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P5 Panel not working with OctoPlus and BBB Black

Started by Giannifp, March 23, 2022, 08:51:06 PM

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Giannifp

I have come across a P5 Panel from Ali Express, Indoor with standard HUB-75 pinout which does not seem to work with the Octoplus Cape and the BBB Black. I'm running FPP 5.5 and tried any panel configuration to see if at least the panel latches some data, but nothing. I have 14 of these panels and none of them work. They seem to random flash or light up a line of LEDS, but randomly. 

I have tried to connect a good known panel as P1 on a 1X2 configuration and the good known panel works, the bad panel doesn't. So I inverted the panels putting the bad panel as P1 and  the good panel as P2 in the string and the good panel still works. It seems the issue is timing or something related. 

I also noticed the silkscreen on the PCB on the panel calls them as 3264 in the part number, where I have seen 6432 in the past. 

Has anyone seen this before?

Thanks in advance.

tbone321

IF the part number is reflective of the panel configuration, that would indicate that the panels you purchased are configured as 32 X 64 instead of 64 X 32, IOW, they are designed to stand on their side and sadly, that configuration does not appear to be currently supported in FPP.

dkulp

Do you have a link to the panels?    There are usually 2 causes:

1) Scan rate - sometimes even if you ordered 1/16 scan, the vendor may have sent something other than that.  However, if this is the case, normally you would see SOMETHING on the panel that is vaguely recognizable as the original data, just in the wrong places or entire rows not working or similar.

2) Panels that require a config packet - these appeared a couple years ago, but pretty much broke everything so didn't become popular.  Haven't seen any recently, but it definitely sounds like that is what you have.   Basically, instead of the normal HUB75 chips, they use a different programmable chip that requires a configuration sent to them first to allow them to understand the HUB75 data.  Since they never gained in popularity, and every attempt I made to try and order one failed, I never really pursued adding support.   Usually, a vendor on Ali would start selling P5's with these chips, customers would by some, then complain they could get them working right, and the vendor would stop selling them and flip to normal HUB75's.  By the time I found out about the non-working stuff, the vendor only would provide the working versions.

If I could get my hands on a couple panels for a few days, I could likely get them working. I have seen some sample code for initializing them if they are using either a FM6126 or FM6127 chip.  I don't know if you can look at all the chips on there for any marking that would match one of those.
Daniel Kulp - https://kulplights.com

Giannifp

Hello, 
Here is the link to the panels in AliExpress... in goo Ali fashion there is very little information on the actual listing.

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32636193207.html?spm=a2g0o.productlist.0.0.95275c44YTeGfJ&algo_pvid=a204b583-b48c-4d07-b19a-7ba0210e8098&algo_exp_id=a204b583-b48c-4d07-b19a-7ba0210e8098-0&pdp_ext_f=%7B%22sku_id%22%3A%2212000017501825206%22%7D&pdp_pi=-1%3B11.6%3B-1%3B-1%40salePrice%3BUSD%3Bsearch-mainSearch

I took a picture of the panel in the back and named all the chips. It seems is the troublesome LYD6168 which after some reading seems to be a rebrand of the MBI5153. Link with some information: https://lucasteske.dev/lyd6168

You cannot view this attachment.

I'm still waiting for the information from the seller... Will update once I have something.  

If needed, I'm able to send one or maybe two of these since in Ali express seem to be pretty cheap compared to other ones out there and could be a nice addition to have support. 

I have a colorlight card coming from WiredWatts that might be able to drive them, but reading it seems that also needs some TLC to make it work... 

Thanks again!!

dkulp

Wow....   Looking at the chip specs, that would require an almost complete re-write of the BBB PRU code AND the code on the ARM side to drive those.   It's not a simple "send a config packet" and then have everything work normally.      That's not something I'd have the time to tackle at this point.   :(
Daniel Kulp - https://kulplights.com

Giannifp

Oh Well... I managed to get in touch with the seller, which promised me to send me a RCVBP file to configure the card. 

Thanks for all the help!!

CaptainMurdoch

Quote from: Giannifp on March 28, 2022, 11:03:29 AMOh Well... I managed to get in touch with the seller, which promised me to send me a RCVBP file to configure the card.

I wonder if we could reverse engineer this file format sometime.  If so, we could possibly enhance FPP to allow the user to upload their rcvbp file and FPP could auto-configure if possible.

https://www.ledcontrollercard.com/english/blog/colorlight-rcvbp-rcvp-file-ledvision-configuration-files-free-download/ has a nice archive which might be helpful to us in the future.
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Chris

Giannifp

Quote from: CaptainMurdoch on March 28, 2022, 05:48:16 PM
Quote from: Giannifp on March 28, 2022, 11:03:29 AMOh Well... I managed to get in touch with the seller, which promised me to send me a RCVBP file to configure the card.

I wonder if we could reverse engineer this file format sometime.  If so, we could possibly enhance FPP to allow the user to upload their rcvbp file and FPP could auto-configure if possible.

https://www.ledcontrollercard.com/english/blog/colorlight-rcvbp-rcvp-file-ledvision-configuration-files-free-download/ has a nice archive which might be helpful to us in the future.
That would be a great idea, some of these displays are getting away from the standard drivers and going into the more complicated PWM versions. 

A little update on this project:
So I contacted the seller and asked for the Colorlight and the LINSN configuration files... and got both... interesting, that loading the configuration file on the colorlight card it shows as a MBI5153 driver, but still doesn't work... So, I downloaded the LEDUPGRADE and dump the current FW of the colorlight card and then flashed the PWM firmware and it worked. 

So I was happy I had hopes it will work with FPP, and then it didn't. Is interesting how the FW have some intrinsic differences under the same card... you know how in LEDVISION when you setup the panel, you get the LED1 background? well if you change the FW to the PWM version, then that doesn't work... and you get a weird behavior where the background only flashes for less than 1 sec when you apply settings to the card... 

Then I tried to run FPP to the Colorlight card and it didn't work when using the PWM firmware... I could see network traffic on the Pi and the colorlight card, but nothing displayed. Did get a Sending card and it works. 

So far these 14 units are being a pain in the backside... I still need to test with a LINSN card and FPP. So far the LINSN card is a pain to configure to run this display correctly... 

Thanks and sorry for the long update. 

CaptainMurdoch

Quote from: Giannifp on April 12, 2022, 07:22:21 AMSo I was happy I had hopes it will work with FPP, and then it didn't. Is interesting how the FW have some intrinsic differences under the same card... you know how in LEDVISION when you setup the panel, you get the LED1 background? well if you change the FW to the PWM version, then that doesn't work... and you get a weird behavior where the background only flashes for less than 1 sec when you apply settings to the card...

Then I tried to run FPP to the Colorlight card and it didn't work when using the PWM firmware... I could see network traffic on the Pi and the colorlight card, but nothing displayed. Did get a Sending card and it works.

If LEDVISION won't display on the panels using the net card to drive them, then we may not be able to get FPP working with it.  I was able to reverse engineer the current network protocol FPP supports by capturing the LEDVISION network output while it was driving the panels directly.  Maybe ask the vendor if it is possible to use the receiver card directly with the windows software and no sender card.  If you can get that working then there is a better chance we could get it working with FPP directly without the sender, if we could get some good packet captures of the data.
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Chris

Giannifp

Quote from: CaptainMurdoch on April 12, 2022, 08:46:05 AM
Quote from: Giannifp on April 12, 2022, 07:22:21 AMSo I was happy I had hopes it will work with FPP, and then it didn't. Is interesting how the FW have some intrinsic differences under the same card... you know how in LEDVISION when you setup the panel, you get the LED1 background? well if you change the FW to the PWM version, then that doesn't work... and you get a weird behavior where the background only flashes for less than 1 sec when you apply settings to the card...

Then I tried to run FPP to the Colorlight card and it didn't work when using the PWM firmware... I could see network traffic on the Pi and the colorlight card, but nothing displayed. Did get a Sending card and it works.

If LEDVISION won't display on the panels using the net card to drive them, then we may not be able to get FPP working with it.  I was able to reverse engineer the current network protocol FPP supports by capturing the LEDVISION network output while it was driving the panels directly.  Maybe ask the vendor if it is possible to use the receiver card directly with the windows software and no sender card.  If you can get that working then there is a better chance we could get it working with FPP directly without the sender, if we could get some good packet captures of the data.
Is interesting... LEDVISION will display it using the PWM firmware but just for a flash when saving to receiver cards... If I put in the sending card in, and connect the DVI input to the sending card with default configuration it works...

This leads me to think there is some packet difference from the LEDVISION and Sending card that the 2 different firmware interpret differently. It would be interesting to see the packet differences from LEDVISION and a Sending card... I can collect this data, if you let me know what software to use.

LINSN update...
Today after posting the first message, I tried the LINSN receiver card, RV908M32 and I manage to make it work with the standard LINSN software and the net card. No funky firmware to flash. I tried with FPP and it was a no go. I noticed when I select LINSN receiver card, I have the source MAC pop-up... is this the MAC of the PI interface? I'm using a 2GB RPi 4 . I'm using the onboard port which is claimed to be Gb, but some of these have Gb, but is based on an USB chipset and the true throughput is not Gb at all. I did get correct link and APIPA address assignment.

Thanks for all the help and good discussions... :)

CaptainMurdoch

For the ColorLight, there may be a difference between what the sender sends vs what LEDVISION sends.  I don't have any sender cards to test with, I originally went out on a limb and bought the Linsn and ColorLight receivers hoping that I could reverse engineer the protocol and it worked out for both.  If you wanted to use Wireshark and an ethernet switch, you could probably get a capture of what the sender is sending, and I could take a look at the capture sometime to see if I can spot any differences.  You would need to have the sender, receiver, and a PC connected to a network switch and start Wireshark and start capturing from the PC's network interface.  I would only probably need a 30-second capture at the most, they can get quite large.

For the Linsn, the MAC address is the address of the NIC that is in the Windows system running the configuration software.  The Linsn receivers don't want to receive pixel data from any MAC other than the one that was used to configure the receiver, this is why FPP has to spoof the MAC to use Linsn cards.  There may be a way around this, perhaps their sender cards use a specific generic MAC address, the only thing I have tested with is the Windows software sending to the receivers.

You don't need full gigabit throughput for it to work with a Pi, you only need a gigabit connection to the receiver.  I originally used a Gigabit USB NIC plugged into a USB2 port on a Windows computer to configure, then moved that NIC to a Pi and it worked fine.  Technically, you can use a 100Mbit NIC if you have a gig-E switch in the middle, but due to the throughput limitations on the 100Mbit NIC, you will run into issues if you try to drive any significant amount of panels.  The ColorLight may be worse for this since the ColorLight uses one packet per row of pixels on the output while the Linsn packs the data into fewer packets to minimize the number of packets that need to be sent per refresh.
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Chris

Kensington Graves

Gianni, did you try the intelligent settings on LEDVision when you tried to set up the panels?  That usually results in workable settings.

Giannifp

Hello all... A bit of an update...

LEDVISION/ColorLight Card: Waiting for a Micro HDMI to DVI Cable to connect a RPi to the Sender Card as a video source for the Packet Capture. As I side note, I don't understand how these network port for the receiver and sender cards really work... If I plug them in the switch, the computer doesn't see the receiver card, they need to be connected directly or Isolated, it seems the DHCP assigns an IP to the computer but not the Receiver, so they never see each other. I was able to setup a VLAN on the switch and isolate them, It will help when capturing packets as well. Also, I almost fried the sending card as I forgot to turn off the PoE on the port for the switch and some component on the card was getting really hot I could smell it. 

LINSN Receiver Card: After the explanation from the MAC Source Address in FPP (Thanks CaptainMurdoch!!) I setup FPP and still didn't work, I got a really weird behavior. When I used LEDSET to configure the card, it displayed a portion of my windows desktop on the LED panels, which is great. Once I shut off LEDSET, the image goes away and panel turns off. I plug everything back together (No power cycle on the receiver since is just the network cable) and when I try to run a test pattern in FPP, I get the same image from my desktop (seems to be catched in the Buffer of the card) but I get random pixels in the screen with random colors, but static. In FPP, The display turns on and off as I hit the Test mode, but no response to patterns nor color. 

Once I capture the packets I'll provide another update with the data.

In response to:
QuotePosted by Kensington Graves
 - April 12, 2022, 08:53:33 PM

Gianni, did you try the intelligent settings on LEDVision when you tried to set up the panels?  That usually results in workable settings.
Yes, I tried with no luck... I got the configuration files from the seller, both for ColorLight and LINSN which makes it really easy... 

A little word on the config files, LEDVISION comes installed with a very nice library. Online it seems all sellers post the files, but they are password protected since they only give them to their customers. 

Already a long post... sorry about that... 

CaptainMurdoch

Quote from: Giannifp on April 14, 2022, 08:15:08 AMLINSN Receiver Card: After the explanation from the MAC Source Address in FPP (Thanks CaptainMurdoch!!) I setup FPP and still didn't work, I got a really weird behavior.

It has been years since I have even powered on a Linsn card, so something might have broken along the way.  Most people, including myself, are using ColorLights since they don't have the MAC address issue, so my Linsn cards are in boxes.  I think I can test the MAC address code without having to actually have a Linsn setup, I'll add that to my ToDo list.
-
Chris

Kensington Graves

Quote from: Giannifp on April 14, 2022, 08:15:08 AMAs I side note, I don't understand how these network port for the receiver and sender cards really work... If I plug them in the switch, the computer doesn't see the receiver card, they need to be connected directly or Isolated, it seems the DHCP assigns an IP to the computer but not the Receiver, so they never see each other. I was able to setup a VLAN on the switch and isolate them, It will help when capturing packets as well. Also, I almost fried the sending card as I forgot to turn off the PoE on the port for the switch and some component on the card was getting really hot I could smell it.




For Colorlight, until you get into the C-series players, the sender units are not "network devices" per se.  Essentially, the sender box receives information from the DVI or HDMI input, translates it into data packets that the FPGA on the receivers understands, and transmits those packets from its "ethernet" ports to the receivers.  Senders are configured and controlled through a USB connection from a computer.  Generally speaking, senders are not intended to be connected to other network infrastructure such as switches.   

Under the hood, a sender may actually use the TCP/IP protocol to transmit information.  I suspect that the sender and receivers function akin to a peer-to-peer network with each receiver stripping information applicable to its controlled section from the data stream and passing other packets down the line.  But this is conjecture.  As far as I know, Colorlight has not disclosed how thing actually work.

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