Hi. Installed plasma buttons. Installed bash script. Plasma only works with different setup of pins that are specified in manual (BTN7 → BTN8). Plasma LED sequencer times out while booting. The only way to launch plasma is to type ‘plasma’ in terminal. Then it stays and not returns with cursor. Killing process makes buttons stay lit, until turned off (rebooting keeps them lit up). plasmactl keeps asking whether plasma is running. Installed script, reinstalled. Changes service setting from 14:15 to 15:14 to 23:24. Nothing helps. Any ideas?
Reread your post after I posted, are you sure you installed the daemon?
Here is some info I gleamed while playing with Plasma on my Blinkt, no Picade hat installed. Make sure the two pins your using aren’t in use by something else.
You can install the software in one of two ways.
curl https://get.pimoroni.com/plasma | bash
or
git clone https://github.com/pimoroni/plasma
cd plasma
sudo ./install.sh
To install and run the daemon, which is a “separate step”.
cd daemon
sudo ./install.sh
For my Blinkt I did the following
sudo nano /etc/systemd/system/plasma.service
and changed the -o GPIO:14:15 to -o GPIO:23:24 for blinkt.
sudo nano /usr/bin/plasma
and changed LIGHTS = 10 to LIGHTS = 2 for Blinkt
Each button is 4 LED’s so 2 (buttons) = 8 LED’s
You can also look for a line with load_pattern(“default”) at the end
I changed it to load_pattern(“trippy”) and it switched.
Other helpful commands are as follows.
sudo systemctl stop plasma
sudo systemctl disable plasma
plasmactl --list
plasmactl rainbow-cycle
plasmactl --install my-animation.png
plasmactl my-animation
Animations
There’s a nifty way to set animations on your Plasma buttons.
You can create a 24-bit png image that will be cycled through from top to bottom at 30FPS.
The horizontal size of the image controls how the animation is applied to the buttons, as follows:
1 pixel - will be duplicated to every LED
4 pixels - will be duplicated to every button
36 pixels - individual LED values for 6 buttons
40 pixels - individual LED values for 10 buttons
The vertical size of the image determines how long each cycle of the animation will take, e.g. a 30 pixel tall image will cycle every second,
since the frame rate is 30fps, and 300 pixel tall image will cycle every 10 seconds, and so on…
When trying to install deamon after bash script got: "I’m not going to overwrite it!’ massege regarding plasma folder.
After checking status of plasma.service here’s what I got
pi@retropie:~ $ sudo systemctl status plasma.service
● plasma.service - Plasma LED Sequencer Daemon
Loaded: loaded (/etc/systemd/system/plasma.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
Active: failed (Result: exit-code) since Tue 2021-06-29 13:16:28 BST; 2min 53s ago
Process: 551 ExecStart=/usr/bin/plasma -d -o GPIO:14:15 & (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
Main PID: 553 (code=exited, status=1/FAILURE)
Jun 29 13:16:28 retropie systemd[1]: plasma.service: Service RestartSec=100ms expired, scheduling restart.
Jun 29 13:16:28 retropie systemd[1]: plasma.service: Scheduled restart job, restart counter is at 5.
Jun 29 13:16:28 retropie systemd[1]: Stopped Plasma LED Sequencer Daemon.
Jun 29 13:16:28 retropie systemd[1]: plasma.service: Start request repeated too quickly.
Jun 29 13:16:28 retropie systemd[1]: plasma.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'.
Jun 29 13:16:28 retropie systemd[1]: Failed to start Plasma LED Sequencer Daemon.
I’m at a lose as to what’s going on? I’m far from any kind of expert on this though.
Is this a Picade X hat or an older original Picade Hat?
And how are your plasma buttons wired up, plasma header of pin connection?
If pin connection what pins?
It’s Picade X Hat for Raspberry Pi 4B. Plasma is connected through Hack Header pins.
BTN7, BTN8, 5V and GND. Changed order of BTN7 and BTN8 because only in current configuration it lights up upon typing ‘plasma’ in terminal.
The Picade X hat has a dedicated plasma header?
Button 7 is wired to GPIO 15 and
Button 8 is wired to GPIO 14
Picade X HAT at Raspberry Pi GPIO Pinout
At one time
sudo nano /etc/systemd/system/plasma.service
-o GPIO:14:15 needed to be changed to -o GPIO:15:14
pretty sure that has been fixed in the installer now though?
Unfortunately - did not help.
Once I type “plasma” in terminal. Buttons light up with default configuration.
Once rebooted - buttons still are lit.
running plasmactl gives me this:
pi@retropie:~ $ sudo plasmactl --colour 255 0 0
Setting colour to 255, 0, 0
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/usr/bin/plasmactl", line 60, in <module>
with open_fifo(FIFO) as fifo:
File "/usr/bin/plasmactl", line 31, in open_fifo
raise RuntimeError(f"FIFO {filename} does not exit! Is plasma running?")
RuntimeError: FIFO /tmp/plasma does not exit! Is plasma running?
Ok, I’ve narrowed it down to problem with plasma newest version.Even on this forum, everyone is using deprecated plasmactl parameters. plasmactl 255 0 0 returns error. New syntax was introduced in version 2.0. Unfortunately nobody updated docs, or even github page.
In my case, running latest retropie and latest plasma - something is not working on that link. Need to just wait for the update.
Ok, I hope that works out for you as I’m a bit lost as to what’s going on with your setup.
I had it working with my Blinkt, but that was a while ago, maybe a year ago or so?
I am having this exact same problem described by user Morlas. Getting the same error messages when trying to install and run plasmactl. I see that there was no final solution posted back in June of 2021 which was over 6 months ago. Is there any update from technical support on this issue ?
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I’m having the exact same issue. I wonder if any one has resolve this?
plasma.service - Plasma LED Sequencer Daemon
Loaded: loaded (/etc/systemd/system/plasma.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
Active: failed (Result: exit-code) since Fri 2022-04-29 09:40:11 BST; 2min 15s ago
Process: 821 ExecStart=/usr/bin/plasma -d -o GPIO:15:14 (code=exited, status=1/FAILURE)
Apr 29 09:40:11 retropie systemd[1]: plasma.service: Service RestartSec=100ms expired, scheduling restart.
Apr 29 09:40:11 retropie systemd[1]: plasma.service: Scheduled restart job, restart counter is at 5.
Apr 29 09:40:11 retropie systemd[1]: Stopped Plasma LED Sequencer Daemon.
Apr 29 09:40:11 retropie systemd[1]: plasma.service: Start request repeated too quickly.
Apr 29 09:40:11 retropie systemd[1]: plasma.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'.
Apr 29 09:40:11 retropie systemd[1]: Failed to start Plasma LED Sequencer Daemon.
For better diagnostic purposes, try “sudo plasma -o GPIO:14:15” and see what the error is, then post it here.
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/usr/bin/plasma", line 210, in <module>
main()
File "/usr/bin/plasma", line 77, in main
plasma = auto(f"GPIO:14:15:pixel_count={LIGHTS * 4}", CONFIG_FILE)
File "/usr/local/lib/python3.7/dist-packages/plasma/__init__.py", line 25, in auto
return plasma(**options)
File "/usr/local/lib/python3.7/dist-packages/plasma/matrix.py", line 62, in __init__
'device': output_device(pixels, **output_options)
File "/usr/local/lib/python3.7/dist-packages/plasma/apa102.py", line 31, in __init__
import RPi.GPIO as GPIO
ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'RPi'