Changing from ESPixel Sticks to Falcon F16v3 - is this setup going to work ???

[Tory Street Lights]

After a difficult run with ESPixel sticks last season (23 of them) I am planning to  replace them all with one Falcon F16v3, using 23 outputs. I have pasted below a screen shot of the setup page and would value constructive comment, as I would like to ensure it is correct early in the year  :-)

I will be driving the Falcon from xLights Scheduler direct from a show PC, as it will be running other devices as well.

The blocks of channels with the 192.168.200.10 would be the ones going to the Falcon, and are grouped by physical cabling which would be very difficult to re-wire to allow chaining as they were previously driven in their groups by individual Pixel Sticks.  The strings labelled as "roof stripes" is the longest with 648 Pixels in the one string, the rest are somewhat shorter around 225 to 324 Pixels.

I plan that the first 16 outputs would handle universes 5 - 34, and the rest would be on a 8 channel balanced line extender board, with four outputs run to each of two locations.

I would have liked to split the 648 Pixel string into two, but it is wired as a Polyline, thankyou Gill for showing me how,  but I couldn't figure out how to break it in the middle and put another data output on it at that point, thankfully it worked fine when driven by the Pixelsticks, so hopefully it will be fine when driven by the Falcon.

Thanks for reading,

Terry

[Gilrock]

I would have liked to split the 648 Pixel string into two, but it is wired as a Polyline, thankyou Gill for showing me how,  but I couldn't figure out how to break it in the middle and put another data output on it at that point, thankfully it worked fine when driven by the Pixelsticks, so hopefully it will be fine when driven by the Falcon.

Are you trying to use the automatic controller upload feature or will you manually configuring your controller?  If it's manual its easy you don't need to change anything in xLights you just configure the Falcon to however you want the channels to start on each output.  If you want the auto stuff then I'm not an expert on that feature and don't know if you can have it switch outputs in the middle of a PolyLine.  How many segments does the PolyLine have?  You can use individual start channels for each segment.

[Tory Street Lights]

Hi Gil, thanks for your reply :-)  I had figured that it should work, but naturally I would like confirmation.  I planned to manually configure the setup because after watching several of Keith's video's it didn't seem the config I required would apply easily, well that was my take!!

Regarding the polyline, it has 18 segments and can be accessed in the middle, it is the set of "stripes" on the roof that you showed me how to set up a year ago!!  xLights didn't seem to play nice when I tried to break it in the middle to apply another data input, hence I left it as is. I am happy to leave it although it will unbalance the F16v3 output allocation balance, but according to my calculations it should fit inside the 1024 pixel limit  :-)

Cheers,

[Gilrock]

What do you mean when you say you tried to break it in the middle?  The only thing you should need to do to change the channels is click the Indiv Start Channels checkbox and then make sure the start channel listed for each segment matches what you want.

[Gilrock]

In fact why does the model in xLights need to change at all?  The model can be a contiguous block of channels and then you can break it across the Falcon outputs however you like when you set it up in the controller.  You need to show the model and controller setup info to get folks to help suggest how to arrange it.

[Tory Street Lights]

Thanks Gil, at the expense of appearing "dumb", I found that on the xLights layout page, with the polyline model as a contiguous chain all was well. If I attempted to place a new universe/start channel (Universe 44:1) to the point I wanted to break into the chain, to match the setup configuration, I would have had to apply the same, incremented, for each item on the list from that point on in the chain.

I re-arranged the setup page to address the start, and the middle section of the Polyline model, where I would like to inject the data from another output of the Falcon, and xLights seems happy  :-) 

I have been pondering the "problem" and if I am correct, I should, as suggested by yourself a year ago, be able to simply apply the extra Falcon output part way along the polyline chain without changing anything so long as the numbers are correct, before and after that point. 

I suspect I may have been over thinking the whole thing  :-(  I would like to apply the PC/xLights to the Falcon, but at this stage it is still packed up in it's box as we are well away from home, and I simply doing planning for the display attempting to get my head on straight!!!

I have pasted below a snippit of the Layout page, where the chain involved is located, as well as the setup page to illustrate the configuration.

Thanks for your time, I am still getting my head around this gear  :-(

[Gilrock]

There are like at least 3 different ways you can handle what you want to do.
1)  Manipulate the xLights Setup tab so that the univ/channel you want aligns correctly when you get to the middle of that PolyLine.
2)  Use Individual Start channels on the PolyLine model which requires you to define every segment.
3)  Just set the Falcon output to be wherever it needs to be.

And it can be a combination of one or more of those options.  The problem is you seem to be treating it like the universe/channel on the Falcon output is fixed and I'm saying that is the easiest spot to change.  There is nothing saying you can't setup a Falcon output to start at Universe 55 channel 27 if that happened to be the spot where you wanted to do what you are calling a split.  To me that is the easiest solution.

Here's how I create my channel setup:
1)  Define a bunch of universes that are all 512 (If it's not Falcon controllers stick to 510)
2)  Hard code the start channel for the first model connected to the first output on each controller.
3)  Daisy chain the start channels for every model that is on that controller.
4)  Every time you get to a model that begins on a new controller use a hard coded start like #44:1
5)  You design your whole show in xLights and then configure the controller outputs last...I wait till I put them in the yard and then I configure the controller manually in 5 minutes.

So the controller on the left side of my front yard starts at universe 26.  First output is Arch1 defined as #26:1.  It has 216 channels.  Arch2 is attached to output2 on the Falcon so here's how it becomes easy.  I don't assign the Falcon outputs first I assign them last.  When I setup my Falcon I tell it output 2 is universe 26 channel 217.  If I had assigned the Falcon first I might have told it output 2 is universe 27 and then I would not be able to use model daisy chaining for start channel assignments I would have had to hard code every model on the Layout page.

[Tory Street Lights]

Hi again Gil, 

That all makes perfect sense :-)  As the old agade said "there are more ways of killing a cat than drowning it in cream"  :-)  It just requires some knowledge of the permutations available, as well as the "Best/simplest" way of going about it :-)

Our display, as far as Pixels are concerned, was laid out with ESPixels stick's in mind, driving individual models/sections. Due to the legacy of the mechanics of the Data input wiring involved, I will need to keep the bulk of it "as is". The exception being that long string of "stripe Pixels", which I have got easy access too, at "roughly" the mid point for a new data input, by literally unplugging the existing data feed from its neighbour and applying a "new" feed from a Falcon output.  :-)  The only reason being to keep the Pixel numbers "similar" on each data output of the Falcon.

Many thanks for your observations, and direction. For a relative "newbie" it is invaluable at this stage of the year to get ones head pointed in the correct direction, and allow the brain to process the setup over time :-)

The more I read the xLights/Falcon information, and dig into it's possibilities, the more I realise how powerfully the combination is.  Even if the learning curve is still very high for one of a "certain age", trained in electronics for servicing/maintaining  broadcasting equipment at component level with valve technology  50+ yrs ago :-)

Cheers and Thanks again, Terry

[Tory Street Lights]

I have finally managed to get the F16V3 and expansion module boxed up and "hopefully configured", I would value another pairs of eyes to look over the configuration that I have hard coded over from the original setup used when driven by multiple ESP8266's.

It has been suggested that I reconfigure all the models in xLights to chain them all together and then allocate the port addresses in the Falcon.  As one of a "certain age" I got my head around the original config, Universe/Start Channel/ESP and applied it to the Falcon F16V3 (Universe/Start Channel/Port) and to my mind it looks as though it should be OK.  Is there any advantage in converting the config, as far as I am aware there will be no changes expected in the setup going forward, so the universe count barrier should not be an issue.

Terry