Build festive lighting for the holidays with balena, Christmas lights

Project help
1

OK so last year i used my raspberry pi for my Christmas lights and saw this project to use RBG lights with a balenacloud account. it looked really cool so im trying it this year. the only problem is its not working like the instructions say and im stuck. i got everything loaded into the cloud and loaded to my RP but the services wont run like they are supposed to. i cant find a way to contact the guy that made the project to ask for tips or help and i really want this to work. if i can get it to work then i will use it from now on. please someone help me im really new to balena, and coding and dont understand what im doing wrong.

2

Hi @edgeedj1982 welcome to Balena. Do you have any error logs showing up on your dashboard. Are the services restarting over and over, or did they just not start at all? What version of balenaOS and device type are you using for this project?

4

Ok so I’m not getting any errors or anything. The services just don’t start. Two of them say downloaded and one says installed, but non of them will start. Even if I try to start them manually still nothing happens.

5

the balenaOS is balenaOS 2.43.0+rev1 and im using a raspberry pi 3. Sorry i tried to post screenshots but couldn’t figure out how.

6

Hi, could you grant us support access to the device and send us the device uuid, so that we can take a look? Thank you.

10

Hi,
We where able to reproduce the issue locally, so no need to grant support access or tell us your device uuid. We will investigate and update this thread when we know what is going on.

11

Awesome thanks

13

Hi,
We created an issue in the repo (https://github.com/balena-io-playground/fadecandy-led-controller/issues/2), so you can track the process there as well.

15

Thanks, hopefully they will fix it soon. I don’t have anyone to teach me this stuff and I have to teach myself. Thanks again

16

just tested something, it all seems to work fine with [balenaOS 2.27.0+rev1]. All the services work and stay running. if you use a updated balenaOS then the services keep restarting

17

new problem, i got it up and running but when i use the VNC and connect to my device all i get is a black screen. any ideas?

19

Hi, passed your message to project author. Will get back to you as soon as we have news.

21

Awesome thanks

24

@edgeedj1982 if you’re just getting a black screen it sounds like the glediator application isn’t starting, although the VNC part of that container is working fine. Is there anything in the logs relating to this? I know you have to download and copy that binary into the project manually so perhaps some kind of execution permissions. Feel free to enable support access for the device and share the link here too.

25

Ok as soon as I get home today I will look at it

27

ok i enabled support access to my device for 1 day, but i dont know how to post a link to it for you to look up.
The UUID is c09a2def743b2b83e704ba4bad5be09b
Current Release 37fe4113977f596a96d2b92cd9b6b127
Target Release 37fe4113977f596a96d2b92cd9b6b127
HOST OS VERSION [balenaOS 2.27.0+rev1]
SUPERVISOR VERSION [8.3.5]

37

Hey @edgeedj1982,

I checked your glediator container on the device, and it does not have the jar required to run the app.
If you ssh to glediator container,

root@2a86b486e500:/usr/src/app# ls -la
total 724
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root   4096 Oct 26 02:17 .
drwxr-xr-x 6 root root   4096 Oct 26 02:17 ..
-rw-rw-rw- 1 root root    379 Oct 25 01:14 Dockerfile
-rw-rw-rw- 1 root root 673226 Oct 25 01:14 autoSave.gled
-rw-rw-rw- 1 root root   1548 Oct 25 01:14 gled_patch_generator.py
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  31843 Oct 25 01:14 patch.gled
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root   4096 Oct 25 01:14 supervisor
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root   4657 Oct 31 03:03 supervisord.log
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root      2 Oct 31 03:03 supervisord.pid

As you can see, Glediator_V2.jar file is not here.

You need to download it separately and put it into the glediator folder before executing balena push, as it’s described in the project README.

Hope this helps. Let us know how it’s going.

38

I realized the link we use in the readme does not work anymore. Will check with the team if we can properly update it.

39

Hey thanks, I totally downloaded it ( took a few days to find due to the site being down) and thought I copied it to the right place. I will look at it when I get home tonight thanks.

41

@edgeedj1982 do you mind sharing where you found the Glediator download - it would definitely help other users!