[LINUX] HOW-TO get AmbX with X11 working using Boblight and CombustD

darkscout · 2011-08-19 14:29

boulala Wrote:damn you apple. thanks for the quick reply. guess i have to wait until someone ports the whole thing to ios

Um... and magically changes the hardware that comes with ATV2. There is NO way to hook it up. None.

**bobo1on1** · 2011-08-19 17:48

darkscout Wrote:Um... and magically changes the hardware that comes with ATV2. There is NO way to hook it up. None.

Well, boblight works over tcp, you could run a boblight client on the atv2 and boblightd on a different machine with usb and make it work.
The question then is, is the atv fast enough to read gpu data into system mem and keep normal video rendering going.

AlphaDog · 2011-09-29 18:55

I'm trying to get this to work on Fedora 14. After some afternoons of cursing, yelling and throwing, I managed to get everything installed, configured and compiled. But, it still won't work.

It looks to me like combustd can't find the amBX device. When I connect the wallthing with USB, it starts flashing non-stop, so its working.

Here's the output of #boblightd

Code:

Starting popen daemon on ruby /usr/local/combustd/applications/boblight/boblight.rb

(...)

Format: ruby boblight.rb r1 g1 b1 r2 g2 b2 r3 g3 b3 r4 g4 b4 r5 g5 b5

Unable to find a ambx device

dmesg gives a lot of output with Philips amBX in it, but its not listed on lsusb. I'm out of idea's, any suggestions?

liamf · 2011-11-14 12:39

So this all looks really nice, but I can't find any amBX lighting for sale, anywhere.

Is it possible to find these any more?
Are there any equivalents available?

Thx
liam

Mike34 · 2012-02-15 20:54

liamf Wrote:So this all looks really nice, but I can't find any amBX lighting for sale, anywhere.

Is it possible to find these any more?
Are there any equivalents available?

Thx
liam

I am having to sell mine as new tv is mounted on the wall, i am going to have a go at building a flat version to fit in the 15mm gap now

if anyone from here wins it i'll knock 10% off final price

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?V...0860974669

Great guide by the way it worked really well with mine, hope the homemade version works as well as it really adds more depth to the movies. Big Grin

liamf · 2012-02-15 21:28

Quote:I am having to sell mine as new tv is mounted on the wall, i am going to have a go at building a flat version to fit in the 15mm gap now

I made one using 4 of these as the lights: http://www.dealextreme.com/p/rgb-multico...-12v-14965

and an Arduino-based PWM controller.

Works fine ... and the LED strips are super thin and self adhesive. So they'll fit Laugh

Mike34 · 2012-02-19 19:56

liamf Wrote:I made one using 4 of these as the lights: http://www.dealextreme.com/p/rgb-multico...-12v-14965

and an Arduino-based PWM controller.

Works fine ... and the LED strips are super thin and self adhesive. So they'll fit

I'll give it a go then, be fun trying to make and program them.

Big Grin

OvermindDL1 · 2012-03-08 21:29

AlphaDog Wrote:It looks to me like combustd can't find the amBX device. When I connect the wallthing with USB, it starts flashing non-stop, so its working.

I have the exact same issue, different set up.

I have a slightly modified Kubuntu 11.04 64-bit. 16gigs ram, and 8 amBX standing lights with 4 of the 'backlight' parts. Used to have it set up on an old Windows computer, but packed them away when I decided that I wanted to burn the thing as a sacrifice to the gods of linux/bsd (plus I just hated the instability of the thing, no matter what I did to it).

Got all the software installed as per the front post, no issues there.

I then hooked up just one set of lights+backlight to the system, and they just blink. Hooked up one of the speaker lights instead and I have found this:

- Sound plays for about 1 second, then quiet for about 2 seconds
- Lights blink (quickly fade in and then out) about a half second before the 1 second of sound works.
- Repeats that endlessly until the USB is unplugged.

Tried plugging it straight into the main system, into a USB hub, into the USB hub built into my monitor, same results in all cases.
If I plug the USB into my phones USB adaptor then the lights come on once and go off, sound then works (as the sound is still plugged into the computer), but I cannot very well use my phone as a passthrough for this. Wink

I have quite a number of USB devices plugged into the 3 USB root hubs on my computer (two are USB2 and one is USB3, tried them all) and no issues with any other devices. Tried known working ports, tried unplugging everything from a root hub and trying amBX on just that one, all to no avail, just constant blinking when plugged in.

If I try to start boblightd at the exact right second (about a half second after the lights blink) then it recognizes it and then spits this out:

Code:

/usr/local/combustd/applications/boblight/../../libcombustd/communication/ambx.rb:55:in `usb_claim_interface': Bad file descriptor - usb_claim_interface (Errno::EBADF)

        from /usr/local/combustd/applications/boblight/../../libcombustd/communication/ambx.rb:55:in `open'

        from /usr/local/combustd/applications/boblight/boblight.rb:10

If I try to start boblightd at any other time it just states "Unable to find a ambx device". Other than the wonderful grammar of the error, it does indicate that the lights seems to be losing communication with the Linux USB system, although it does successfully connect. Unsure what could be causing that however.

oo_void · 2012-03-09 23:06

OvermindDL1, you're close ... I had the same issue, but I've forgotten exactly what I did ;(. It's caused by a problem with the USB audio driver. Look at your log when you plug in your AmbX and then search using the error message that gets thrown. You should get results that point you to the Ubuntu forum with instructions on what to change; Basically removing the device type from one of the configs.

Maybe this will jog someone else's memory and they can post the exact steps.

tscheff · 2012-03-12 21:49

First of all: THX bobo1on1. Your work is really great.

And now my problem: I've got _some_ flickering lights, 5-6 all seated next to each other. They sometimes stop once i start xbmc (no autostart), but in the Ubuntu desktop it's flickering.

My setup is:
Adalight Kit (WS2801, with 50Pixels)
custom made mediacenter based on ubuntu,xbmc nightly, intel i7 and z68 motherboard which supports intel VDPAU, intels onboard grafik chipset.

darkscout Posting Freak Posts: 2,148 Joined: Jul 2008 Reputation: 12	2011-08-19 14:29 Post: #161 boulala Wrote:damn you apple. thanks for the quick reply. guess i have to wait until someone ports the whole thing to ios Um... and magically changes the hardware that comes with ATV2. There is NO way to hook it up. None. Code: GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON `xbmc_%`.* TO 'xbmc'@'%'; IF you have a mysql problem, find one of the 4 dozen threads already open.
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liamf Member Posts: 97 Joined: Mar 2010 Reputation: 0 Location: Ireland	2011-11-14 12:39 Post: #164 So this all looks really nice, but I can't find any amBX lighting for sale, anywhere. Is it possible to find these any more? Are there any equivalents available? Thx liam
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liamf Member Posts: 97 Joined: Mar 2010 Reputation: 0 Location: Ireland	2012-02-15 21:28 Post: #166 Quote:I am having to sell mine as new tv is mounted on the wall, i am going to have a go at building a flat version to fit in the 15mm gap now I made one using 4 of these as the lights: http://www.dealextreme.com/p/rgb-multico...-12v-14965 and an Arduino-based PWM controller. Works fine ... and the LED strips are super thin and self adhesive. So they'll fit
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