Hyperion audio effects

Examples: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zLPZ6Lzbmgc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AOv9BwbtA6w

Dev kit for creating audio visualizations for hyperion.

• Update 27/3/2016: Config file (config.json), matrix configurator, protobuf support
• Update 8/4/2015: Some improvements and cleanup, new video
• Update 31/3/2015: New parameters and hyperion config file parsing

Installation and running on Debian **

1. Install Gstreamer 1.0 and PyGI: sudo apt-get install libgstreamer1.0-0 gir1.2-gstreamer-1.0 gir1.2-glib-2.0 gir1.2-gst-plugins-base-1.0 gstreamer1.0-plugins-good gstreamer1.0-tools gstreamer1.0-alsa gstreamer1.0-pulseaudio python-gi
2. Install Tkinter for GUI: sudo apt-get install python-tk
3. Install pip: sudo apt-get install python-pip
4. Install dependencies: sudo pip install -r requirements.txt (or use virtualenv if you like)
5. Put options snd-aloop index=-2 in end of /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf to prevent loopback device for getting first card index
6. Enable loopback device modprobe snd-aloop (and type line snd-aloop to /etc/modules to make it permanent)
7. Put the included .asoundrc to your home folder (backup old if exists) and change the soundcard index if needed ("hw:<card>,<device>", check aplay -l) *
8. Reboot or reload alsa sudo alsa force-reload
9. Run python main.py with options:
   • --config=<path> path to hyperion config file (defaults to ./hyperion.config.json)
   • --gui for gui
   • --json for network connection (--host=<ip> --port=<port>)
   • --help to see all options
10. Play some audio
11. Levels should be drawn to gui, also sent to hyperion if json enabled
12. Exit by closing the GUI or Ctrl+c

Installation and running on OSMC (RPi 2)

1. Enable audio so we can use alsa and loopback: Add dtparam=audio=on to /boot/config.txt.
   • Why? https://discourse.osmc.tv/t/alsa-doesnt-work-after-last-update/10600
2. Install Gstreamer 1.0, alsa, PyGI and pip: sudo apt-get install libgstreamer1.0-0 gir1.2-gstreamer-1.0 gir1.2-glib-2.0 gir1.2-gst-plugins-base-1.0 gstreamer1.0-plugins-good gstreamer1.0-tools gstreamer1.0-alsa alsa-base alsa-utils python-gi python-pip
3. Install git (sudo apt-get install git) and clone this repo (git clone https://github.com/RanzQ/hyperion-audio-effects.git), or just download as zip and extract
4. Install python dependencies cd hyperion-audio-effects/ && sudo pip install -r requirements.txt
5. Put options snd-aloop index=-2 in end of /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf (the file doesn't exist, just create it) to prevent loopback device for getting first card index
6. Enable loopback device sudo modprobe snd-aloop (and type line snd-aloop to /etc/modules to make it permanent)
7. Put the included .asoundrc to your home folder and change the soundcard index on line 21 if needed (check aplay -l, for me "hw:0,0" works, this depends on if you use usb-audio etc.)
8. Reboot
9. Now you must choose how to play some music. Kodi/OSMC doesn't support the loopback setup and Spotify can't be installed (maybe possible soon, check spotifyd), so I went with mpd and mpc sudo apt-get install mpd mpc.
   • To get audio working with mpd, I needed to copy the alsa config to be global sudo cp .asoundrc /etc/asound.conf
   • After adding some music to /var/lib/mpd/music run mpc ls | mpc add to add all files to playlist, then mpc play (check mpc help for all commands).
   • You can select between HDMI and Headphone jack with amixer cset numid=3 2 (HDMI) / amixer cset numid=3 1 (Headphone)
   • I didn't find a way to adjust the audio level that the effects receives, I've done that using Spotify
10. Finally you can try the audio-effects :)
    • cd hyperion-audio-effects/
    • python main.py --effect vumeter
    • The heavier effect works with setting "band-width-exp": 4-5 but uses quite a lot of CPU. python main.py --effect color_spectrum
    • You can also modify config.json and just run python main.py
    • Exit by typing x and enter

Effects development

1. Copy one of the script & config pairs in effects/ (e.g. myeffect.py and myeffect.json) and then it can be passed as --effect=myeffect (json values can be read from hyperion.args like in normal hyperion effects)
2. Adjust gstreamer parameters
   • See spectrum_dump.py for explanation of parameters for GstSpectrumDump
   • Using vumeter and bands you can adjust the type of received magnitudes (self.magnitudes)
     • With vumeter=True you get 4 magnitudes which correspond to peaks and decays for the L/R channels
     • With vumeter=False you get spectrum magnitudes for the amount of bands (defaults to 128)
3. Update the leds by modifying the bytearray self.ledsData according to values in self.magnitudes (I've done it in method update_leds())

Effect: VU Meter

• Volume bars for left and right of your hyperion setup, or by setting indices manually
• Min and max volume and colors can be adjusted from config

Effect: Color spectrum

• Leds strip is divided into octaves 1-8
• Low frequencies start from red, ending in pink at high frequencies
• Adjust your sound volume if the leds are too dim or bright (no volume normalization yet)
• Config has a field band-width-exp, if you have performance issues, try with higher values (it sets FFT bin size to 2^x Hz, e.g. 2^3 = 8 Hz, affects on bass accuracy)
• Set mirror to false if you want to use whole strip instead of splitting and mirroring
• Color range can be adjusted with hue-from and hue-to parameters (0.0-1.0)
• New config parameter matrix
  • Modified version for matrix setups, need to use protobuf connection instead of json
  • Example config.json for matrix:

    {
    "json": false,
    "proto": true,
    "effect": "color_spectrum",
    "config": "/etc/hyperion/hyperion.config.json",
    "host": "localhost",
    "port": 19445,
    "audiosrc": "autoaudiosrc",
    "interval": 50,
    "matrix": true
    }

Contribute

Pull requests are welcome but try to follow the style in existing code and check yours using pylint (.pylintrc included).

* Check this if you have pulseaudio: #4

** Windows istructions were removed since performance was poor due to the fact that Gstreamer is meant for Linux