Software Setup

Debian

This tutorial assumes Debian or Ubuntu is installed on your Beaglebone (older revisions may use Angstrom Linux)! If you are not using one of these distributions, it is recommended that you re-flash to ease the installation process.

LEDscape

Install LEDscape on the Beaglebone and copy the device tree overlay to /lib/firmware/

git clone https://github.com/osresearch/LEDscape/
cd LEDscape
make
sudo cp ./dts/CAPE-BONE-OCTO-00A0.dtbo /lib/firmware

Setup your matrix layout in default.config (in our case we have 4 panels in a 64x32 matrix). You specify the channel 0-7, and can chain up to 8 boards on each channel. Then the orientation (N,L,R,U) and x,y offset.

matrix16
0,6 N 0,0
0,7 N 32,0
1,6 N 0,16
1,7 N 32,16

You can test things with:

sudo ./bin/run-ledscape default.config
sudo ./bin/identify default.config
sudo ./bin/opc-rx

If things aren't working:

LED-bot

Make sure your system has these packages installed, libfreetype and libjpeg are needed so Pillow will build with support for JPG and TrueType Font rendering:

sudo apt-get install build-essential python-dev libfreetype6-dev libjpeg-dev git

Download LED-bot.

git clone https://github.com/marqsm/LED-bot

You can install the led bot software by:

python setup.py install

If you wish to install a development version, so you can test your changes, use

python setup.py develop

To run the bot, run

led-bot

To edit the default config file, you can use your favorite text editor:

vim ~/.led-bot.conf
nano ~/.led-bot.conf

If you'd like to make an adjustment to which listeners launch at start-up, take a look at main() in bot_scheduler.py

Debian start-up script

This start-up script will run LED-bot and LEDscape when your Beaglebone boots. To install it follow these steps:

Copy the start-up script to /etc/init.d/

sudo cp ~/LED-Bot/startup/ledbot.sh /etc/init.d
sudo chmod +x /etc/init.d/ledbot.sh`
sudo update-rc.d ledbot.sh defaults