So if I install the firmware update to test out Shipshape, will the device still work with the old rockpool?
Thanks
Paul
Iām fairly confident it will, but Iām not sure if any weirdness might occur. Youāre better either waiting a little while longer, or using the downgrade script provided in pre to downgrade your dock again.
Any semblance of back/cross compatibility is going to be wiped out with the next push up to the ShipShape pre-release. Iāve had to make some significant changes.
Ok, Iāll probably leave it for now. An ETA on the release?
cheers
Paul
Iām running 1.1.
I had a minor brainwave when listening to this weekās Bilge Tank. You mentioned that it was a good idea to up the current limit on the Pi when using Flotilla. It doesnāt look like the Flotilla install script does this automatically so I added max_usb_current=1 to my /boot/config.txt manually and tried the motors/joystick combination again.
A dramatic improvement! The lag and hanging we encountered previously has all but disappeared.
Also, the Rainbow now works with the slider (albeit with a second or so delay between a change in position generating a corresponding change in brightness).
I still noticed that with more than 5-6 rows in the Rockpool, response time to any change in input seemed to increase. I also managed to hang everything by swapping a few components in and out. A simple restart of flotilla server fixed things.
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thanks for the heads upā¦ and yes, I think the script could enable the max_usb_current setting to save you the hassle, weāll sea to that (pun intended).
Good to hear itās sped up, but Iām still confused that thereās as much slowdown as youāre reporting!
How many rules are you running when this happens? On a Pi 2 thereās a perceptible delay, but nothing even approaching a second. Do you run any other services on your Pi, what do you see in the CPU load percentage? Or are you, perhaps, using an alternate browser?
The Pi reports approx 66% CPU most of the time Flotilla is running once you add a few rules.
With just two rules, the lag is almost unnoticeable. Add in a few (5-6) rules and the lag kicks in:
Hereās a movie of the rainbow and slider
Hereās one of the motor/joystick
For both of these movies there were 7 rules in total.
This is very useful. Thanks!
I replicated your setup, albeit on a smaller display, and hit about 30% CPU load with some moderate lag.
I think the problem in your case is that the browser is bogged down redrawing the graphs on every single one of those rules, so it just canāt keep up the data rates. This comes from having a full-screen browser on a high resolution display. The poor Pi just canāt keep up.
I think Iāll have to significantly slow down the redraw rate of the graphs under certain circumstances, so the system is kept responsive.
Unfortunately thereās no easy way to have lots of shiny graphs in a browser on the Pi and keep solid performance. Iām already doing sneaky rendering tricks to try and speed it up.
I suspect shrinking the size of your browser window will speed things up immensely in the short term. Even my desktop PC has a bit of trouble keeping up with it full screen. There may be more performance gains to be had, however, but Iām going to get this release pushed out to everyone before I start tweaking things like that any further!
You could add a button to turn on and off the moving graphs. Call it turbo mode or something. It could be something to turn on once youāve debugged your app and want to just run it. Also it would have the benefit of passively letting the user know that the lag issues are related to the browser and not some deficiency in the Flotilla.
Hello,
Iāve also tried the pre-release, but would like to know if I can revert the dock firmware so that it will work with the stable release.
Why? Two issues Iāve found:
- cookbook doesnāt work with the pre-release, and I need to show some quick recipes to keep the kids interested at the beginning
- on the Pi2 running raspbian, rockpool hangs on āconnectingā when using the default epiphany browser. If I install chromium and set it as default (with āupdate-alternativesā) it connects, so at least there is a workaround, but it isnāt very practical to install and configure as default
Thanks!
yes, you can revert the firmware, thatās in part why āpreā does not overwrite the daemon and has to be launched manuallyā¦
head over to https://github.com/pimoroni/flotilla-offline (or git pull if already cloned locally) and run the firmware āuploadā script.
On the next reboot, all should work again. If not, re-run:
curl https://get.pimoroni.com/rockpool | bash
ā¦ that should get you back on track (including access to cookbooks)
This is a bug. It should absolutely work in Epiphany. Iāve found and fixed this, so you should ( if you cloned from GitHub ) be able to āgit pullā to get the fix. Otherwise re-download as a zip.
Cookbook is on the back-burner at the moment, but it will be updated to work with the pre-release once the pre-release becomes the main release.
It now loads in Epiphany, but mine (on pi2 and pi3 with newest jessie) doesnāt display the modules in rockpool. Need to try python again with shipshape, but I donāt think rockpool is working as intended. I do see lots of options that I can use, but none apply to the hardware.
yes, the latest (shipshape) rockpool broke Epiphanyā¦ @gadgetoid fixed it in the master repo but I donāt think it has made itās way into āpreā yet as there are a couple of other bugs being worked on.
ā¦ you can grab it from https://github.com/pimoroni/flotilla-rockpool/tree/shipshape in the meantime (just overwrite the rockpool folder in your āpreā git clone)
btw, there is now a script to automate installation of the python API and firmware upgrade, just run:
curl https://get.pimoroni.com/flotilla | bash
This is specifically for SHIPSHAPE users at this point, DONāT use if you donāt wish to leave behind the cookbooks and step into the moving waters. The shoreline is in view though, so nowās a good time to jump aboard and try out the latest and greatest ;-)
actually, the latest rockpool IS available in the āpreā repo, so it should work again in Epiphany. Make sure you āgit pullā the latest or rebase your install so that it is fully up-to-date.
sigh you are correct, current rockpool does not work in Epiphany, which seems to break if you look at the code from less than an inch away.
For the time being it might be best to install and use an alternative browser such as Iceweasel or Chromium - weāll update this thread when we catch that bug!
In the end Iām sticking with pre for now. The kids are way too busy with school to be able to play much, but they have already voted for the pre-release over the stable oneā¦ :)
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Tried it today on my mac running El Capitan and worked seamlessly. The automated python install didnāt work on the mac, but once Iād installed the python libraries, all worked like a dream - python and rockpool, which was lovely to use. Going to try rockpool with my 7 year old later on.