Display was mostly a failure for me in 2014

[drlucas]

+1 to Tom's post

All my ethernet cables have labels at both ends.

I have all my channels laid out in an excel spreadsheet.  I have the sheets going back several years so I can always go back and look at the way things were setup in the past.

My excel spreadsheet has several tabs
- a channels summary that show all my DMX channels and all my pixelnet elements with their channel count, nodes, and type of node used
- a controller summary that lists all my controllers and what is connected to them along with the channels that will be coming off them
- a pixelnet channel layout that shows by universe all elements, node count, controller 1st channel, last channel, pixel forward or backward, and show 1st channel which is not the same as controller 1st channel because of different universes.
- a dmx channel layout that shows by channel, (for me it's LEs), the unit number, the channel number within that unit which is labeled on the end of the 120v cord, the use, the bulb count, the amps used, etc
- and some other tabs used to build vixen channel labels

You can also take a lot of pictures of how you have things setup which will help in remembering how you did it in the past

This year I also started a sequence planning spreadsheet that has a list of songs I have an interest in, the artist name, the source of the music, whether I have completed an audacity timing file, and the status of that sequence.  I use version numbers on the sequence name and update the version everytime I redo it or make major revisions to it.

It all helps.

And you back up the excel sheet to Google docs in the event of hard drive failure! If not trust me on this one!!

[danj]

I am taking all of your advice to heart.  I already laid out my channel assignments in detail, assuming I will be using E682s again.  Also, will test everything WAAY before thanksgiving to make sure things work as I want them to....  Thanks so much for all the responses.

Merry Christmas!!