Not an effect request but a 'feature' request

[Greg.Ca]

Last year my Mega tree was a 36 strand X 75 pixel, this year it is a 48 strand X 150 pixel and I'm already planning for next year which should be a 64 strand X 224 pixel mega tree.  All of these are 180 degrees pointed at the street.

As I increase the size of my matrix, it uses more electricity. This new matrix scheduled for NEXT Christmas will use 16 separate 350 watt  5VDC power supplies all powered by two different opposing legs of 120 power (240VAC).  Half of the power supplies will be powered by one leg and the other half of the power supplies will be powered by the other leg.

Initial computations with all pixels going to white will use the maximum amount of current that my service can provide. As I design for worse case scenario I have to factor in all pixels going to white just in case that happens. Therefore I had to cut down the length of each strand from a desired  240 pixels to a safer 224 pixels/strand.

Some of the effects have a lot of pixels going to white which uses a lot of power. I need to know how much power at any given moment so that I can adjust my other channels so that I don't use too much power and pop a circuit breaker. One of the tools I use is called a  'kilowatt' power meter. See below. Everybody should have one of these.

http://www.amazon.com/P3-P4400-Electricity-Usage-Monitor/dp/B00009MDBU/ref=sr_1_1/186-3384635-4353444?ie=UTF8&qid=1419263077&sr=8-1&keywords=kilowatt+meter


This device can be temporarily inserted into the AC  line and monitors exactly how much current is being consumed. It has a digital display and indicates exactly how much AC current is being used at any given time. Best $20.00 I ever spent. 

If there was a indication in the nutcracker software that shows a percentage of how many pixels were energized at any given time such as a bar graph then it would give me the necessary info I needed to allow for other channels to be powered up. I have to share electricity resources between my pixels and my non pixel LED's. There is only so much electricity for everything and that has to be shared between pixels and non pixels. I have 100,000 other full wave LED's that also need to be powered up with the same electricity sometimes at the same time.

As we all know, going to either all red, all green or all blue is OK, but as we deviate to other colors we use combinations of these colors. White is the worse case scenario as this uses 100% of all three colors and uses the most amount of electricity.

As the size of our displays increase, (let's face it, this Christmas light stuff is addictive--they always increase) electricity usage starts to be become an issue. I have had to go to two separate feeds of 240 VAC to power all of my lights and I am 100% LED but as the size of our displays increase we use more electricity and electricity usage needs to be shared between all elements of the display.

Any chance of a dynamic LEDl (bar graph??) monitor that shows an indication of how many LED's  are being powered while programming? This would help me during programming and let me know how much electricity was being consumed at any given moment.  --Greg--

[sean]

 Easy, I will get it done in xlights 4. I will add a prompt on each model, u enter the power that those lights are using, like .3w. I will calculate the estimated power and graph it for your sequence

[flyinverted]

I will add that because my pixels were so bright, I went back in many of my sequences and adjusted many effects to 40-80% brightness.

The downside is that at 40% brightness, it's hard to see the resulting effect on screen.

Is there a possibility for "Sequencing Brightness" and "Output brightness" controls?

Thanks!
Steve

[Steve Gase]

+1  ...a 'no vidualizer dim' that avoids both effect and model dimming would be very helpful.

[Greg.Ca]

Yes Steve you are correct. I have had to reduce the brightness to a level of  '15' on some of my animated GIFS so that they would look real good on the street but yes indeed, with that low of a brightness the image on the computer screen is almost dark. I would want to control screen brightness independently from the brightness of my mega tree. That would be nice to have. --Greg--

[jnealand]

Sometimes I think if we could just have a non-black background for the visualizer windows that if would help a lot, lot a grey instead of a black.  Lots of time I cannot see a blue element very well on the screen.

[sean]

+1  ...a 'no vidualizer dim' that avoids both effect and model dimming would be very helpful.

yeah, that would be an easy fix.

[Charl Marais]

The Setup page gives me a list of all the networks and channels but currently no way to assign either a model name from my model list or even a chosen tag or name.  Is it possible to add a additional column to the sheet which allows us to indicate names or even better assigned models from our model list?

Thanks in advance

[sean]

The test tab will show which models are connected to each channel. We certainly had a description column on setup


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[Charl Marais]

Initially the test tab did indicate the various models, however once you create a whole house model this overwrites the descriptions. My test tab only indicates whole house model assignments and not the various models anymore.

I will try reassigning each model to see if it changes the descriptions on the test tab again.

[sean]

We could block whole house from displaying in test, would that help?

[Steve Gase]

since whole house will be a secondary model, it seems it should have a lower priority.

maybe assign descriptions from whole house models first... then apply the non-whole house models (the latter ones would/should replace the former)

[DDameron]

WOW, Greg, I didn't make it up to your display this year, but I certainly will for 2015 !!!

Dan