SMPTE time code sync / slave

[sean]

Maybe a picture of our landscape will help.

xLights 4 is the sequencer. It was originally written by Dave Pitts in Oct 2014. Dave Pitts is also the original designer of the Falcon Player in 2013 and also the designer of all falcon boards.
Dave handed off the falcon player to Capt Murdoch in late 2013. Capt has been leader in that project since.,
Dave handed off the xLights sequencer to Gil Jones, Dan Kulp and Keith Westley in Jan 2015.
Dave continues as sole developer of falcon hardware.

To your question as reliability, The falcon player is very reliable. Running Linux instead of Windows I think has helped reliability. I had mine running for 3 months straight, never needed to reboot it. One user ran a park in Wisconsin on the FPP. His was mounted up in a tree and drove thousands of lights. The only issue he experienced was the FPP (really raspberry pi) would stop when temperatures approached 5 degrees F. His solution, put a 15w bulb in the case the rpi was in.

As far as smpte, i assume Gil, Dan or Keith could do this but they
a) Would need to decide if they want to take the time. The time they take to develop anything is time away from their families. Our software is open source so their is no remuneration for them.
b) decide technically how to implement it.

If you really want something like this you might make a direct donation to one of them, it might raise the priority.

xLights is used for Christmas and Halloween. Our target audience normally does NOT use artnet or smpte. Our shows are usb dongles driving lights (LOR, Renard, Pixelnet,d-lights,DMX) or E1.31 driving controllers (Falcon16v2, alphapix,pixcon,e682,pixlite).

I would estimate not even 1% of our user base would need this. If we did implement it, our user base would
expand. Because we can have one master and hundreds of remotes in FPP, each driving 250K channels each with a projector we have a solution for large shows now. Like 25 million channels, 100 projectors , or even larger

A picture describing how you imagined it would work would be a help.

sean
I created the original Nutcracker effects in 2012

[arw01]

are you able to use artnet as a protocol?  Opens up some "stored" and triggered abilities geared more for commercial such as what you are doing.

[sean]

artnet is currently available on the FPP. It is not available from xlights.

I should clarify:
xLights is a sequence AND a show player
FPP is a show player only

xLights runs native on Windows XP, Vista, 7,8,10. Linux and MAC 10.8 and higher
FPP only runs Linux

FPP has more support for output devices than xlights.
xlights show player: USB DMX, OpenDMX, LOR, Renard, Pixelnet,D-Light, E1.31
FPP:    All the above + Artnet, triks-led

[flyinverted]

You can trigger events to start sequences / or effect sequences on the FPP.  A trigger can be a GPIO header contact or a software command. You may have what you need already there, just need to explore.

[CaptainMurdoch]

FPP can also be triggered by E1.31 if you use the control channels to fire events.

I have considered SMPTE but that won't happen until I rewrite the input code which won't be until next year.  Focus right now is playlist and player enhancements to go along with the new UI in FPP v2 which we would like out this year but won't be recommended for show use even if it is out before Halloween.

FPP supports ArtNet out via the OpenLightingArchitecture library but we don't support ArtNet input.  That will come after the input code changes next year.

[lasersmith23]

I think the easiest way to make the SMPTE part work would be to make a normal show in Nutcracker, synched to a soundtrack and then be able to change the timing reference from the original audio track to the SMPTE timecode reference.  As an example, I use Cakewalk's "Sonar" audio / MIDI sequencing software to send MIDI cues to external equipment, making new MIDI 'tracks' to record MIDI cues which will trigger my DMX lighting board.  I make additional 'tracks' to send MIDI cues to an inexpensive DMX board which will trigger fog, bubble and snow machines.  Just like using Nutcracker, I program using a .mp3 file along a timeline to sync all of the activities in the show.  Since the main soundtrack is identical to Sonar's, but mastered in multi-channel audio, an external HD-based audio player is used (which also plays the main SMPTE track).  I switch Sonar's timecode reference from following the .mp3 I used to program to now listen to the audio track with the SMPTE reference.  When playing back the main audio player's soundtrack, you can turn up the volume on the Sonar computer and hear an almost-perfectly synched soundtrack as it follows the SMPTE timecode.  What's convenient is knowing that as long as your main soundtrack is playing and multiple computers are following the same timecode, if one of them crashes during the show you can reboot while some elements of the show are still playing and the audience is still hearing a soundtrack.  Let's just say that Windows, to this day does not have my vote of confidence so I tend to look for hardware-based solutions as much as possible.  Hope this helps... thanks again!

[lasersmith23]

Wow... I just noticed the stream of replies from the group.... thanks!  It sounds like the Pi unit is reliable enough to provide a mono audio track with the other track providing the master SMPTE timecode, operated through the web browser.

Is there a link to a thread where I can see how to trigger events through e1.31 or "a GPIO header contact or a software command"?  This may be an adequate solution for the immediate future.

Other than a 'play' button, does the browser have the ability to jump through the timeline or through songs in the playlist?   Again, your input is very appreciated.  I'll contact those who may be able to modify the source to follow SMPTE after the busy Halloween and Christmas season.

[kevinp]

Here's the Falcon Christmas forum for the Falcon Pi player (FPP) that you can search and possibly find the information you're looking for.

http://falconchristmas.com/forum/

[CaptainMurdoch]

Other than a 'play' button, does the browser have the ability to jump through the timeline or through songs in the playlist?   Again, your input is very appreciated.  I'll contact those who may be able to modify the source to follow SMPTE after the busy Halloween and Christmas season.

You can jump forwards and backwards through a playlist using the 'fpp'  command line helper utility but you can't seek within a sequence or media file while they are playing.

"Those who may be able" would be me, I am the lead developer of the Falcon Player.

I have plans to work on the sync code at some point already and that work would include making the sync code more modular so that different sync protocols could fit in easier.

[lasersmith23]

Good to know.  It sounds like the FPP is solid enough to provide a timecode on one soundtrack channel for the time being.  I'm buying a Pi 'bundle' from Amazon.com this weekend and look forward to seeing this setup run through the F16V2 pixel player and expansion board.