Messages

1

Bugs in xLights/Nutcracker / Re: Model Disappears after Universe Change

« on: August 27, 2019, 11:00:35 AM »

This is likely the same behavior that myself and at least one other person noticed. It looks like Keith has a fix, and it will be included in the next release.

https://github.com/smeighan/xLights/issues/1678

2

Nutcracker Models / Re: Singing face colors

« on: August 14, 2019, 03:21:01 PM »

You can drop another singing face effect on the same model (in a new layer) using the same lyric track / breakdown, but have a separate face definition with a different color for those tongue nodes. It was discussed a bit in this post, and that's how we ended up doing it.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/xLights/permalink/2085875041448240/

3

Bugs in xLights/Nutcracker / Re: Crash Report MAC version 25

« on: May 21, 2019, 01:13:31 PM »

I just reproduced it in .25 and .24 as well. I'll open an issue on github with the crash log.

4

Enhancement Requests / Re: New Settings entry: Default Audio Volume

« on: May 20, 2019, 01:14:21 PM »

I took a stab at implementing this feature, and my pull request (the code changes I proposed, for those who aren't familiar with github lingo) was accepted and merged, so you should see this topic addressed in the next release. There won't be a separate menu selection for default audio volume, but whatever you set in the existing "Audio" menu will be saved and restored at the next launch of the program.

5

Nutcracker Effects / Emoji fonts for SHAPES on a MAC

« on: July 24, 2018, 08:02:17 PM »

On a Mac, the built-in Font Book application is great for previewing and finding exactly what you're looking for, and the built-in Calculator is handy for converting the Hexadecimal character values from Font Book into the Decimal values that xLights is looking for in the Shape Effect. For the Text Effect you can simply click the character you want in Font Book, copy it to the system clipboard, and then paste it straight into the xLights text effect's text box. Here's a little video I threw together for the shape effect and text effect. I hope it's helpful!

One thing I forgot to mention in the video about Font Book - make sure you go to the View menu, and select "Repertoire" so you can see all characters of the selected font.

https://youtu.be/F5Q5VvkaGsA

6

Lights / Re: Moving Head Recommendations

« on: July 15, 2018, 10:43:18 AM »

http://www.prosoundrock.com/SL-1016A.html

These are an excellent bang for the buck. They're just slightly above your price range, but are quite powerful and have a lot of features that I think you'd appreciate. I used 4 of them in a display last year, all controlled with xlights, and everyone loved them.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H8K5gHBPwpU

You mention wanting something without a color wheel - do you want something with an LED light source that you can mix RGB values to create your own color, or do you want something that's literally just always a preset, solid color? Powerful LED light sources currently are not small enough to give you a good "laser beam"-like visible beam effect, so with an LED moving head you will be stuck with more of a wash effect. For true visible beams in the sky you will need something with a short-arc, metal halide lamp, and in my experience, at least in the 200 watt range.

You can still get true RGB color mixing in moving heads without a color wheel, it's just accomplished with sliding dichroic gradient filters between the light source and the focusing optics. Attached are a couple pictures from the inside of a Clay Paky Alpha Beam 700. The first shows the dichroic filter assembly (with static color wheel) just in front of the lamp housing / reflector at the bottom / back of the moving head (right side of picture). The second photo shows the assembly removed from the head, so you can get an idea for how they work. Each pair of shutters is designed with a gradient so that they insert more or less of the particular color as they're slid in and out of the path of light. Each of the 3 sets of filters are independently controllable with DMX channels (Just like RGB LEDs) so you can mix and create any color you want.

The biggest issue for any moving head in a outdoor application is keeping them clean and dry. The 4 in my display were elevated off the ground with bricks, and covered with plastic trash cans every night after the show. If it was raining or snowing, we would leave them covered and they would not be part of the show that night.

There are several manufacturers of full clear plastic enclosures (hard plastic or inflatable) but they often times cost as much, or more, than the fixtures themselves.

7

Lights / Re: Which C9 to get????

« on: July 15, 2018, 10:20:12 AM »

I have over 6000 of the Brilliant Bulb from HolidayCoro https://www.holidaycoro.com/Brilliant-Bulb-p/709.htm in use for 3 years now in a commercial display, and I love them. I also use a couple hundred for a simple roof outline at my house. The base of the bulb fits nicely into the shingle and gutter clips that I had been using for my incandescent C9 strings. They use 2x 5050 RGB LED each, and I think they're a good compromise of brightness, build quality and cost.

IMO, They look great top down or from the side. I would be worried about the brightness of a C9 shape / size light that just uses a single LED.

8

Do You Need Help? Post it here / Re: Layering DMX effects and model groups / sub-models for moving heads

« on: June 29, 2018, 04:58:45 PM »

When I mention pointing at a target, I'm talking about multiple lights that are spaced out in a particular way (this would require actual measurement between lights and target, etc. in the layout) automatically calculating their pan / tilt angles trigonometrically. So, for example, you could have a group of 8 moving heads spaced 5 feet apart in an east-to-west line, which could then be instructed to all point at the same arbitrary point in 3d space at a particular distance, height and angle away from some predefined reference point of the group.

For example, in my setup I have the 24 moving heads spaced evenly in a circle with a 30 foot radius. Off in the distance about 60 yards to the north west and about 35 feet off the ground is a flag on a flagpole. If I want all 24 moving heads to point precisely at the flag, without manually guess-and-checking, I have built a spreadsheet where I can plug in the distance, height and azimuth of the target, and then it calculates the pan and tilt angle for each head. It would be fun to have some more tools like that available right in xlights for moving head power-users.

9

Do You Need Help? Post it here / Re: Layering DMX effects and model groups / sub-models for moving heads

« on: June 29, 2018, 04:46:52 PM »

I wonder if you could do this with the block of channels model.

But I am not sure what would happen if you submodelled it. It clearly wouldn’t look on the screen right but it may let you do what you are after.

I'm not as concerned with it looking properly in the preview (and can't I just assign the same channels to multiple models if I really do care?) as long as I can still name the channels I will understand what's going on when I sequence it. I typically end up spreadsheeting the pan / tilt angles anyway since a lot of times I'm trying to point at specific things or cardinal directions and need to do some trigonometry to back into the DMX values.

If we're talking about feature requests, it would sure be handy to display and allow input of an actual pan / tilt angle instead of DMX value for the moving head models. If we want to get fancy, building in an automatic calculation for aiming multiple lights at a target, or pointing at a cardinal direction (using the pan orientation offset, and inputting a global offset from north or something) would be super slick!

I've never used the block of channels model - will have to try that one out.

10

Do You Need Help? Post it here / Re: Layering DMX effects and model groups / sub-models for moving heads

« on: June 29, 2018, 11:07:07 AM »

I understand why trying to route effect data to a DMXModel or group of DMXModels would require some more work, but what about making submodels for just those 3 RGB channels of the DMXModel? Shouldn't a group of 3-channel submodels be treatable like a group of standard RGB pixels and allow layout-rendered / positionally representative effects to be applied to it?

Also - I'd be happy to split the shipping cost (or deliver if you're reasonably close) of sending one of these beasts back and forth to you to play with. They came off of a professional tour, and I have full padded flight cases for everything. The 1500 HPEs are about 110 lbs each, plus another 50 lbs for the flight case itself, and the case is about 38" x 36" x 24". They also pull about 2 kW a piece, and require 200+ vAC power. Even the Alpha Beam 700s that I'm using in the ring technically use 26 channels, but I'm ignoring some that aren't critical to my application. They're a lot smaller, lighter, can run on 120 vAC and I'd be happy to send a couple of them your way instead / also.

11

Do You Need Help? Post it here / Re: Layering DMX effects and model groups / sub-models for moving heads

« on: June 29, 2018, 10:09:36 AM »

I forgot to include the second part of my question.

How should I actually layer DMX effects? Say I have a motion effect (using pan / tilt DMX channels) that I want to keep going over a longer period of time, but I want to mix up the color, gobo, prism, etc. in a layer above it, without overwriting the DMX channels that are controlling the motion. Is there a way that I can tell xlights to ignore / discard the (unwanted / unused) DMX values from a higher layer effect so that they don't screw up the motion on the effect in a layer below?

12

Do You Need Help? Post it here / Layering DMX effects and model groups / sub-models for moving heads

« on: June 29, 2018, 09:59:59 AM »

What's the best way to set up groups and layers for complex moving head animations?

For example, I would like to be able to use area-mapped effects like the fan, bars, etc. on the RGB, shutter and / or dimmer channels as a group of sub-models while controlling the pan and tilt channels separately, maybe per-model or with another layer or group of submodels.

I have 24 moving heads in a ring and built a 3-channel submodel for the RGB filters (it's an arc lamp with dimmer / shutter, not LED) another submodel for the dimmer channel, and yet another submodel for the shutter / strobe channel. I then put all of the submodels of a particular type (say, the RGB filters for color) into a model group, and tried to apply an effect to that group. No matter which combination of "Default Layout Mode" in the layout tab, and "Render Style" I choose in the Layer Settings tab of the Sequencer, I can't get effects to respect the physical layout of the heads, like a wipe in transition on those channel groups or an actual rotating on / off or color sweep like on the fan effect. The best I could do was to set up the "Default Layer Mode" for my shutter / strobe channel as "Single Line" and then I can at least turn them on and off sequentially with a "left to right" wipe  (see attachment) - but I really want to render that effect as it is laid out in the preview.

Any suggestions / ideas?

Also - what would it take to bump up the maximum channels on the DMX effect? I have some Clay Paky Alpha Spot 1500 HPEs which use 40 channels each. I'm currently skipping some channels I'm not using and controlling it with two models and two copies of the DMX effect.

13

Do You Need Help? Post it here / Duplicating / remapping model data onto new model

« on: December 20, 2017, 12:03:09 PM »

I have a 48 x 100 pixel ground matrix which is part of a large garden display, and I have purchased a few ESPixel Sticks to make some wireless / mobile things for volunteers and staff to wear which will correlate with the main large show.

Specifically, I have made a scarf with 4 x 48 pixels in it, and I would like to scale down or pick a few lines of the large matrix and remap / reproduce those exact values onto a different model - the scarf.

Is there an easy way to do this? I have tried exporting my ground matrix model as an avi, and then reimporting that onto the scarf model, but the scaling tends to distort a lot of the cooler effects. If I could just have xLights reproduce specific channel data onto other channels, that would solve my problem exactly. I am running the show on an FPP, and can remap contiguous blocks of channels, but because my scarf is physically assembled in a zig-zag, and the ESPixel Stick does not support a hardware zig-zag function, I need to correct that in software first.