Green flickering lights (only) after first Hyperion start.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

as I'm relatively new to the whole Hyperion-Project, I would need some support of you guys..

There was someone (@cbabbman / -> Thread) with the same Issue on OpenElec, which couldn't be resolved until OSMC was used instead.

The Problem here is.. I'm already using OSMC and I'd love to keep it, as it is easier to use via SSH (for me as a linux "newbie")

So here's the Problem:

Quoting the original description of the above mentioned thread:

Zitat

"...Basically, hyperion fails to start correctly when being loaded through autostart.sh.. It does work, but there is a greenish flicker throughout the entire string of LED's... If I SSH in, kill hyperion and start it with exactly the same start command that's in my autostart.sh, it fires up and works just fine until the next time I reboot..."

I found out some differences on my side:

Everytime my RPi boots up, the Rainbow Swirl Effect stops after 1 second.. Then only the lower half of the LED's start to flash in greenish light, as cbabbmann described.. The upper half seems to show almost the right colors (as on screen).

Here is my detailed Setup:

- RPi 3 (OSMC November 2016)
- WS2801 Strip (~3m) powered from the beginning only. (Grounded together with RPi)
- 10A Power Supply (For RPi and LEDs)
- STK1160 Grabber
- HDMI->AV Converter (currently needs to be powered over RPi's USB, otherwise I get a very dark and bad Image on the grabber.

The problem seems to be with the grabber only.
Fix colors are okay, also the Screen capturing works well.
It seems everytime Hyperion boots for the first time, the Grabber only gets a snowy, flickering Image (which is green on the lower half)
Thats why the LED's flicker in greenish light until I restart Hyperion.. After that restart everything is fine.

Is there any Setting for the Grabber which could make it start stable at first launch?
Could the USB-Power to the HDMI->AV Converter drag the Grabbers power down?

(Grabber and HDMI->AV Power are on different stacks, so every stack should give full power to the devices, anyway I'm just mentioning it for the completeness wegen..)

Did I miss something? For sure everything is soldered / connected correctly, and my Colors and Image quality seems to be fine (after its restarted)

Thanks for any hint..

cheers,
Varco

As of now, I do not have any idea what to use to get an image from the grabber (besides the HyperCon.jar "Screenshot" option)

What could I use to check it?

Thanks to both of you,

will try that in a second.

First I wanted to check, whats happening if I boot without hyperion, and then run it after everything else booted up.

EDIT: BTW this is my hyperion.service file:

I have now taken a screenshot - after booting but without hyperion started - taking the following command:

hyperion-v4l2 --screenshot -v PAL --width 240 --height 192 --crop-left 6 --crop-right 8 --crop-top 2 --crop-bottom 8 --red-threshold 0.1 --green-threshold 0.1 --blue-threshold 0.1

(These are the settings of the hypercon file)

This is the Output:

see attached screenshots for reference.

(The second screenshot was directly taken after the first)

Any other things I could try?

Okay Guys..

I took a screenshot without setting the width and height of 240x192 (leaving it at standard 720x576)
and the first image looks good (see attached).

Hoewer I get a

V4L2GRABBER ERROR: Frame too small: 828606 != 829440

error as output.

So maybe the Issue is caused by the screensize, but Hyperion doesn't work due to the GRABBER ERROR.. I've not yet found a solution for this problem with the STK1160..

Does anyone of you know any?

Thank you,

I've tried with width/height: -1 settings already and hyperion fails to grab an image due to FRAME TOO SMALL errormessages..

I found out, that this is a problem with the STK1160 Grabber only, so I got rid of them by changing it to 240 x 192 in size..

I also found out that my problem is only occuring when the grabber first changes the resolution.. it doesn't matter from which resolution to whatever else it changes..

For example:

- If I take a screenshot with native resolution (-1 x -1 or 720 x 576) then the image is okay (but a FRAME TOO SMALL error along whit it)
- If I then take a screenshot with another resolution (eg. 360x288) - the grabber gives the crappy green image even without rebooting, (see first screenshot)
- This signal only reverts stable after another screenshot is taken with the same resolution again. (which explains why an hyperion restart fixes it)

Tho basically it's either the FRAME TOO SMALL error or the grabbers first attempt to change the grabbing size.

I almost believe, everyone with a new OSMC installation and an STK1160 Grabber has this problem, could someone with the same setup (OSMC 11.16) confirm this?

PS: The HDMI-AV converter was not the problem..
I just forgot that my DVI->HDMI Adapter won't power the converter, when otherwise normal HDMI outputs do. :facepalm:

cheers

Unfortunately the STK1160 wouldn't work for me.

The new LogiLink Grabber fixed the problem.

though, I think the main problem here is the "FRAME TOO SMALL" message. Because the green image is only occuring when I "workaround" the FRAME TOO SMALL error by changing the resolution.

STK1160 seems to hang when changing the resolution, which shows the green image.

I am still curious if someone has a solution for it..

cheers