So I wanted to post another update to this thread. I wound up using xlights and my setup again in this summer's town production of Little Mermaid and it worked wonderfully. Below are details of what I did for anyone interested...
One of the set pieces was a doubled sided rolling piece which had Ariel's Grotto on one side and Ursula's lair on the other. For Ariel's grotto, I lined the "cave cubbys" shown here along with my fellow no-sleep set/tech and producer...
with some led strips. They are turned on their side and attached by one of my favorite utility materials...floral wire.
On the other side I used zip ties to mount strips behind the last layer of Ursula's lair artwork.
Because the set piece was mobile, I rigged my controller (with some electronics help from a fellow wizard) to run off a 12volt battery. I mounted the controller and some breakouts on a shelf we put in the set piece, and the battery in a hollow section of the lower part. We hooked up a meter to measure amperage of the 6 strips we used and found it drew 9 amps with all strips on white. I also wired up a router and a separate circuit of electromagnets which we used to "destroy" the grotto. Piece of cake. Here's a shot of the wiring...
My special effects desk (more than just this) was just off stage left, so I put my Mac there and ran xlights. I was able to make tracks and use the wonderful fact that when you click on an effect in a timeline it runs the effect in that area , as a means to cue each effect. This is the same strategy I set up for my 5th graders last spring, only this time I ran the effects. I just put an off effect in between each actual effect (in theater that's called a blackout) for organization mostly. Also the labels in each effect made it possible to write cue numbers and effect details in. Overall it worked awesome!
Here are a couple in the dark pics I took of the set piece.
Ariel's lightning:
If you compare to the first picture you can see what's going on. This is a still frame but I used the Lightning effect which worked out incredibly! I also built a Bluetooth controlled trident (shown here)
that could animate led's so the bottom lit up gold in sequence and then the fork flashed white right before the grotto flashed white. Then the magnets released various objects which clattered down completing the effect. Overall it worked great!
Here's the effect for Ursula's lair. This complemented stage lights on the front and around it. I used a purple hue effect and added in some twinkles that made it look like poor unfortunate souls were trapped and moving around in it.
Overall, xlights continues to be a great way to add great effects into stage shows once the interface is approached from a theatrical perspective...which of course is a secondary, yet totally awesome application! Thank you guys so so much for such an awesome program!
There's one thing I forgot to test when this rig was up and I will next time. When I do this again I'd like to add in the ability to fade in and out the effects. I know this is possible because I have played with it, but I haven't figured a way to transition from the lights full on to them fading when I want to (as opposed to in time). In other words if I have say a 2 min time slot for an effect on the timeline and I add in a fade at the end, that works perfectly in context of the intention the software is designed for. But...what if I want to control when the fade happens live? (not intended function). I thought well if I duplicate my effect into two timeslots and then I make the first one with no fades, and the second slot duration as long as the fade I want and with a fade programmed, then I could click the non-fade one and run it (preview it) until I'm ready to fade and then just click the second...as long as I can hit stop once it fades completely. ( clicking an area of the timeline previews that effect and loops it. I will post funny story about that in next post.). Or...set the cursor up so that when I hit play it starts at the fade effect slot, and just put an off effect after it and when it's time to fade out just click play. What I haven't tried is to see what happens when the timeline goes from one effect to the same effect across a time marker....does it glitch in any noticeable way? I will experiment next time I setup the rig.
Once again thank you guys for an amazing piece of software! I wish one day I could sit down and write an operation screen/view/skin specific for theater because you really can use this creatively for so many led-based productions! Continued awesomeness!!
Mike
