Arduino chinese clone project, help (1 Viewer)

[Crabstick]

Hi,

I stumbled on these atmolight projects, saw some videos on youtube how cool it looks and thought I need my abilight too!

Went on and ordered WS2801 led chain (pixels with wires):
http://www.ebay.com/itm/25Pcs-DC-5V...module-string-IP68-Transparent-/281450642383?

and a chinese arduino clone:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/UNO-R3-Deve...59?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_15&hash=item2a3e4c1643

and a cheap power for the leds:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/110-220V-AC...743208?pt=US_Car_Lighting&hash=item4188028ea8

Went and assembled the leds, connected wires and powered it on. Tested the board with Arduino IDE with basic blink scetch and it worked (led on board blinks). Then started the problems

Loaded FastSPI and uploaded the test program in Arduino IDE, but leds are not lighting up.

Installed atmolight MP plugin along with atmowin. In atmowin I can select the device and set it to COM3 and it says "connected". The hardware button stays grayed out.

Now I'm not 100% sure the wires are correct but I think they are: data, clock and gnd connected on board. Power from both ends to the power source.

Now I would like someone to give me some pointers, where is the problem. I think the power is busted anyway (makes buzzing sound and heats up). But why don't I see the hardware button in atmowin? The device is recognized as CH340 something and drivers installed automatically (not by Arduino, but Win7 installed them automatically). And do I need to do something with Arduino IDE other than test that the leds work?

Any help appreciated. Anyway I will continue and maybe scrap this and start over with some WS2811 led strip...

 

[Lightning303]

Loaded FastSPI and uploaded the test program in Arduino IDE, but leds are not lighting up.

So, we dont even have to look at AtmoWin/AtmoLight yet, because the problem seems to occur way before this.

A photo of your setup would help, especially the wiring, to see if something is wrong there.
Also, did you change the FastSPI scetch to your setup? Edited the right ports and that you are using WS2801? Would be helpfull if you could upload the scetch you were using to test but failed aswell.

 

[Crabstick]

Ha! I went through the connections again, and found out that the other end of the power was inverted. Other end has red connected to + and clear to gnd on the led strip. Other end had red on gnd and clear on +5V. I fixed that and currently my setup is running cylon script from FastLED examples.

Now what? How should I continue? My data pin is 2 and clock is 10.

Edit: I was using FastLED library for testing, not the older FastSPI

 

[Crabstick]

OK, I downloaded the atmoduino sketch from github and uploaded it to arduino. Now I got the basic ambilight working. Remapped all channels according to my setup and it seems to work. Great!

Context menu works now after assigning it to teletext button (I don't use it for anything else anyway).
Now only thing left is the configuration of atmowin and atmolight. I didn't find any wiki for this or help in general. Do you have any links how to setup this plugin?
Thanks!

 

[Lightning303]

Do you have any links how to setup this plugin?

What exactly are the problems you have with setting up AtmoLight? I always thought its streight forward .

As for AtmoWin, i would suggest just using the default or using one of the setups other users here on the forum are using and then do changes from there.
Some examples:

@HomeY: http://attachments.team-mediaportal.com/2014/05/198922_AtmoWin_Settings.png
Myself: http://attachments.team-mediaportal.com/2013/07/177005_AtmoWin_Config.png

I only know one site that explains the AtmoWin settings a bit more, but its in german... http://www.vdr-wiki.de/wiki/index.php/AtmoWin

 

[Crabstick]

Hi,

Thanks for the links. I was able to figure the configuration out and now the system is running perfectly. This is so cool!

 

[Crabstick]

Now I noticed one problem: when the movie end credits start to roll there is random blinking with the side LEDs. It's a bit annoying. What configuration option would make this stop? Attached is my AtmoWin config.

 

[Lightning303]

Now I noticed one problem: when the movie end credits start to roll there is random blinking with the side LEDs. It's a bit annoying. What configuration option would make this stop? Attached is my AtmoWin config.

You could try to lower the Darkness Limit, which defines when something is considered as black/off. Maybe changing the edge weighting could help aswell. The scanned area might be to big.

 

[Crabstick]

OK, I'll try that. This is off topic anyway, so I will continue in another thread if I have further questions. Thanks.