Newbie Blinkt question

Support
1

This is going to sound absurd, I’m sure, but… I am putting together a little RetroPie box as a gift and I want to have some lights on it. I immediately thought of Blinkt, but I’m such a noob that I’m not sure if Blinkt can/will run at the same time as EmulationStation. In other words, can I set up my Blinkt lights in Raspbian Lite and still have it run when the Pi boots into RetroPie?

2

I would think that’s doable. I use crontab to start python files on boot on several of my Pi’s.
The Blink will also work with Plasma, which is for Picade setups.
GitHub - pimoroni/plasma: Plasma LED driver, FX Sequencer and plugins
I’ve done it, you just have to edit a couple of files. I can post that info if you want it.

3

I can post that info if you want it.

Oh, that would be terrific! Thank you!

4

To install plasma, and start the daemon. it’s as follows. Once you do that it runs all on its own on bootup.

git clone https://github.com/pimoroni/plasma
cd plasma
sudo ./install.sh

cd daemon
sudo ./install.sh

I then did the following to get it to light up the blinkt.
sudo nano /etc/systemd/system/plasma.service
and changed the -o GPIO:14:15 to -o GPIO:23:24 for blinkt.
It’s crtl x then y to save the changes.

And then this to get the number of LED’s to match whats on the blinkt.
sudo nano /usr/bin/plasma
and changed LIGHTS = 10 to LIGHTS = 2 for blinkt

The actual Plasma Buttons have 4 LED’s each. Lights=2 equates to 8 LED’s. It’s really Buttons =.

You can also look for a line with load_pattern(“default”) at the end
I changed it to load_pattern(“trippy”) and it switched.

To turn it off, and disable it.
sudo systemctl stop plasma
sudo systemctl disable plasma

5

This is great! Thanks so much!