[DIY] Amblight project/guide - Hyperion - WS2801/ WS2812B / APA102 (1 Viewer)

[Freshage]

Will do, one thing I am actually just thinking about. There doesn't seem to be a 'brightness' adjuster for the LED's. As in, making the brighter or dimmer. Am I missing something?

 

[Rick164]

For brightness control you have the valueGain setting in the Hyperion config, default is 1.000 so can raise or lower that if needed

 

[Freshage]

Morning Rick, I just wanted to close this up with a huge thank you. Really great guide and a fantastic help with the final touches. It's all up and running gloriously now (with a few minor tweaks left and clean up of all the cables).

Take it easy and all the best, Chris.

 

[Rick164]

Glad to hear it's working and have fun

 

[Freshage]

Annoyingly, I have one final question. In the very dark scenes on normal films, when it can't pick up a bright enough colour, it puts out glimmers of green. Now I know I could increase the threshold so it needs brighter colours meaning it doesn't pick up on the darker colours. But is there any other option?

 

[Rick164]

Could be that green is to prominent (threshold) or that you have green lines in the live capture results (slight interference) but there a few other options to try:

- Would first check with a live capture screenshot a couple of times (during playback) using hyperion-v4l2 and see if you get any green lines now and again, if so best to check live capture hardware cables or switch between video standards (NTSC / PAL).
Could also be cropping issue as some component devices can get a green-ish tint on the outer lines.

- Reduce white level of green or increase those of others to make it balanced, can be tricky so would pause during a a scene where you see the glimmers of green and reduce it by steps of 0.05 via Hyperion web or android app till you get the desired results.
- If its green around the outer areas you can decrease vertical / horizontal depth or increase black bar sensitivity but that isn't a perfect solution.

Most likely it's like a green line issue so would focus on that first

Forgot to mention that the documentation lists that the "Frame decimation" in the Hyperion config can also help reduce the greens, never played around with it much as the default should be fine but also worth a try.

 

[Freshage]

Well, yet again you're on the money. The screenshots don't have any green lines. But they are very badly out of colour. I changed from NTSC to PAL and I ended up with a lot of green lines (almost the entire picture). So went back to NTSC.

This is one of the screenshots, focusing on the bottom right corner, the bench in the film is a much darker down. However, the ambilight is throwing out an orange-greeny light.

http://i.imgur.com/DaIudD5.png

Actually, I lie, it does seem I'm getting green lines. Just not every time I snap a screenshot.

http://i.imgur.com/eGYKgsR.png

 

[Rick164]

Best to try with a higher or lower frame decimation, these have been my defaults for a while:

"frameDecimation" : 2,
"sizeDecimation" : 4,

Would play a bit with the live capture rgb threshold values as you should be able to get them pretty close to the screen however there's always some color loss due to analog conversions (typically negligible for amblight)
NTSC for me was the most color accurate as PAL looked a bit washed out , also there can be a quality difference between some of the HDMI to Analog converters.

 

[Freshage]

Aces, will have a tinker. I'm running frame at 2 and size at 8... I'll try the same as yours. If it rids then green lines. I'll then work on the thresholds

I hate having to get everything working perfectly lol.

Also, any thoughts on options if I'm unable to get rid of the green lines? Are they essential to be out of the picture (pun intended) or is it just a 'nice to have'?

 

[Rick164]

Hehe, usually go by this:

"When you aim for perfection, you discover it's a moving target." ~George Fisher

Analog converters can be tricky to work with as they are also depended on the source and build quality which from the outside it hard to tell
The small horizontal thin green lines should be fine as during screenshots that can happen due to the way it does 1 frame grab as opposed to several in 1 stream, however if you get them as flashes during normal live capture (i.e. during playback) something is interfering.

Best bet then is to replace the hdmi to composite converter or different composite cable as the thin ones have less shielding.