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

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

Big Grin
still learning linux, | Eve Media Box Case | Abit I-N73HD Motherboard | 2gb Ram | 8gb usb drive | xbmc live | 4tb Linux server |- Second box - XBMC live | GA-81915PM motherboard | 2gb Ram | Gainward 8400GS 512MB HDMI | 2.5" 60gb hard drive |Cheap MCE remote | Tvheadend server | Raspberry Pi | Acer Revo | Zotac ION
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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.
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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.
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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.
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I'm using my AMBX now for a long time and it is working great. Lately I upgrated my HTPC with an external Blu-ray player and now I'm using the Makemkv plugin to watch Blu-ray movies. Unfortunately now my CPU power is no longer sufficient (Acer Revo R3610, 2GB), this means when I use boblight and the Makemkv plugin in parallel the movies can no longer be played smoothly.

Is there are a possibility to reduce the CPU usage of boblight?

Does the new boblight version (http://code.google.com/p/boblight/) have a lower CPU usage? If yes, can somebody help me with the replacement of the old boblight version?
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(2012-03-09, 23:06)oo_void Wrote: 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.

I did, here is the information.

The problem is caused by libmtp, it tries to access *every*single*device* as a media player, if it fails then it ignores it. It also has a kind of blacklist of certain IDs to just ignore. Programs like Banshee and Amarok and even VLC use it, so you cannot just remove it. There are quite a number of USB devices that it has to Ignore because if they try to be accessed as an invalid device they reset their connection to clean up their state. Other lighting systems, a few mice, and a few odd other things do.

Since I do not want to remove it for obvious reasons I had to find a way to disable it. Well when a USB device is plugged in it calls /lib/udev/mtp-probe and this is where it fails. Since I have no MP3 players or whatever else that I hook up to my computer (just my phone, which I use as a storage interface anyway), I have no qualms about just disabling mtp-probe, so I did:

$ sudo mv /lib/udev/mtp-probe /lib/udev/mtp-probe-broken

Badda bing, no restart needed, everything just magically started worked. There might be a better way then just renaming it, but I do not care as I do not need its probeing functionality.

It is only a problem in mtp9, mtp8 did not have this problem, and supposedily there is an upstream patch to mtp9 to fix it that 'should' come out 'soon' (I.E. probably the next year... or more... in my package manager at least).
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(2012-05-11, 00:12)OvermindDL1 Wrote: Since I do not want to remove it for obvious reasons I had to find a way to disable it. Well when a USB device is plugged in it calls /lib/udev/mtp-probe and this is where it fails. Since I have no MP3 players or whatever else that I hook up to my computer (just my phone, which I use as a storage interface anyway), I have no qualms about just disabling mtp-probe, so I did:

$ sudo mv /lib/udev/mtp-probe /lib/udev/mtp-probe-broken

Badda bing, no restart needed, everything just magically started worked. There might be a better way then just renaming it, but I do not care as I do not need its probeing functionality.

It is only a problem in mtp9, mtp8 did not have this problem, and supposedily there is an upstream patch to mtp9 to fix it that 'should' come out 'soon' (I.E. probably the next year... or more... in my package manager at least).

Thx, works like a charm here.......

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Hello,
I almost got it to work aswell. I have installed the 4loosen boblight version because the newer (google project) boblight version give's a lot of error which makes it unable to install. The lights are all working well when wathching youtube etc. But when I start XBMC -eden the lights turn of inmidiately. Whe I close XMBC the automatically turn back on again. Is there anyone who has experienced this problem before?

Thanx in andvance,
Marco

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Friends,

I need your kind help.
i have just procured the Mad Catz Cyborg amBX Gaming Lights (www.cyborggaming.com/prod/ambx.htm) and have followed the instructions for "Openelec" on:

http://openelec.tv/forum/44-cool-things-...me-theater

I have installed the boblightd package from the openelec repository from under All Addons -> Services
I have renamed boblight.conf.sample to boblight.conf and also Renamed boblight.X11.sample to boblight.X11

The lights dont come on. I havent edited the boblight.conf file since I do not know how to set this up,. Both my lights are connected to USB and I would like to have ambient lighting on all the time.

Please can you guide me to configure the Cyborg amBX Lights using Openelec.

Many thanks .

Your help is greatly appreciated.

Regards,
Shiva
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[LINUX] HOW-TO get AmbX with X11 working using Boblight and CombustD0