Adjusting P10 Brightness Level

BradsXmasLights

WiFi Interactive
Joined
Dec 23, 2010
Messages
601
Location
Brisbane, Australia
I tested my 25 panel P10 setup with 10 different brightness levels hidden inside the Falcon Player.


Results below, as measured from cheap ebay current meter/shunt. (expect for the final value which had to be measured via multimeter as the ebay special maxed out at 50A) Not entirely sure about this little ebay meter's calibrations, particularly at the lower levels (under reading by maybe <=1A) but at higher levels it seems to match up with against my multimeter. Value below also include BBB own power consumption.


[attachimg=1]


I also tried brightness 12 whilst playing a video and it spiked at 59A of a 60A supply. Did not try that one on full White!!!


IMO I actually think decreasing the value to 5 made my video content look better. This is definitely something that won;t be decided until everything is setup and it's brightness can be compared against the rest of the display.


Having said that I'm finding my video content is going to need careful tuning to get brightness/contrast/saturation and maybe gamma levels set correctly so it looks clearer on the panels.


To change the BBB's brightness level, you need to modify the PRU source code & recompile. (Thanks to Phil for asking the question on the Falcon forums http://falconchristmas.com/forum/index.php/topic,2727.15.html

SSH to your BBB machine.
cd /opt/fpp/src/pru
sudo nano FalconMatrix.p
(then edit the Brightness level line from the default 7 value)
sudo make
sudo make release

Then restart the FPPD service for it to update.

 

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BradsXmasLights

WiFi Interactive
Joined
Dec 23, 2010
Messages
601
Location
Brisbane, Australia
Ben, you need to SSH (terminal) in to the BBB/FPP installation and edit the source code, as per the last paragraph of the original post.


Why would you do this?


Well to a lesser extent, it's effectively hard-coding the brightness limits (and power consumption) in to the system, so your sequence can't go brighter - or of course can be made brighter than default.


Reducing brightness this way i think is better than just trying to ride the lower portion of sequencer's brightness scale. It then also saves having to export sequences again if you need to quickly make a global brightness change.
 

BundyRoy

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Joined
Apr 9, 2014
Messages
1,026
BradsXmasLights said:
IMO I actually think decreasing the value to 5 made my video content look better. This is definitely something that won;t be decided until everything is setup and it's brightness can be compared against the rest of the display.


Just watched the video and for what it's worth I thought level 4 looked the best.
 

Phrog30

New elf
Joined
Jul 10, 2015
Messages
29
Location
US
gerry said:
If u are using xlights, would it not be easier to change the brightness level of the model ie the dimming curve value ?
Absolutely. I don't understand why you wouldn't do that. Sometimes there might be a need to change the brightness on a per effect basis.

James

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