Messages

1

Xlights Setup / Re: ZCPP and Pi Player

« on: December 29, 2019, 07:33:35 PM »

FPP can not currently talk ZCPP but I want to have some conversations about it in the new year.  I have a patch for an earlier version of FPP which allows FPP to send channel data via ZCPP but don’t have the config code hooked up to configure the controllers.

2

Do You Need Help? Post it here / Re: Models not Diplaying on Mater View

« on: December 01, 2019, 07:06:05 PM »

Yeah 2019.1 you can’t go back to 2018 as model positions are updated.

Thanks for confirmation.  It was a friends computer and I told him to uninstall the old version .

3

Do You Need Help? Post it here / Models not Diplaying on Mater View

« on: December 01, 2019, 05:47:49 PM »

I saw something like this the other day and it seemed to be related to using an old version of xLights from 2018.  When I ran a recent version from 2019, the preview displayed correctly.

4

Nutcracker Effects / Re: 16*16 LED Panel WS2812B RGB LED Full Color Digital Flexible Display Board 5V 256

« on: January 25, 2019, 08:04:57 AM »

Maybe three separate models grouped within xLights would be the way to go then?

I think that is the only way to do this currently due to the way these wrap.

I am in a similar situation but for a different reason.  I have 30 P10 panels on one BBB.  I have them setup in 3 matrices in 3 side by side windows so there is a small gap between each window for the window frame.  FPP sees one wide matrix, but I use an undocumented feature of FPP to split that into 3 logical matrices which I configure individually in xLights and place on my xLights preview spaced a tiny bit apart to account for the window frames.  Then I glue them back together in xLights in a model group for some effects and use them individually for other effects.

5

Nutcracker Effects / Re: 16*16 LED Panel WS2812B RGB LED Full Color Digital Flexible Display Board 5V 256

« on: January 24, 2019, 05:15:17 PM »

If you have three panels, make the matrix model 48x16 or 16x48 depending on the orientation?  Then run the data out of one into the next panel.  I can't imagine this is any different then the normal P5/P10 panels everyone typically uses.

The P5/P10 panels are essentially glued together in software in FPP or the xLights helper program and treated as a single large matrix.  Panels like these would need something to glue together the multiple panels which are each individually zig zagged internally.

6

Enhancement Requests / Re: Send packets out to Pi earlier then show starts?

« on: March 10, 2018, 03:27:13 PM »

I need to document the new “open” sync command which I will be adding to FPP shortly which is meant to help with the initial sync in situations like this.  Essentially the master will tell the remotes to open and get ready and then they can start playing as soon as the first sync packet is received.  I haven’t yet looked at the xScheduler code to see when it sends the start packet but in FPP right now it is sent a little early to try to give the remote time to spin up before the first frame is played.  That timing is still a race between master and remote though as to who opens and starts playing a file first.  The new command should let systems start in sync better.  Currently if systems are running mismatched hardware the initial sync can be off by a second or so and take a couple seconds to pull in.  Another fix I will be looking at is making the remote seek to pull into sync quicker but skipping frames could be just as bad so that is not a fix for this issue, only a bandaid for really bad sync issues.

7

Falcon Pi Player / Re: Falcon Player User Survey for January 2018

« on: January 29, 2018, 09:56:18 PM »

Bump this thread, there are only a few days left, so if you haven't taken the survey and are a FPP user please take a few minutes to respond.  Once the survey is closed, the results will be posted on FalconChristmas.com.

8

LOR / Re: LOR Pixie controller in XLights not working right

« on: January 23, 2018, 03:25:22 PM »

Here's what I've got so far.

On your screenshot with the parts breakdown, the value that is sometimes 0x13 and sometimes 0x03 are the command which on the intensity set commands indicates how to interpret the channel fields.  0x13 indicates that it is a 2-byte bitmask of channels.  A value of 0x03 is what we currently use in xLights and FPP and that indicates that the field actually contains the actual zero-based channel number OR-ed with 0x80.   That must be how they send more than 16 channels to the 24-channel controller, they could use 0x03 with an actual channel number 0-23 or possibly there is a different code other than 0x13 which has 3 bitmask fields for the channel numbers.

For the CCR testing, here are some observations:

Code: [Select]

CCR all white for 3 seconds
00 02 51 49 3F
00 02 51 08 FF FF
00 02 51 07 FF FF
00 02 51 06 FF FF
00 02 51 05 FF FF
00 02 51 04 FF FF
00 02 51 03 FF FF
00 02 51 02 FF FF
00 02 51 01 FF FF
00 02 11 FF FF 00 00

The "00 02 51" lines are setting the channels to apply the value to.  Were you using all 50 pixels or just 45?  On each of the first nine lines, it looks like we are addressing a 'bank' of 16 channels, going from bank 9 down to bank 1.  The first line might seem to indicate that we are only looking at a bank of 8 channels.  This would add up to 135 channels or 45 pixels.  For banks 1-8, all channel bits are turned on via the 0xFF 0xFF.  The last command is the "all on" command as noted at the top of the doc.

The second CCR sample seems to agree with the analysis above.

Code: [Select]

First 10 channels red
00 02 51 C9
00 02 51 C8
00 02 51 C7
00 02 51 C6
00 02 51 C5
00 02 51 C4
00 02 51 C3
00 02 51 C2
00 02 51 01 24 09
00 02 11 49 92 00 00 

In this, the "00 02 51" command is sent with a "C9", "C8", etc. which appear to be clearing the bits on those banks of channels.  Then, it sends a "00 02 51 01 24 09" which would set the red channels 3,6,9,12 since the two bytes are reversed when looking at the 16-channel bitmap.  It looks like when you said you wanted 10 channels, it actually did 12 since it sees them as RGB triplets.   I'm uncertain what the "00 02 11 49 92 00 00" is at the end.

9

LOR / LOR Pixie controller in XLights not working right

« on: January 20, 2018, 02:34:41 PM »

Gil, can you post that LOR USB capture somewhere?  I thought I heard they had a newer protocol so maybe it can support multiple channels in one packet.  Also please note how many channels this was.

10

LOR / Re: LOR Pixie controller in XLights not working right

« on: January 19, 2018, 06:11:58 PM »

Another thing that affects LOR usage is that you can run more channels as long as they aren't changing much.  The inefficiency comes in if more than 1/6 of your channels are changing at the same time.  If fewer channels are changing then you are saving bytes on the wire by only updating changed channels.

11

Falcon Pi Player / Re: Falcon Player User Survey for January 2018

« on: January 13, 2018, 09:04:36 PM »

For anyone that comes across all the  threads in the respective forums after the survey closes, can you add best place for people to provide feedback/enhancement requests?  In particular thinking of people that just got into the hobby and not aware of where to go.

I plan on posting a follow up message after the survey closes, so I can add something like this to the followup in the same thread.

12

Falcon Pi Player / Re: Falcon Player User Survey for January 2018

« on: January 13, 2018, 10:29:26 AM »

Of course we are! This will help make the software better. Everyone's opinions count and will help!

Thank you.  We are getting some good info out of the survey regarding user configs and where we should be focusing development efforts.  Once the survey is complete the results will be posted and I will probably go through and respond directly to some of the comments via a forum post.  We are getting a lot of good feedback.  As you noted, every opinion counts, so if anyone is reading this and hasn't replied, please take a few minutes to provide some feedback to help us make FPP better for you the user.

13

Falcon Pi Player / Re: FPP ports

« on: January 11, 2018, 09:56:57 PM »

I think I answered this elsewhere, but just in case....

FPP uses UDP 32320 for sync between FPP instances and will use UDP 32321 for sync to a F16v3.

14

Falcon Pi Player / Falcon Player User Survey for January 2018

« on: January 11, 2018, 09:55:47 PM »

Over the holidays, I started thinking about posting a poll on
FalconChristmas.com to get input from users regarding FPP configuration,
issues encountered in 2017, and future direction.  After thinking about it
for a little while, it became obvious that a simple poll on the forum
wasn't going to collect the information we wanted to get from our users.
The poll idea evolved into a survey which I have created to help us get
a better handle on the user base and their experience with FPP.

The survey should only take about 10-15 minutes at the most.  It is only
about 25 questions, a lot of which are dependent on earlier questions, for
instance, if you don't use BeagleBones to run FPP, the survey won't ask you
which capes you use on your BeagleBones.

The majority of our user base is silent.  The FPP v1.8 SD install media
file has been downloaded over 13,000 times, but we only have a few thousand
users on FalconChristmas.com.  There are so many places to get good FPP
support that we wanted a way to reach out to all users rather than a poll
requiring you to login to FalconChristmas.com.

If you are a FPP user, please take the time to complete the survey so that
we can better know which parts of FPP we should be focusing our development
efforts on and which features you would like to see added or improved.

In the nature of FPP being Open Source, the survey is being run using
LimeSurvey which is Open Source survey software.

To get to the survey, go to:

http://fpp.bc2va.org/limesurvey/

Click on the green box labeled "2018 Falcon Player User Survey".  The next
page will have a Captcha question.  The text says "enter the letters you
see", but it really means "enter the answer to this math problem", so if
you see "49 + 1 =", enter the answer of "50", don't enter "49 + 1 =" in
the answer field.

If you are interrupted, you can return to the survey and it should continue
where you left off as long as you return using the same web browser.  There
is no login/password, the survey uses cookies to track your position in
the survey.

Thanks for your help and thanks for using FPP.  The survey will be open
through the end of January and will close at 11:59PM on Feb 4, 2018.

The Falcon Player Development Team


(This post will be cross-posted to various forums and facebook groups)

15

Enhancement Requests / Re: True 3D?

« on: February 21, 2017, 05:05:43 PM »

A wise xlights developer once told me that most of the people that take a crack at the code don't contribute it back.

I for one am thankful for that, we don't need code with cracks in it.