A tool to stream video to WLED matrix displays
Video can be streamed from local files, from a local webcam, or directly from a website compatible with yt-dlp such as youtube, vimeo, etc.
WLED-video uses the WARLS protocol over UDP or the tpm2 protocol over a serial connection to the ESP running WLED. For the time being, the UDP connection seems to be much more stable and performant.
Sound is currently not handled.
Executables are available for Windows, MacOS and Linux on the releases page (x64 only for all three, at this time). These executables are built on github. After downloading and unpacking the executable for Linux or MacOS, you may have to set the "executable" bit on the wledvideo file using chmod +x wledvideo.
You can also run WLED-video from source. You will have to install its dependencies, preferably in a virtual environment.
pip3 install -r requirements.txt
After that, you can run wledvideo like this:
python3 wledvideo.py --help
The simplest invocation of the WLED-video commandline is as follows:
wledvideo --host 4.3.2.1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPYZpwSpKmA
To decrease the time-to-first-frame, you can use a local video and supply the width and height of your WLED matrix:
wledvideo --host 4.3.2.1 --width 32 --height 16 togetherforever.mp4
More options are available via wledvideo --help:
usage: wledvideo [-h] [--config CONFIG] [--host HOST] [--port PORT] [--serial SERIAL] [--baudrate BAUDRATE] [--width WIDTH] [--height HEIGHT] [--crop CROP] [--scale {stretch,fill,fit,crop}]
[--interpolation {hard,smooth}] [--gamma GAMMA] [--loop] [--camera] [--debug]
source
positional arguments:
source The video file to stream (required unless a source is specified in the config file). If --camera is set, 'source' shall be the index of the camera source (defaulting to 0)
options:
-h, --help show this help message and exit
--config CONFIG
--host HOST
--port PORT
--serial SERIAL
--baudrate BAUDRATE
--width WIDTH width of the LED matrix. If not specified, this will be automatically retreived from the WLED instance
--height HEIGHT height of the LED matrix. If not specified, this will be automatically retreived from the WLED instance
--crop CROP pixels to crop from the image. Can be either 1, 2 or 4 integer values to crop from respectively cropping all sides by the same amount, different amount horizontally and
vertically, or all sides individually
--scale {stretch,fill,fit,crop}
'stretch' stretches the video to the panel, disregarding aspect ratio, 'fill' scales the video so the whole panel is covered (default), 'fit' scales the whole video onto the
panel adding black bars, 'crop' shows only the center of the video at 100%
--interpolation {hard,smooth}
'smooth' uses pixel area relation when scaling the video (default), 'hard' uses nearest neighbour algorithm leading to crisper edges
--gamma GAMMA adjust for non-linearity of LEDs, defaults to 0.5
--loop
--camera use a webcam instead of a video
--debug show the output in a window while streaming
All settings can also be parameters in a TOML configuration file. Parameters specified in the command line override parameters in the configuration file. If it exists, a file named config.toml is loaded automatically.
debug = true
camera = true
[[wled]]
host = 4.3.2.1
The source, loop, camera and debug options are general options. The other options are specifc for to a [[wled]] group. The configuration file can specify multiple WLED instances, to stream different parts of a single video to different WLED instance.
debug = true
source = 'https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qWNQUvIk954'
loop = true
[[wled]]
host = 192.168.1.18
width = 32
height = 16
crop = [280,0,960,0]
[[wled]]
serial = 'COM3:'
baudrate = 250000
width = 16
height = 16
crop = [960,0,280,0]