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bk1285 / rpi_wordclock

Software to create a Raspberry Pi based wordclock
GNU General Public License v3.0
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Leds reset after each minute #183

Closed wiefeli closed 2 years ago

wiefeli commented 3 years ago

I made a wordclock and everything seems fine, but the Leds are blinking each minute. It seems like they are resetted each minute. Is there a way to enable the feature that only the "new" Leds light up and not a full reset every minute?

FrankX0 commented 3 years ago

What you are facing is not normal behavior. The LEDs are not supposed to blink every minute: the ones which should be off turn off, the ones which should be on turn on. Maybe it’s related to your power-supply? Is the current rating sufficient? Do you see the blinking only during the clock feature, or also with the other features (matrix, rainbow, etc.)?

wiefeli commented 3 years ago

It's only with the time default plugin. The matrix, rainbow,.... are working perfect. It seems like checking the time every minute and therefore resetting each time.

The power supply should be sufficent. It is an 8A and I'm using a Pi 3 B+

phenze commented 3 years ago

Which Branch are you working on ? Are you running on python2 or python3 ? Which raspbian version are you using ?

I think your power supply is not enough at max power consumption:

On Top the PI 3 has a construction error which drops 0.6 V anywhere on the board. I don't know the exact problem. But as far as i know the PI 3 is only working properly with the official power supply which has a power output of 5.2 V! So try getting this official power supply and powering the PI separately.

wiefeli commented 3 years ago

But the LEDs need the max power only when all leds are up.

However I think this is not the issue, since I had a similar setup with this Pi and it was working properly (but with older branch) but had to build everything from scratch again and now this issue appeared.

I'm using Raspbian Stretch

bk1285 commented 3 years ago

Thanks for reporting

Possibly caused here: https://github.com/bk1285/rpi_wordclock/blob/8e2e57fadb5b70c8e3de3a8df0c83fe144e30fbe/wordclock_plugins/time_default/plugin.py#L41

Requires a bug fix to allow further options than only fadeOutIn or typewriter...

Regards, Bernd

luchs7 commented 3 years ago

Thanks for the great work that has been done around the wordclock. I was also not happy with the fadeOutIn option and was happy to see the comment above.

The code to display the LEDs (wordclock_display) offers 3 options: typewriter, fadeoutin and no animation. The config file allows to set a varable typewriter to true/false (2 Options). The plugin time_default allows only typewriter (true) and sets it to "fadeOutIn" otherwise.

As a workaround I changed the else value in the line mentioned above (anything other than typewriter or fadeOutIn) to trigger the 3rd option. E.g. self.animation = "typewriter" if self.typewriter else "None"

Not a fix but the result is ok.

bk1285 commented 2 years ago

Hi @wiefeli, @luchs7,

a fix is on it way. Will be on master, as soon as #195 is merged.

Best, Bernd