=/dev/leds0 bs=4

So the kernel side is working.

What happens in Hyperion

I had an idea, and set the LED device to “file” and point it at /dev/leds0, Hyperion does send data and the LEDs turns on. But I cannot define WLED and remote control doesn't work (Tyring to change colour) It looks like using the generic file output for continuous LED updates isn’t a good solution.

Request

Would it be possible to add proper support in Hyperion for the Pi 5 PIO LED device (/dev/leds0)?

A dedicated backend would avoid the issues seen when using the “file” device and would let Raspberry Pi 5 + SK6812 users drive LED strips normally again.

Environment details:

• Raspberry Pi

• Kernel: Linux kodi 6.12.56

• LibreELEC

• SK6812 RGBW

• GPIO 18

• Device: /dev/leds0

If you need any additional logs or testing, I can provide them.

Thanks Ambient_theater77 !

Indeed have a levelshifter, and reading up on SPI, I moved the data cable to GPIO10. (my strip doesn't have a CLK like you linked here, only 5V, data, GND)

Added 'dtparam=spi=on' to config.txt (this enabled /dev/spidev0.0 /dev/spidev0.1 after boot)

I tried just now but I can't get the strip to light up yet.

Config as attached.

Any insights would be appreciated!

Thanks for the insights Lord-Grey . I'm new to this. My situation is now (with GND connected):

1. Connect data cable to GPIO18 (GPIO_GEN1), and I can manipulate colors with /dev/leds0:

for i in $(seq 210); do printf "\xFF\xFF\xFF\xFF"; done | dd of=/dev/leds0 bs=4

this is where my idea came from to manipulate /dev/leds0 as a file. But I think you can ignore my comment, as I wasn't aware there exists a SK6812spi.

2. I wasn't aware of SPI. So using the comment of Ambient_theater77, I researched a bit and understand that I connect data cable to GPIO10 SPI_MOSI and enable SPI in config. I point it at /dev/spidev0.0 and setup SK6812spi in Hyperion.NG. In this situation, I don't know how to test. At least the LED strip doesn't light up when I use remote control. I feel like I'm very close. (logs attached)

Thank you for this fantastic project!