Me too, which is why I tagged along for the ride. ;)
All I got was a headache reading along ,lol
Well, if you decide to buy some plasma kit, at least you’ll be able to get it working now! ;)
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Just want to add its
sudo systemctl stop plasma
sudo systemctl disable plasma
To actually fully turn it off and stop it. If you only do the stop, it will run again on a reboot.
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Thanks to the folks who got in touch regarding the swapped plasma pins - turns out it was actually a GPIO mapping error in the software that was causing the wiring setup in Sandy’s tutorial not to work!
We’ve fixed it with a commit this morning, so if you grab the most recent version of the drivers from Github the instructions should work as expected (but if you’ve already sorted it by swapping the DATA and CLK wires it’s fine to leave it as is).
H
@hel What’s the deal with the Plasma Connector on the Picade X Hat, the latest revision that is? What’s it for?
I ask because so far there are three different Picade Hats. The original Pi 3 one, a USB C Pi 4 one without the Plasma header, and the one on the product page with the plasma header.
@alphanumeric The plasma connector is an alternate way of connecting lights to the Picade X HAT via one of the plasma cables instead of via the hack header, it connects to the GPIO in exactly the same way but with the advantage of a chunkier connector that you can lock in place.
The GPIO mapping for the plasma connector should also be fixed with that commit :)
H
Ok thanks for that info.
But on the plasma github page it states?
Note: If you’re using Picade Player X you should edit daemon/etc/systemd/system/plasma.service and change the output device option from -o GPIO:14:15 to -o SERIAL:/dev/ttyACM0 /////////////// .
What is Picade Player X?
Never mind, I sorted it out. I had wrongly assumed it was referring to the Picade X Hat but its actually this. So the plasma GitHub page info is correct, I just misunderstood it. Sorry about that. =(
You’re not the only one alphanumeric, now that you found it’s refering to a games controller, that caught me out too. I totally thought that was refering to the Picade X Hat, word wise it looks so similar.
Perhaps it could have been worded it better tho to reflect that they’re talking about a completely seperate product. Given the subject matter, the natural assumption would be to think they mean the x hat.
If it had said Player X “pHat” I would have clued in right away it wasn’t referring to the Picade X Hat.
Just a FYI info update.
I reflashed my SD card with the latest Raspbian today. My Pi 4B with a Fan Shim and Blinkt attached.
I did the curl https://get.pimoroni.com/plasma | bash this time around and the LED on my Fan Shim lit up right away.
I then did the sudo nano /etc/systemd/system/plasma.service and chnaged the GPIO:15:14 to 23:24 and rebooted. Now my Blinkt is lit up. I do believe the -o GPIO:15:14 was originally 14:15 before that fix posted above?
I didn’t have to manually install or setup the service. The curl command did that for me. =)
Hi - sorry to drag up an old thread but I am trying to get the plasma lights working on my Picade and not having much luck with similar descriptions to what has been described.
When I turn on the Picade all the light buttons flash on and off but then only three on top and one on front stay lit up. I followed the install and nothing changed. I double and triple checked the wires and all looks good (and hopefully them all flashing on with boot confirms they are all working too).
I have tired sudo systemctl stop plasma and sudo systemctl start plasma and nothing changes.
[Edit]: Also tried plasmactl 0 0 0 which does not turn off the four that are on.
I have run ps aux to see that there is a running process:
root 347 25.2 0.3 13496 6704 ? S 18:30 0:57 python /usr/bin/plasma -d -o GPIO:15:14
I have tried changing the pins (btn 7 and 8) as above too and nothing changes.
I have a Pi4 and my Picade Hat has the extra “plasma” plug but sadly the button kit does not provide the connector.
I am not a linux expert (my command lines are usually following Google) and I don’t know what else to try - if there is a fault physically or with the software - or how to check, reinstall the plasma software or anything.
If anybody has any ideas please it would be a great help. Have I missed something above?
Many thanks.
Trying to figure out what is wrong - I have removed the LEDs from the buttons and double checked wiring… I am now getting once booted the first four doing a rainbow pattern so the software seems to be working and the wires correct.
1 - 4 Rainbow
5 - dead
6 - 1 fixed LED
7 - 2 fixed LEDs
8 - 10 dead
I am using the official USB C power adapter which just powers the pi, the screen and the hat - no plugged in spinning hard disks or anything that could draw power.
So, next I tried swapping round 8-10 (dead) to 1 - and ended up with 1-7 working, 8 dead, 9 1 led, 10, 2 LEDs.
OK - Swapped 8-10 round - no change. Moved 7 to 10 and all of them come on in a rainbow…
Maybe that one PCB out connector was not working? I have also noticed - even though only on for a very short time all of the PCBs are cold apart from that last one that feels warmish.
Anyway - this makes me feel this is a hardware problem (1 faulty PCB maybe) rather than my inability to run a linux command properly. I will get back to the supplier to see if I can get a replacement.
Many thanks.
Each Button LED cap has a Data in and a Data out. If one fails all those after it also fail. What you get on the others after will depend on what it sends out. You likely could get some weirdness?
I don’t own a Picade and have only ever run Plasma on my Blinkt. That’s why I kept quiet. Now that you have given more info I decided to give an opinion. Sounds like a hardware issue to me.
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