Відео

No problem, glad it was useful!

Thank you so much!!

Thanks!

I would love to, but I'm very busy with the light show season starting up and have a lot of things on my plate. I have some tutorials though I've posted about programming the lights and sequencing if those would help. Here's a few videos you could check out if you'd like. Hope this helps! ua-cam.com/video/0nojG3zjq1Q/v-deo.html ua-cam.com/video/xLd35K_e65Q/v-deo.html

Oh nice! I'm glad that setup works for you. I've tried using wifi before but I don't have antennas for the boards and it's never been reliable for me. However, everyone has different situations and different setups work better for others!

Yes, that should work as long as everything is setup to keep the data separate, and you use unicast instead of multicast for your PIs to communicate with the devices. Unicast will send the data only to the IP address you put in whereas multicast sends it everywhere and hopes the right device finds it.

Fantastic! Thanks! In previous years I was running a master/remote type setup. I am looking forward to give this separate light show network method a try this year. Also this will be my first year splitting some stuff up and running some differential receivers. Your videos have helped tremendously! Keep up the great content!

@How2Pixel could I use 1 Pi and FPP to control both the P4 matrix and the F16v4?

From my experiences I would have to say no. I tried to use one pi to control my 5,000ish lights on my F16v5 and also used it to control my 56 P5 panels. However, everything started glitching really bad and the screen would freeze, the lights would freeze, and it would just stop communicating with the controller. So I'd recommend using 2 PIs if you can.

Haha thanks! Glad the videos are useful!!

Thanks!

At the time it was around $500, but now it would be more around $575ish plus shipping. Where I bought them from you have to buy at least 10,000 to get bulk pricing. However, I've seen some other places where you only need to buy 3,000 pixels for bulk pricing.

Thanks so much for the information! I had heard and seen from other examples before that it forced you to divide them up equally, but maybe like you said that was when the controller first came out.

So sorry for the late response, I was out of town so I wasn't paying attention to comments. What you could do now is instead of running the RJ45 from your router to your pi, run it from your router to the switch. Then connect another cable from the switch to your pi. Now the pi can have an ethernet connection and still communicate with any devices connected to the switch. Hope this helps!

Yes

Thanks for letting me know! I was aware of that and thought I referred to them as RJ45 jacks, but did I accidentally call them ethernet ports?

You know, I thought I heard that somewhere before but couldn't remember and for some reason I thought they had to be in order. Thanks for telling me though! I'll make sure to let everyone know about that in part 2 of the video.

Ok, thanks for letting me know! I tested it myself and found it worked for me at least, but I'll make sure to talk about that in the part 2 video.

I have heard lots of people say that before, but I haven't noticed a problem with it. On my main run of cables that come out of the garage, there are 2 AC power extension cords and 2 data wires zip-tied in a giant bunch and there aren't any problems. However, I don't have any low voltage power wire (12 volts DC) for power injection right next to data wires. I have some that are a few inches apart, but not directly next it. I'd assume that also shouldn't cause problems, but I think it depends on which type of wire you have.

Thank you! Glad the video was helpful!

Yes! You can run Falcon Player on a Raspberry Pi Zero, 2, 3, 4, and 5.

No, if you just add more strands or lights to the tree and don't drastically change it, everything will be fine. If you have any sequences programmed with the old tree, you will just need to re-render them and Xlights will put the effects on the new design of the tree.

Which software are you going to be running on the Pi to communicate with the receiving card? I will admit that I am not the best with these types of projects, and had a hard time trying to figure out how to use the colorlight card. I know how to make it run a panel but nothing really advanced with it.

@@How2Pixel Thank you Nick for replying I am planning to connect the Raspberry Pi with a synchronous sending card, which will then be connected to a receiving card and finally to the display modules. In this setup, I do not want to manually add content to play on platforms like LEDVision. As it will be difficult to automate, instead I am thinking of playing the content on the video player on the Pi, and using the synchronous sending card to display it on the modules. Could you please tell me if this is feasible or if there is a better way to achieve this?

I really wish I could help you out and answer your questions, but I'm not really sure how to run the colorlight card with any other software besides LEDvision or Falcon Player, the software I had on my raspberry pi. I'm sure it's possible, but I don't know how since I don't have much experience with that type of stuff. Have you tried looking online for some other tutorials that might help with what you're looking to do?

I'm so glad the video was helpful! Thank you for watching!

You would like to add multiple songs into just one sequence? This is possible but I don't usually recommend it for a couple of reasons. First, when you're playing your show, if you want to skip to a certain song, you can no longer select the sequence since it's all in one now, so you'd have to wait for it to play to get there. Second, changing one little effect can cause you to have a larger render time since it has to render ALL the parts in the one sequence. But if you are ok with this, the way you have to do it is edit the audio track and combine all the songs you want into one mp3 file. There are some different tools to do this but I recommend audio-joiner.com/ because it's the most simplest. So just join all the songs you want in one sequence into one audio file.

@@How2Pixel ah gotcha that makes sense. so the best option would be for me to create a new sequence for each song and run x lights schedule

Yes, if you're planning on running an actual show during the Christmas season (or whatever your show is for), this would be best. Now if it's just a one time thing or you won't be running it much, you could just run the sequences straight from Xlights, but it doesn't work without someone opening the sequence file(s) and pushing the start button. Additionally, if you don't want your computer being tied up running Xschedule, you could buy a Raspberry Pi for a little under $100 and set that up to automatically run your show with Falcon Player (FPP).

Hmm that's a good idea, I've never thought of using the cube model for peace stakes. The only problem I would see is that the peace stakes would look less random which is sort of what I like, but some people don't mind them being in perfect order. What are you having a hard time doing to make them look right?

@@How2Pixel I can't get them to look organized like ron howard did in his video. Maybe because i have not yet tried 3d setup. ua-cam.com/video/zu3UAmTun_k/v-deo.html

Oh I would definitely say that's probably the problem. In 2d I think you would only see the very front of the stakes, making the back ones hidden and it won't look right. If you can, try setting it up in 3d.

Yes! I'm working on it right now as we speak haha

I'm a little bit confused so I have a question. Do you have all 4 SRx1 receivers and the SRx2 receiver on one chain? Or are they separated across multiple chains? The SRx2 receiver is technically 2 normal receivers put onto one board. So when you set it up in xlights, the SRx2 receiver should look like 2 receivers, and they should be receiver A and receiver B unless you have other receivers before it on the chain.

@How2Pixel I have two SRx1 chained together, but my tree copies the same sequence as my matrix/arch. I have 4 ports going into the matrix and 1 port going into the tree PORT 17,18,19,20A INTO MATRIX/ ARCH and 17B INTO my small mini tree does that make since or iam I doing something wrong

@How2Pixel my first show has 5k pixels, one main controller, and 5 smart receivers

Ok that makes a little bit more sense, so you have 2 receivers, one is going to the matrix/arch and all 4 ports are being used there. Then you have another receiver for your tree but only 1 port is being used there right? And you said on xlights your tree is trying to take up 8 ports correct? If you only want the tree to use 1 port, then you need to go into the model settings on the layout tab, and set the string count to 1. You'll then have to increase the strands per string, that way your tree is the same size still. Did this help or am I still misunderstanding you?

Glad the video was useful! I think there is a way to do that, but I'm not 100% sure. I haven't done many projects with the colorlight card other than just running it for my panel, so I don't think I could be much help to you. Have you tried looking online for a user manual or maybe tutorials that show how to do it?

@@How2Pixel I managed to find some videos on the subject, thank you for your attention.

Great! Glad you were able to figure it out.

I don't think I used any this past year, but in other years I have had to use some. Figuring out where to place them can be tricky because lots of people say different things about where they should go. Some say the boosters should be at the start of a data wire, some say after, and some say in the middle. I did a lot of research about this and found some helpful presentations from Keith Westly about where they should be put. Data boosters are mainly made to fix a data signal to extend it farther, so they normally work best right before a prop or in the middle of a long data wire. However, with specific controllers, especially Falcons, data boosters actually work better if you put it at the start of a data wire. There's a couple reasons why, but I'm not sure if you're interested in hearing about all it. In the end, I would start by putting a data booster right before the prop, but also test it in multiple locations. Even using a data booster at the beginning and end of a strand will help it more. So just use it where it works. Hope this helps!

Glad the videos are useful! To answer your question, do you mean connecting the receiver directly to a Raspberry Pi or a computer to run the sequence off there? And have it go straight into the receiver? Sadly, you cannot do that and it will damage the receiver if you do. The receiver must be connected into a controller since it doesn't have the power to convert a sequence into pixel data itself. The controller does that, then it sends any pixel data a receiver needs over a cat 5 cable to it. So you could run a test through the controller, and have it go to the receiver, but the receiver itself cannot run a test sequence.

​@@How2PixelYes! I wanted to know if there was a test button on the card. It's already good to be able to send a test sequence via the transmitter card. Thank you for your answer. 💪

Yes there is a test button on all smart receivers! The button will test all the pixels that are hooked onto that receiver.

For the base, I just used 2, 4x4 boards that were around 8 feet long each, and then cut out a piece of the middle in each so I could crisscross them. The pole is made of metal fencing pipe that's 1 and 5/8in in diameter. I took 2 pieces since one was not long enough, connected them together (since they come with the ends slightly smaller to allow you to put them together), and then put 2 safety pins in the part where they join just to make sure it won't come apart. If you'd like to see more about how it's put together, I showed the whole tree in my latest behind the scenes video here ua-cam.com/video/VXcz6pMZlYc/v-deo.html . If you skip 33 minutes into the video, that's where I show the mega tree setup.