Howto: AmbX with X11 (Boblight + CombustD)

[CharlesNasi]

Hi,

I bought a Philips AmbX Starter kit, and struggled how to configure this so it will work with X11. It's working!

What I used:
- Ubuntu Desktop 10.04 Beta2 x64
- XBMC Camelot 9.11
- Philips AmbX starter kit (Around 25 euro in NL)
- CombustD
- Boblight

1. (If not installed) install Subversion

sudo apt-get install subversion

2. get combustd from svn

svn checkout http://combustd.googlecode.com/svn/branches/combustd-ruby-0.1

3. Download Boblight and extract it to something you want

Download: wget http://www.xs4all.nl/~loosen/boblight/boblight-1.3.tar.gz.
Tar: tar zxvf boblight-1.3.tar.gz

4. Get dependencies to compile Boblight

sudo apt-get install gcc libusb-dev ruby ruby-dev libportaudio-dev libavdevice-dev libswscale-dev libavformat-dev libavcodec-dev libxrender-dev libsdl1.2-dev libc6-dev-i386  libx11-dev

4. Build the package 'Boblight'
Go to the folder where you extracted Boblight and do:

sudo ./configure

(If some dependencies are missing, ask in this forum about it!)

sudo make

and install it.

sudo make install

5. Configure Boblight
Open a text-editor (I used Gedit in the code-example) and edit the file 'boblight.conf

sudo nano /etc/boblight.conf

Add the following code into the file

[global]
interface 127.0.0.1
port 19333
[device]
name AmbX_Combust
output "ruby /usr/local/combustd/applications/boblight/boblight.rb"
channels 5
type popen
interval 20000

[color]
name red
rgb FF0000
 
[color]
name green
rgb 00FF00

[color]
name blue
rgb 0000FF

[light]
name main
color red AmbX_Combust 1
color green AmbX_Combust 2
color blue AmbX_Combust 3
hscan 0 100
vscan 0 100

And save the file.
Boblight is now configured.

6. Install and compile Ruby-usb
download and get Ruby-usb

wget http://www.a-k-r.org/ruby-usb/ruby-usb-0.2.tar.gz

Extract ruby to a folder

tar -zxvf ruby-usb-0.2.tar.gz

Run ruby extconf.rb

sudo ruby extconf.rb

(If you get a error here (mkmf error) > sudo apt-get install ruby1.8-dev
Make & Install Ruby
sudo make && sudo make install

7. CombustD
- Extract the CombustD package you downloaded previously
- Rename the folder to combustd
- Move the folder to /usr/local

All steps are now done, time to start the daemon!
Run the following command in a shell:

sudo boblightd

Start the boblight-X11 binary

boblight-X11

Tweaks:
More saturation:
Add -s 20 behind the boblight-X11 exec.

To Do:
Create a file to autostart the daemon on startup and to launch the server
Add more tweaks
V. 0.1

Thanks
Thanks go to:
Bob for creating the great Boblight utility!
http://blogger.xs4all.nl/loosen/
Creators of CombustD!

[bobo1on1]

Originally Posted by CharlesNasi

Bob for creating the great Boblight utility!

Yay

[voyager2]

Dear Bob light god, yes thats you bobo1on1 ;-)

I have two momo light controllers here doing nothing, because there's no good software that works under 64bit windows7 So it just sitting here, but reading this I thought maybe I can use it with my Linux xbmc system, it seems to work better under linux anyway.

Will it work with movies under linux/xbmc? or is it only the gui that's working just like windows?

Can you write a small tutorial on how to get it going under XBMC live 9.11? I really loved my diy ambi light kit, the last time I used epilight under windows and it just eats away cpu time and is not useable.

Hope you can help bringing live to my favorite diy project from years ago.

[Kode]

I'm glad this thread is here, a very general search of "ambx" on the front page turns this up as the only example of how to get this working on linux, my ambx starter kit should be arriving this week, so thank you very much for this.

*edit*
As an aside, should i use boblight-1.3.tar.gz or svn checkout from google code?

[Kode]

i get:

kode@dhcppc1:~/ambx$ boblight-X11
Received hello from new client 127.0.0.1:35042
Assigning number 0 to client
Sending global config to 127.0.0.1:35042
Sending lights config to 127.0.0.1:35042

Starting boblight-X11

ERROR: Can't open display (null)


Closing boblight-X11

Timeout of 127.0.0.1:35042 set to 20
Priority of 127.0.0.1:35042 set to 128
127.0.0.1:35042 light main interpolation on
127.0.0.1:35042 light main proportional set to 100.000000
127.0.0.1:35042 light main saturation set to 1.00
127.0.0.1:35042 light main value set to 1.00
127.0.0.1:35042 light main valuerange set to 0.00-1.00
127.0.0.1:35042 use light main
Received bye from 127.0.0.1:35042


Any ideas?

*edit*
boblight-constant works, but cant get boblight-X11 to work

*edit2*
If this happens to anyone else, it turns out the problem was the DISPLAY environment variable wasn't set, typing:

export DISPLAY=:0.0

worked DD

[NotShorty]

Subscribed. I've loved this idea ever since I saw Pike2k's video. Thanks for the tut!

NS

[einhänder]

Originally Posted by CharlesNasi

Hi,

I bought a Philips AmbX Starter kit, and struggled how to configure this so it will work with X11. It's working!

...

- Philips AmbX starter kit (Around 25 euro in NL)

could you please tell me where you ordered your kit? it seems not to be available over here in germany anymore. at least i couldn't find any offer... :/

[piotr]

Originally Posted by CharlesNasi

Hi,

I bought a Philips AmbX Starter kit, and struggled how to configure this so it will work with X11. It's working!

Could you post a picture of your setup ? I'd like to hide the lights behind my (wallmounted) plasma, don't know if this is possible with the Ambx kit.

[Z3rO]

Bought my starterkit yesterday (was pretty hard to get one), after I read that xbmc works with it.
Its running great, the only thing i noticed is, that it reacts a bit slow to colour changes. Already tried to lower the intervall in the boblightd config from 20000 to 10000, but it didnt really help.

I also think that -s20 for saturation is way too high. I tried it with 5 and its really sufficient.

Another thing is, that I had to turn off VDPAU studio level colour correction since the lights would never go off when there was a black scene. This worked on non accelerated videos though, so that was the culprit.

Otherwise its really great to have a blue/green painted wall when watching avatar

[piotr]

Just bought a starterkit for 20 euros Will post the results.

Ps: is it possible to use only the "wallwasher" w/o the ugly satellites ?