Messages

1

Xlights Setup / Re: Custom Model

« on: November 28, 2020, 11:23:43 AM »

OK. It's been a looooooooooong time since I used zoom or tapatalk. Can someone show me instructions for signing in, please? Apparently I still have my user name registered but I must have outdated passcodes/forum passwords etc. Thanks.

2

Xlights Setup / Re: Custom Model

« on: November 28, 2020, 10:54:56 AM »

Thank you. I will absolutely follow that advice shortly.
I'm curious about how that works, but I'll ask that next time. Thanks again.

3

Xlights Setup / Custom Model

« on: November 27, 2020, 11:47:28 AM »

I've struggled with X-Lights' learning curve for 3 or 4 years now. The very altruistic gentleman who has been helping me is a computer genius and over-explains, complicates, and confuses me to a degree my entire setup is almost worthless. So, I'm having to do a very late crash course trying to fix immediate goobers and identify what else I need to relearn. A late show will be better than nothing and while the lights are up is the only time I can actually see results in action.

My most pressing issue is I had to set my matrix as a custom model because of the offset pixels. I'm pretty OK with Excel, so I built it there then copied and pasted it successfully. It's worked for two years, but this year it only lights the first 15 or so rows, skips a few rows, then lights 3 or 4 more. I think I really messed up trying to set the channels/ports plus I stoopidly changed settings on the Falcon FPP. I expect I just need to reenter correct info, but since I never learned this correctly to begin with, I'm totally lost.

Any help is UNBELIEVABLY appreciated.

4

Do You Need Help? Post it here / Fore vs. Background

« on: December 03, 2019, 08:07:59 PM »

I have a couple of questions, please.

We have a manger scene with an 8 foot tall, 8 foot wide angel (Gabriel) standing guard over the Nativity. Our yard has a slight incline making it possible to put some things behind others there and they can still be seen from the street. Is there a way to get X-Lights to show them on the computer screen in the order they are stacked?

Also, is there a way to time a chase exactly with the music? With TSO Christmas Cannon for audio, I'm hoping to start multiple chases from various spots winding all around our display each reaching the manger at the music's crescendo, about 34 seconds into the song.

Thanks for any assistance, and Merry Christmas to everyone!!

5

Xlights Setup / Re: Trouble Finding Lost Setup

« on: October 01, 2019, 09:33:00 PM »

Thank you for the information, and I will take your advice on both points. I always worry I sound like an idiot.

6

Xlights Setup / Trouble Finding Lost Setup

« on: September 28, 2019, 08:52:16 PM »

I had a stroke in 2012 which makes learning new things harder than before. I have 35 years experience with midi programming, and my creativity is still intact. I also developed adult attention deficit so badly, I can't sit through videos as short as 5 minutes. I need help with understanding, from a layman's perspective, what to do with all the files created in X-Lights such as rgb effects, fseq, key binding, etc. I finally figured out what I save last is what I have next time, but somehow I keep losing progress anyway. I will never excel at computer programming, so can someone help me understand how to save new files with new progress and still be able to find the older things? I cannot find the last layout I created and it took me far too long to produce to just forget it and start over. I will say I thought I saved my last work before I went back to add music, but when I saved it with the music something happened and niw it's all missing. I get confused when the software asks if I want to save models and whatever else it asks before I shut down. I cannot find any of my setups anymore and music sequences with songs only are useless. What I can find are dozens and dozens of files described above, but none have anything in them even in my backup folder. Before getting sick, I suppose I would have had a chance to figure this out and this permanent brane fog sux, but I've found the XLights community to be very patient with me. Thanks and please let me know what I'm likely doing wrong and how to hopefully recover my lost work.

7

Do You Need Help? Post it here / Re: Layout/Setup

« on: September 20, 2019, 09:49:17 AM »

For a laptop I'm assuming you mean a peripheral mouse? I had not thought of that. I only use a touch pad, but my son has as many peripherals as I have pixels. You made me think of something. 3D. I can't find where I used to bring one model to the front, another to the back, etc. Because I have a very small space, 3D would be even better. I've seen it but not tried it. Thanks for the idea about the mouse!

8

Do You Need Help? Post it here / Layout/Setup

« on: September 19, 2019, 09:58:13 PM »

I have three quick questions:
1) Is there a reason I can't center my house in the background of our layout? If I try to change the height or width I can't unlock the two.
2) Can I get the pixels to display the same size on the layout display screen? As is, my matrix has enough pixels they all become a solid line instead of individual dots, and since I can't scale the background image, several vertical and horizontal lines do this also.
3) Looks like I made a mistake trying to label my models as part of a controller instead of individual start channels. About half of my models turn red signifying an overlap when I select them, even though they are all set the same.


I want to apologize to all the great people who have tried to help me. Three years ago I thought this would be a piece of cake having 30 years experience with A/V, specifically audio with an emphasis on midi-programming and more than 10 years with LOR. Unfortunately, there'e been a calamity each of the last 2 years preventing me from utilizing all the great advice, but this year I'm going to have to be 6 feet under to stop me. With your help, of course. Thanks.

9

Bugs in xLights/Nutcracker / "Output to Lights" Crashes our Internet/Network

« on: April 22, 2019, 05:09:09 PM »

I posted this in another subject, so please feel free to delete whichever is in the most inappropriate location.
[/size]We have been having a lot of trouble with our internet service, so we had a tech come out for the 1 millionth time and finally got one who was literally willing to spend hours with me tracking the problem. What we found was that 100% of the time I ask X-Lights to “output to lights” our entire internet dies and the network crashes down to a crawl. I am no longer able to control lights through our Falcon F16V3 1 controller/X-Lights setup except for test, which works just fine. I can hook everything up, test the FPP, run X-Lights, even build a new sequence, but as soon as I output to lights, everything is gone. I can’t even get a speed test to work because it times out. The tech and I checked all the provider’s hardware and settings and everything we could think of such as too many devices, specific devices, changing from 5G to 2.4G, isolating the controller entirely, etc., but the only thing that caused the crash was asking X-Lights to control the lights. Nothing else. The controller has no problem running the lights in test mode over the network or just connecting the laptop directly to the controller, but enabling controlling the lights means I’m goobered. We put a lot of effort making our home a safe place for all of his friends to congregate and since it’s not unusual for him to have 4 or 5 friends over, each with their phones and a few laptops, so we pay for 200Mbps and usually get it and sometimes appreciably more. Last year we only had half of that bandwidth and there was no trouble even controlling the show wirelessly through the network. No interference, no lag, no anything detrimental. Unfortunately though, I got very ill last year just as it was time to put the lights up and wound up without 90% of our show. So this year I am trying very hard to have everything completely finished in the next month or two so I can relax a while and the worst thing that can happen is our 18-year-old son puts everything together this year when it’s time.
[/size]Has anyone else ever seen this problem? What kind of settings could possibly cause this? I sent in a bug report and do not know how to post my settings, but if they are needed I am happy to learn how to do it.
[/size]I always feel obligated to mention I am disabled to begin with, so I am only capable of devoting small snippets of time here and there to work on this. It was anxiety/stress that put me on disability to begin with, so I am struggling in more ways than my ego likes to admit. Every forum I’ve ever been involved with has been incredibly good to my family and I, so I wish you all the very best and if anyone has any suggestions they would be greatly appreciated.

10

Bugs in xLights/Nutcracker / Re: xLights Crashing since latest update

« on: April 22, 2019, 05:06:24 PM »

[size=0pt]Is this the same sort of problem? We have been having a lot of trouble with our internet service, so we had a tech come out for the 1 millionth time and finally got one who was literally willing to spend hours with me tracking the problem. What we found was that 100% of the time I ask X-Lights to “output to lights” our entire internet dies and the network crashes down to a crawl. I am no longer able to control lights through our Falcon F16V3 1 controller/X-Lights setup except for test, which works just fine. I can hook everything up, test the FPP, run X-Lights, even build a new sequence, but as soon as I output to lights, everything is gone. I can’t even get a speed test to work because it times out. The tech and I checked all the provider’s hardware and settings and everything we could think of such as too many devices, specific devices, changing from 5G to 2.4G, isolating the controller entirely, etc., but the only thing that caused the crash was asking X-Lights to control the lights. Nothing else. The controller has no problem running the lights in test mode over the network or just connecting the laptop directly to the controller, but enabling controlling the lights means I’m goobered. We put a lot of effort making our home a safe place for all of his friends to congregate and since it’s not unusual for him to have 4 or 5 friends over, each with their phones and a few laptops, so we pay for 200Mbps and usually get it and sometimes appreciably more. Last year we only had half of that bandwidth and there was no trouble even controlling the show wirelessly through the network. No interference, no lag, no anything detrimental. Unfortunately though, I got very ill last year just as it was time to put the lights up and wound up without 90% of our show. So this year I am trying very hard to have everything completely finished in the next month or two so I can relax a while and the worst thing that can happen is our 18-year-old son puts everything together this year when it’s time.[/size]
[size=0pt][/color]Has anyone else ever seen this problem? What kind of settings could possibly cause this? I sent in a bug report and do not know how to post my settings, but if they are needed I am happy to learn how to do it.[/size]
[size=0pt][/color]I always feel obligated to mention I am disabled to begin with, so I am only capable of devoting small snippets of time here and there to work on this. It was anxiety/stress that put me on disability to begin with, so I am struggling in more ways than my ego likes to admit. Every forum I’ve ever been involved with has been incredibly good to my family and I, so I wish you all the very best and if anyone has any suggestions they would be greatly appreciated. [/size]

11

Do You Need Help? Post it here / Completely Dead to Death Pixels/Matrix

« on: February 17, 2019, 12:13:42 PM »

THE QUESTION: outside of obviously burned to death Christmas light pixels, can I test 12V 12mm led pixels with ws2811 chips by the strand instead of having to cut each pixel out individually? 

THE STORY: I spent 20 years last October - November building a 12V 8,000 led pixel matrix testing every 12mm 100 pixel strand as I went along. I used 400W power supplies and inserted at the beginning/end of each strand. Tested perfectly. I cut 6 foot 2 wire extension cords in half and use the male end for the strings and attach the female end to bring the juice from the PSU. After I finished a little showing off using X-Lights to prove it was awesome, I puffed out my chest and left it a few days basking in my glory. Two days later my son wanted to show it to his friends but didn't understand the male plugs were supposed to connect to the PSUs and plugged them directly into the wall. I came running when I smelled the smoke and unplugged the power strips as quickly as I could, but it was too late. My son is devastated and I love him for being proud, all the help he gave me building this thing, and just being a really great kid. In fact, I erroneously thought someone else made the mistake but that's an even longer story.

THE RESULTS: Several strings weren't connected and are fine. Others flicker, maybe one or two randomly spaced pixels light on a strand with no apparent consistency, some will come to life if I cut pixels out, etc, etc., but I can find no way to locate good and bad pixels without chopping the stands up, sometimes down to one pixel at a time. I'm getting the 12V at the end and random pixels light and random pixels don't when connected to the controller.

THOUGHTS: Would it be possible to connect just the data cable to my Falcon V3 controller and run the pixels in front of a small store bought Tesla coil to identify the good ones? I've tried visual inspection and can weed out the obvious ones, but nothing else I do other than cutting and testing them one at a time seems to work consistently and I'm burning through fuses.

FINAL: I very much want to turn this into a more positive result more for my son than anything else. If I had to, I guess I have the time to test thousands of pixels one at a time, but I also would like to learn. I've seen others who have similar problems on a thankfully smaller scale and to date have not found any solution.

APPRECIATION: If you have any suggestions you can bet the farm I would be extremely grateful. 

12

Enhancement Requests / 1st Year Stumbles

« on: January 06, 2018, 10:38:29 AM »

I had a great first year learning about RGB PIXEL programming (BIG thanks to everyone who chipped in to help-especially Ken Kahala, Mastermind, esq.) and would like to ask about a few things.
1. Is there a method to map PSU, controller, expansion board, other hardware placement? If this could be formatted in a manner that would somehow be positioned in the layout and automatically "grab" and calculate nearby models in a zone of some kind it would solve millions of headaches. A second approach would be if models could be mapped in the layout by zones which would not just determine the channel numbers but add up the power needs and suggest likely power insertion points.
2. In the same line of questioning, can I show the wiring harnesses needed to power the models to/from PSUs and outlets to plug in the PSUs in XLights?
3. I'm already pumped about sequencing for this year, but don't always have my laptop handy. Can this be done on an Android phone or tablet?
4. I don't understand the video conferences and/or other opportunities to meet with others. Have I missed something explaining this?
5. I learned a LOT, starting with the fact I will never stop learning. Unfortunately, as great as the community is even bare bones tutorials can be unintentionally intimidating and overwhelming. Would it be presumptuous of me to offer a post titled something like "Things They Didn't Teach You In XLights Kindergarten" and dumb it down to the level I found myself? If so, would anyone else be interested in contributing?
6. Is it insulting to ask for a "Budget Friendly" section for those like myself on an exceptionally restrictive fixed income?
7. Would it be possible to have somewhere that some of the incredible people I spoke to this year and others interested to tutor individuals according to their available time and expertise? It would make sense if there was a board they could sign in listing the skills they are willing to help with when they are available and sign out when they're not. In my own freshman year, I was easily embarrassed asking what I knew we're simple common sense questions splattered all over a forum.

Forgive me for any unintentional rudeness. I assure you all that is by no means my intent. I learned a lot if humility last year and these dilemmas are all quite fresh in my memory. Thanks again to everyone.

Highest Regards,
Sam Stone

13

The Water Cooler / The Meaning of Christmas

« on: July 09, 2017, 12:21:01 PM »

I want to share a short story I had the privilege of telling a few members this week. When I went back and read what I had written to them I began to believe the experience could easily have been God encouraging me not to give up because I'm struggling and to keep my sights on putting Jesus and His birth on display through our show.
Here's what happened:  A few days ago my son and I went birthday present shopping. I was carrying far more cash on me than usual (the following two days were his and his mom's birthdays) and I took it out of my wallet to buy something. The store tried to literally double the price at the register so I stuffed the dollars in my pocket and we left. 5 or 6 blocks down the road I suddenly remembered I had a hole in that pocket and when I checked, sure enough all the cash was gone. We drove back as quickly as we could, but traffic was so bad it took over 10 minutes. Incredibly, we found the dollars rolled up and sitting in the middle of the busiest part of the parking lot of a very busy store in a very busy shopping center. We drove right up to a green wad of paper, opened the door, and picked it up without even having to get out of the car. Considering the amount of money I was carrying and the financial status of a family living with dad on disability, we could have been really set back a bit. However, only one dollar was missing and my 16 year old son let me know we should thank God for using us to get that important dollar to someone who we're sure really needed it. How blessed we are to not have much money so my son can teach me lessons when I need to be reminded about God's Grace. If anyone else is having trouble getting your show together, maybe you can find some encouragement as I did this week.

Not that I'm proud.

Best Wishes to all,
Sam Stone

14

My Show Setup / How My Show is Shaping Up This Year

« on: July 09, 2017, 11:44:55 AM »

A lot of good people have gone out of their way to help me this year, and I want to apologize for being so dense. Despite all the genuine concern offered, I think this is closer to what our show will look like than the grand theme I had hoped for. Hopefully you will fare much better.

15

My Show Setup / Re: Sam and Belinda Stone's Show Setup

« on: May 04, 2017, 09:40:06 PM »

I did not see a means to respond to all the great suggestions individually. To answer a few questions, yes I have downloaded X-Lights and plan to begin programming this weekend. We both will be watching as much of the available videos as we can (Belinda keeps me sane during this type of process--well, she tries anyway). Our most sincere thanks to each of you who have taken the time to reach out. I know you have all seen similar pleas for help many times, but your kindness and patience is valuable and we deeply respect the time you have given us.

Wish us luck!---Sam, Belinda, and Seaver Stone