Pimoroni Mote USB LED (APA102)

PaulWebster · Dec 2nd 2016

Some developers who work with Pimoroni are interested in getting the Pimoroni Mote working with Hyperion.
https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/mote

Can you advise on which version of Hyperion they should target if they had something ready to go in December 2016?

"ng" is described as pre-alpha and is 1.x accepting updates?

TPmodding · Dec 2nd 2016

would be a better choice if you implement it in ng, but we cant actually say when ng will be released... if you have no problem with it you are welcome

penfold42 · Dec 3rd 2016

Do both.

Looking at the python library it should be easy to port the adalight drivers.

Let me know if you need some pointers to get you started

PaulWebster · Dec 3rd 2016

Thanks for the replies - have relayed.

secutor · Dec 4th 2016

Hi! I am currently trying to make Pimoroni Mote work with Libreelec. Would like to get the aforementioned pointers, please!

penfold42 · Dec 6th 2016

It's a very modular led device driver subsystem.

1) duplicate these files:
libsrc/leddevice/LedDeviceAdalight.cpp and libsrc/leddevice/LedDeviceAdalight.h

2) Update CMakeLists.txt and LedDeviceFactory.cpp to include your new files

3) duplicate schemas/schema-adalight.json

4) edit your duplicated .cpp and .h files to rename all the functions and replace the framing logic to suit your device.

secutor · Dec 7th 2016

Thanks a lot! I will try and see what I can do.

penfold42 · Dec 7th 2016

2 things will be interesting to resolve.
1) finding the serial device by USB vid and pid. There are a couple of USB drivers you could rip the code from.

2) how to map Hyperion linear led numbers to the motes 4 channels.
I would probably include in the device config up to 4 channel sections that have the number of leds in that channel and the starting Hyperion led number for that channel

secutor · Dec 7th 2016

1) vid and pid seems to be easy: https://github.com/pimoroni/mo…/library/mote/__init__.py
2) no idea yet, have to dig a little into the structure of hyperion itself...

Thanks again for the ideas and pointers!

PaulWebster · Oct 18th 2017

Quick update ... I now have something working.
I found some code use Pimoroni Unicorn HAT as a Art-Net & OPC/FadeCandy network device ... so I adapted that to drive the Pimoroni Mote.
It works (although there are some unhandled issues largely due to networking not being 100% reliable).
I plan to put it on GitHub after it has survived some soak tests.

TPmodding · Oct 21st 2017

Sounds good!

PaulWebster · Oct 21st 2017

Someone else has now tried it as well and it works for there as well (although that installation does not have the full complement of 4 Mote sticks so it requires some more fiddling around).
If there is anyone else with Mote sticks who would like to try then let me know.

dglaude · Apr 23rd 2018

Actually, I also tried successfully with four Pimoroni Mote Stick driven by Hyperion.
Here is a video. :
https://twitter.com/DavidGlaude/status/975389617682776064

PaulWebster · Oct 20th 2020

Just in case anyone else did implement this ... you might find that it is broken by the October 2020 update to OSMC.
This is because the Python module numpy installed following the guide does not match up with the Python build included with this OSMC release.

To resolve it simply
sudo pip uninstall numpy
sudo pip install numpy
#then wait a few minutes and there will be some errors listed but it seems to work
sudo systemctl start artnet-server

Full guide (not verified for fresh install on OSMC Oct 2020) at
https://github.com/PaulWebster/artnet-unicorn-hat/tree/mote

Lord-Grey · Oct 20th 2020

hyperion.ng has FadeCandy support. You might want to try, if this works and then you could avoid an extra component on between....

PaulWebster · Oct 20th 2020

I am using the FadeCandy support that is in Hyperion (pre-NG).

My understanding is that Hyperion (NG or not) acts as a FadeCandy client ... I still need a FadeCandy server which is what this extra component is.
This extra component (written in Python) then uses the Pimoroni Python library to drive the Pimoroni Mote sticks.

Or ... are you saying that NG now drives Mote sticks directly?

There have not been any Mote posts in the forum apart from mine (which I started nearly 4 years ago) so my guess is that this is a minority interest so I am not particularly keen to re-do things unless it makes it much easier/simpler.

Lord-Grey · Oct 20th 2020

@PaulWebster Thanks for providing more background information. I was not aware that the additional server component is required. Seems you are already set up well.

Participate now!