Boblight has been running quite successfully on Raspbmc for quite a while, but now with the release of boblight-dispmanx (which I previously discussed here) it’s OpenElec’s turn.
The steps to get it up and running are pretty straightforward, especially if you already have a working setup with Raspbmc.
Step 1. Install OpenElec
I won’t go into detail here as there’s already plenty of guides around on how to do this. One important note is that due to firmware requirements you must use an OpenElec build after July 19th July. This means 3.0.6 won’t work.
For this guide I installed the latest dev build at the time: devel-20130727005416-r15181.
Step 2. Set up the hardware
This is identical to any other Raspberry Pi boblight setup so I’ll direct you to my PiBob hardware guide here. If you already have boblight running on the Pi with another OS then leave the hardware as it is.
If you haven’t bought your hardware yet, have a look here for a parts list.
Step 3. Install boblightd
Within OpenElec, goto settings and Add-ons. Select OpenElec add-ons and then Services. Install boblightd.
You now need to tell boblightd about your LEDs via boblight.conf. If you have one already, place it here: \\YOUR_PI_IP\Userdata\addon_data\service.multimedia.boblightd\
If you don’t have one, then check out the PiBob software guide here for an example .conf and also info on how to make/customise your own.
Step 4. Install boblight-dispmanx
In the step before you installed the daemon or server which communicates with the LEDs, now you need to install the client which is responsible for capturing the colour information and sending to the daemon. SSH into the Pi and run:
cd ~ wget https://github.com/brooc/boblight-rpi/raw/master/src/boblight-dispmanx chmod 755 boblight-dispmanx reboot
Step 5. Testing boblight-dispmanx
After the reboot boblightd will have auto-started. Now you need to test boblight-dispmanx:
cd ~ ./boblight-dispmanx -p 1
Your LEDs should now hopefully switch on and respond to whatever is on screen.
Step 6. Configure and auto-start boblight-dispmanx
To auto-start boblight-dispmanx you need to create (or edit) autostart.sh:
nano /storage/.config/autostart.sh
You’ll then need to paste this into autostart.sh and save.
Feel free to modify or add extra settings here. e.g anything you previously had in boboptions.txt should be added here. Don’t forget the “-o” before each setting.
#!/bin/sh /storage/boblight-dispmanx -o interpolation=1 -o speed=90 -o threshold=35 -o autospeed=0 -o saturation=1 -o value=1 -p 100 -i 0.1 -f /dev/null &
Finally, make the script executable and reboot:
chmod +x /storage/.config/autostart.sh reboot
With any luck, XBMC will boot up and the LEDs will kick in automatically.
Troubleshooting
1. If XBMC crashes when you play a video, make sure your firmware is 19th July or newer. Check your firmware version:
vcgencmd version
If you need to update it, read below.
2. If after running boblight-dispmanx your LEDs are changing colour but it’s all a bit strange and not really matching what’s on screen you may need to update your firmware.
OpenElec doesn’t have rpi-update and I couldn’t find a way to successfully install and run it. One way I found to upgrade the firmware is to completely upgrade OpenElec. See Kirk Miller’s guide here.
3. If you experience flickering when playing back videos then you guessed it… make sure your firmware is up to date.
4.If you get this error when starting boblight-dispmanx then ensure boblightd is running first.
Connecting to boblightd ERROR: SO_ERROR 127.0.0.1:19333 Connection refused
To check it is running:
pidof boblightd
If it returns a pid (a number) then it’s running, if it doesn’t return anything then boblightd is not running. Double check you installed and enabled the boblightd plugin and not the boblight plugin. The ‘d’ is important!
If you have any issues then leave a comment below.
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