Lightpack Support

Dev Community Dev/API Corner
1

Good Day,


I backed an awesome HT LED Ambient light project on KS that funded a couple months ago called Lightpack; www.getlightpack.com


At that time it was mentioned that Plex would work with it but now the Devs of the LP are saying that they are having issues:

Lightpack wrote: “Court C. Hoyle Plex got a unique code base, and sadly XBMC patches won’t work here and we cannot imply modified player into the system. We can only hope that Plex developers will add such possibility. If it cheers you up even a bit, we are also trying hard to find some bypass to solve this problem (though to be honest we are not quite optimistic about it at the moment).”


Is there anyone on the Plex Dev team aware of this product and working on any support for it or that can add any advice I may pass along to WoodenShark, the lightpack creators.


Cheers, and thanks for reading and thanks in advance for any help you can offer.

2

Anybody? Bueller?

3

Anybody? Bueller?

I am going to bet it would be better to get the xbmc team to work with lightpack.  Then inherently plex would get it on it's next major build. 

4

Good Day,

I backed an awesome HT LED Ambient light project on KS that funded a couple months ago called Lightpack; www.getlightpack.com

At that time it was mentioned that Plex would work with it but now the Devs of the LP are saying that they are having issues:
Lightpack wrote: "Court C. Hoyle Plex got a unique code base, and sadly XBMC patches won't work here and we cannot imply modified player into the system. We can only hope that Plex developers will add such possibility. If it cheers you up even a bit, we are also trying hard to find some bypass to solve this problem (though to be honest we are not quite optimistic about it at the moment)."

Is there anyone on the Plex Dev team aware of this product and working on any support for it or that can add any advice I may pass along to WoodenShark, the lightpack creators.

Cheers, and thanks for reading and thanks in advance for any help you can offer.

I am going to bet it would be better to get the xbmc team to work with lightpack.  Then inherently plex would get it on it's next major build. 

I would hope so since I backed them for 2 lightpacks because they originally said that they have plex support on the way.

5

Anyone?

6

Anyone?

I have no idea what he is trying to say in his response to you (the lightpack developer). He/she is saying that we have a unique code base? Sure but that doesn't say anything. Plex is different from XBMC but some of the basic code base is the same. He must be more specific about which difference between XBMC and Plex is causing the issues for them. Afaik none of the Plex devs have a lightpack, and I assume they have no idea on what they are trying to do inside the Plex code. My guess is that the developer of lightpack is referring to PMC, and that lightpack is developed to work with XBMC 12.X. And as PMC is based on a earlier version of XBMC, so this will very likely be solved when the lightpack devs can get their hands on PHT as it is based on XBMC 12.X.

So if you would like a better answer you really need to be more specific :)

7

I have no idea what he is trying to say in his response to you (the lightpack developer). He/she is saying that we have a unique code base? Sure but that doesn't say anything. Plex is different from XBMC but some of the basic code base is the same. He must be more specific about which difference between XBMC and Plex is causing the issues for them. Afaik none of the Plex devs have a lightpack, and I assume they have no idea on what they are trying to do inside the Plex code. My guess is that the developer of lightpack is referring to PMC, and that lightpack is developed to work with XBMC 12.X. And as PMC is based on a earlier version of XBMC, so this will very likely be solved when the lightpack devs can get their hands on PHT as it is based on XBMC 12.X.

So if you would like a better answer you really need to be more specific :)

Aight thanks for the reply. I'll see if I can get in contact with the people developing the lightpack software and get more information.

8

Atrus, I also just got the same response from the lightpack devs. Can I post your reply here: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/woodenshark/lightpack-ambient-backlight-for-your-displays/comments ?

EDIT: just thinking here (not knowing how PMS works in detail): It also might be better to add support on the server (it probably knows what is a given client watching based on the new feature in PMS?), that way the light effects will work with any plex enabled client, since a lot of clients (like roku) will probably never work with something like the lightpack otherwise...

9

I do not know how their product work exactly, but I assume it analyses the videos and show colours based on that. As PMS only serves the video I would assume that it wouldn't yield anything to add lightpack to the server. PHT/PMC is the client which has a video decoder built in (FFMPEG in this case). Both XBMC and Plex uses FFMPEG. And Plex uses XBMCs video player which plays the decoded material (well, I am not 100% sure how that works, but you get the idea, it should be close enough).

I assume that Lightpack listens to the decoder or the player and then apply some intelligence to that. If they have built a XBMC solution based on 12.X, then I assume that it will work in PHT as well. And I will stand by that until they tell us what issue they bumped into. But I guess that the issue they have bumped into is that they have tried adding it to the old Plex client (0.9.5.4) and not PHT. And understandably so, they might not be Plexpass users.

10

I do not know how their product work exactly, but I assume it analyses the videos and show colours based on that. As PMS only serves the video I would assume that it wouldn't yield anything to add lightpack to the server. PHT/PMC is the client which has a video decoder built in (FFMPEG in this case). Both XBMC and Plex uses FFMPEG. And Plex uses XBMCs video player which plays the decoded material (well, I am not 100% sure how that works, but you get the idea, it should be close enough).
I assume that Lightpack listens to the decoder or the player and then apply some intelligence to that. If they have built a XBMC solution based on 12.X, then I assume that it will work in PHT as well. And I will stand by that until they tell us what issue they bumped into. But I guess that the issue they have bumped into is that they have tried adding it to the old Plex client (0.9.5.4) and not PHT. And understandably so, they might not be Plexpass users.


Yea I sent an email to their team asking about their road bump but unfortunately I haven't heard anything back yet.
11

I’ve also tried to encourage the Lightpack developers to become active on this thread. I’m going to message and post this in their comment section.


I really hope they can get it working as they stated it was supported while they were in funding stage.


Thanks Atrus for your help so far!

12

Oh crap. Just realized I created this thread in the PlexPass section… Any way of moving it?

13

Oh crap. Just realized I created this thread in the PlexPass section.... Any way of moving it?

Done.

14

I too purchased two light packs, each for machines that run plex exclusively. I would love to see support from either end so I do not have to return to traditional XBMC

15

Maybe if everyone who backed under the promise of Plex support posted this forum link in the comments section of the campaign it would spark the Devs to get over here and collaborate. The Plex Devs are generally great chaps and I bet they’d be willing to help if possible.

16

Maybe if everyone who backed under the promise of Plex support posted this forum link in the comments section of the campaign it would spark the Devs to get over here and collaborate. The Plex Devs are generally great chaps and I bet they'd be willing to help if possible.

That is a good idea to get this started. I will let the devs know if questions from them starts to roll in here.

17

I think that LightPack runs an OS X application called Prismatik (it color analyzes realtime screenshots or something similar).

I'm pretty sure it works with most apps on OS X, and if it works with XBMC it'll work with Plex too I'm sure.

Now, they have also included XBMC Boblight addon support, so you can change LightPack settings in XBMC.

That uses Python (and addons of course) so it won't work in Plex.

But, you can set everything up with the Prismatik app, so shouldn't be a problem.

18

Thanks Martin, while some of that went far above my head, I did ask the developers of Lightpack if it would/will work with Plex as it is now and they said no. That it was something Plex does differently. Maybe PHT will but without the developers of the pack coming in here to talk about it, who knows…

19
Hi guys, sorry for the delay. Usually to make Lightpack's software work with XBMC ports we're applying patches for XBMC files. Now, there are many versions of Plex for different platforms, and as far as we know currently RaspPlex isn't patchable (here's a link to original forum with problem description http://forums.plexapp.com/index.php/topic/70192-ambilight-for-rasplex/#entry422112).
As to Plex on Windows, Prismatik doesn't support hooking in 64bit applications so it doesn't work with Plex right now. It would be great if we could get average colors of certain fragments via some API, so it could work in a platform-independent way (i.e. to have some kind of cross-platform interface). And even if we were able to implement 64bit hooking, which is not a proper solution in my opinion anyway, there are stil RPi, Linux and Mac OS X versions in the line for a thorough check-up and inventing a solution for every each of different-platformed Plex is too much of a geeky way. And sadly it requires too much of time resources as well, which is a deficite having our main application development on my shoulders. But as you know, Lightpack is an open-source project, so if anyone is willing to help — he's only welcome to. As to our team, we're planning to work on this issue after we reach our priority goals.
20

Now that the specific issue is outlined does this seem like PHT would be immune to this issue or is this somethimg entirely different, sorry for my lack of understanding my degree is in biomedical practice :stuck_out_tongue: