Oh… sudo pip install --upgrade bibliopixel
That’s a recently fixed bug.
And sorry, when I said I got 50fps, that was for the Pi3. I had forgotten in the first message you said you had a Pi Zero.
Honestly I knew it was a Pi Zero the moment I read your CPU usage. That’s pretty typical, especially with the PiWS281x driver. It’s bit-banging the GPIO to get the right data signal and it’s not very efficient.
Sorry I don’t have better news 
Pi Zero would probably do a little better with APA102 or similar that uses SPI, but not WS2812
···
On Thu, Jan 18, 2018 at 7:43 PM, David Lithgow d@vid82.com wrote:
Hi Adam,
I’m not using a PiPixel, but rather something I put together myself.
“sudo bibliopixel run test.json --loglevel frame” doesn’t seem to work for me, I get the following error:
bibliopixel run: error: argument --loglevel: invalid choice: ‘frame’ (choose from ‘debug’, ‘info’, ‘warning’, ‘error’, ‘critical’)
``
If I run with --verbose I get this message about frame time:
WARNING - animation_threading - Frame-time of 33ms set, but took 204ms!
``
If I create a second SSH connection and run the top command I can see that the bibliopixel process is using between 97.7 and 98.4% CPU. There are no other significant processes running.
Thanks
David
On Friday, 19 January 2018 00:02:27 UTC, Adam Haile wrote:
As it is the absolutely theoretical max framerate you can get is 69fps with 480 pixels. That’s just the math of the data-rate. Not possible to go over that.
But you are only trying for 30, and with that animation I admit it should work.
Question… are you using the PiPixel board or did you just roll your own? Same level shifter chip, so just curious.
Anyways, I’m getting ~50fps with that many LEDs here.
What actual framerate do you get with 480 pixels?
Run sudo bibliopixel run test.json --loglevel frame and it will tell you the FPS.
Only other thing I can think of is something else on your Pi is slowing it down. When you are running, can you login from another SSH session or something and run the top command? Then let me know how much CPU usage the bibliopixel process is using and if anything else is using a lot.
On Thu, Jan 18, 2018 at 6:48 PM, David Lithgow d...@vid82.com wrote:
Hi Adam,
Apologies for the delayed response.
I am running the following BiblioPixel project JSON file:
{
“animation”: {
“typename”: “BiblioPixelAnimations.strip.Rainbows.RainbowCycle”
},
“run”: {
“fps”: 30
},
“driver”: {
“num”: 480,
“typename”: “pi_ws281x”,
“c_order”: “BRG”,
“gpio”: 18
},
“layout”: {
“typename”: “strip”
}
}
``
Using the following command:
sudo bibliopixel run test.json --verbose
``
I’m using GPIO pin 18 on the Pi. The LED strip data line is connected to the Pi via a 74AHCT125 level converter.
I discovered that if I reduce to the LED number to between 50 and 100 I can get a smooth animation, but the frame rate drops off as I increase towards the 480 I would like to be able to drive.
Thanks
David
On Saturday, 13 January 2018 02:04:48 UTC, Adam Haile wrote:
Hey David,
Honestly it entirely depends on what your animation is doing. I mean, yes, the Pi Zero is going to have pretty terrible performance compared to the Pi 3, but BiblioPixel started out on the original Pi, which was even slower and got way better performance than 3fps! So… I just need some more info:
- Code & Config!! Need to see your animation and your script or BiblioPixel project (json) file. Most likely your slowdown is in the animation itself.
- How you are actually running all of the above. For example:
sudo bibliopixel run my_blinky_lights.json. The full command you are using to start your animation, whatever that may be.
- Are you using something like our PiPixel or did you just wire this all up by hand? Either way, what Pi output pin are you using for your LED data output?
That should be all for now. I’m sure what can figure it out 
Cheers,
Adam
On Fri, Jan 12, 2018 at 8:53 PM, David Lithgow d...@vid82.com wrote:
Hi,
I’m seeing poor frame rates when using BiblioPixel on a Raspberry Pi Zero to drive a strip of 480 WS2812B LEDs with the PiWS281x driver. My project is set to 30fps, however, I receive a warning that the animation threading could not achieve that frame-rate:
WARNING - animation_threading - Frame-time of 33ms set, but took 345ms!
``
The Pi Zero has the following installed:
- Raspbian Stretch Lite
- Python 3.5.3
- BiblioPixel 3.4.1
I tried switching out the RPi Zero for an RPi 3 which seemed to resolve the issue (frame rates ~40ms) but I’d like to use the RPi Zero for my project, if possible. Is it simply a performance limitation of the Pi Zero causing the poor frame rate performance?
Happy to provide any further details if needed.
Thanks
David
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