What Raspberry Pi do you recommend? - Virtual Matrix

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Gooliez

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Spreyton, Tasmania
So basically i see all these large garage doors used as a matrix / Video from a projector.
i'm "Oooh i could do that too, I have a projector" but it seems like a bit of a rabbit hole. it doesnt just "connect" off a Baldrick etc. you need additional hardware. EG Rapsberry Pi with a HDMI.

I'll Be using EZRGB as the player, so i'm not sure if this is compatible ( first year doing Light show )

I watched the videos Setting up a virtual matrix and Using a Video File on an FPPv9 Virtual Matrix by Greg, who explains it pretty well, still a bit confused on a couple of things but i'll get there. The Videos are from a year ago, so i'm not sure if there's an even easier way, so let me know if there is.

My Garage door is 8m wide by 2.1m High. I have a 1080p Epson tw3000 Projector which should cover a fair chunk of it.

I went shopping for a Raspberry Pi and there's a LOT of choices. Model Numbers, Ram amounts etc.
I guess i would be using the latest version of FPP 10.2 so it's more future proof?
The unit would be housed in a weatherproof box with the projector

What's the minimum model / Ram amount would i be looking at to run at this scale?

Thanks!
 
Last edited:
Hi there,
I use 3x Rasp Pi 4's for my 4 projectors.
The Question you need to ask, What size of a virtual display are you wanting pixel wise,
I use 216 high x 384 wide (eg 82,044pixels or 348,832channels)

I designed mine before Greg put his video's out, But i've re-watched them to get the extra tips.
using too big a matrix size on a virtual display, takes a longer time to render,
where the settings i got from greg keeps my system working an not locking up.

i hope that helps.. good luck
 
SmartAlecLights said:
Hi there,
I use 3x Rasp Pi 4's for my 4 projectors.
The Question you need to ask, What size of a virtual display are you wanting pixel wise,
I use 216 high x 384 wide (eg 82,044pixels or 348,832channels)

I designed mine before Greg put his video's out, But i've re-watched them to get the extra tips.
using too big a matrix size on a virtual display, takes a longer time to render,
where the settings i got from greg keeps my system working an not locking up.

i hope that helps.. good luck
Click to expand...
216 x 384 is equiv of 4k resolution. so i would be in the range of 192 x 108 to keep with the 1080p resolution. so only 1/4 of the pixels your displaying. if the math is mathing? makes sense or am i calculating this wrong? are you using 4k projectors?
or should I be going larger as this is just guessing at this point as i have no previous experience.

how many GB is your Pi's?
 
The Projectors i use are Sony VPL-FHZ55 LCD Projector, i dont understand all this 1080p, 4K Hype they use.
Ohh when i had the projectors at a basic 800x600 in xlights, the picture was very sharp, but xlights took 3hrs to render it.
I have a distance of 10m+ between projector an public.. i was able to drop down the rez.
Easyest way..
Play..Play Play..
I believe its the bare min in memory the pi's are.

the other issue i had at 800x600 virtual matrix, when using both hdmi ports, fine for xlights, but not for a video overlay.

Ps. you can never have too many rasp pi's
 
Gooliez said:
216 x 384 is equiv of 4k resolution. so i would be in the range of 192 x 108 to keep with the 1080p resolution
Click to expand...
No, it's 1% of the 4k resolution. 10% of the pixels horizontally and 10% vertically

Gooliez said:
are you using 4k projectors?
Click to expand...

That would be a total waste to use a 4k projector.

With a 1080 projector, and running 192x108 virtual matrix, each "logical" pixel is taking up 100 physical pixels (10x10).
Running the 384x216 virtual matrix, each logical pixel is mapped to 25 physical pixels (5x5)

The only time going a higher resolution projector would matter, is if you're exceeding the native resolution - which means 1920x1080 or 2,073,600 pixels, or 6,220,800 channels!!

Essentially any projector (even a 30 year old VGA one) exceeds your virtual matrix resolution and will work - the concerning features you should care about are:
* Brightness
* Throw distance/zoom
* Input connectors (eg HDMI)
* Sound level (older ones can have loud fans)
* Heat / whilst making it water resistant
 
Skymaster said:
Essentially any projector (even a 30 year old VGA one) exceeds your virtual matrix resolution and will work - the concerning features you should care about are:
* Brightness
* Throw distance/zoom
* Input connectors (eg HDMI)
* Sound level (older ones can have loud fans)
* Heat / whilst making it water resistant
Click to expand...
The Epson model i'm using and the area I've got, there's no issues with any of those.
I'm not concerned with the projector side, it's the Raspberry Pi i have my doubts with, Mainly how much ram and what model minimum should I be looking at investing in?
 
Gooliez said:
The Epson model i'm using and the area I've got, there's no issues with any of those.
I'm not concerned with the projector side, it's the Raspberry Pi i have my doubts with, Mainly how much ram and what model minimum should I be looking at investing in?
Click to expand...
Nothing fancy - 3B+ / 4 (any size) will work fine.
 
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