Step by step help needed

[SirDevan]

My husband has been in the hospital for over 2 months recovering from covid.  I never do the technical side.

Is the xlights program all I open? Is there a secondary program to run?

It's set up to our Christmas layout which is different from our Halloween one but I don't want to lose the Christmas pixels he's drawn out - what to do?

How do I turn the lights on? He has almost like a modem out in the garage but should I just directly run a cable as I don't know about wifi?

He is on a trach and I'm terrible at lip reading but I can ask him some simple questions. 

I figure if I can't get it running I'll just try and get it in orange meteor test mode or something as he'll be in a much better state come Christmas time.

Thank you for any help you're able to give me.

[Hoogieburner]

Might be hard for someone to give a step by step when peoples set up can vary.  Perhaps someone close by could help?  I would assume sequences have already been completed so it may be as easy as scheduling....I am no expert by any means but I have learned here that there are many people willing to help.

[jnealand]

Add a location to the signature line in your profile so that it always shows up or get in the habit of always adding it to every post and as you read post watch for folks who show their location and see if you spot anyone reasonably close.

If you have zoom available and know how to access it the zoom room can help.  Link is in xlights under the help menu or on xlights.org.

[SirDevan]

Ok, he said to plug it into the yellow and run it out the window and plug it into any slot on the modem thing he has in the garage for all the lights.  I followed the yellow ethernet cable to a switch, the stuff outside still won't play. The audio is still only on the headphones here and not on the radio in the garage which I've got turned on, no lights outside are going on.  I even tried running the ethernet cable directly to his computer - still no luck.

The one matrix I have plugged in is showing a red light in the bottom corner which I believe means a counting issue.  xlights is showing all our Christmas lights which is our bigger show and I don't want to lose that.

How do I save what he drew out? We don't even put up half the lights for Halloween. Do I just need to tell the program that these things aren't hooked up? I would honestly be good with it on test mode, I can make the speakers out there play spooky music and just get by for this.  He will be much better in November and able to talk me through stuff.

[Gilrock]

Normally you would create sequences in xLights and then play the show using the xScheduler application unless you were using an FPP (Raspberry Pi) device.  It sounds like you want to play a Halloween show but you are seeing the Christmas layout.  There are multiple ways to setup different shows.  I like to use multiple show folders or he could have used different previews within the same show folder.  When you run xLights select the "Controllers" tab and you will see the "Show Directory".  That is the path where the files reside on the hard drive.  You can back up that folder to make sure you don't mess anything up.  xLights also should be doing those backups by default but sometimes its hard to find the one you need when a problem happens.  Go up one folder in Windows Explorer (assuming its Windows) and see if there are other folders like one for Halloween and one for Christmas).  Report back what you find.

[SirDevan]

OK.  I backed up the folder named Show.

Inside that folder are more folders like 'old sequences' 'this is halloween' 'ghostbusters'

He does not seem to have one saved set for Christmas and one saved set for Halloween. The old sequences does have 'Halloween_2020' which is 'program xlights' & has the nutcracker icon

[Gilrock]

So as long as you don't mess with the models on the Layout tab or anything on the Controllers tab and don't hit any Save buttons when prompted you will not overwrite anything.  It could be like I do where I have my full Christmas show in the layout but I replace a few of the models with Halloween props and also even though you everything in xLights I do not hook it all up in the yard.

I would run xScheduler64.exe and see if its already setup with a Playlist.

[SirDevan]

Ok he said I need to go to fpp and then started saying our ip address. I did a quick search while I was with him and it brought up falcon.

I have tried our ip address, local, then i tried the ip gateway, and the ip address on the box that's outside.  I  do not know how to get the ip from the raspberry pi that's in the garage. I don't even know if i need to make sure he has software installed on this computer before doing that. I tried reading up on it but it all looked like it was just to get it on the raspberry pi which he would have done previously.

I tried in xlights using the fpp upload and put in the ip address of the box our matrix plugs into but it still wont show any connections. It does list a lot of the sequences there tho.

I think I need to get the ip address from the raspberry pi but I do not know how to do that.

[Gilrock]

I suggest getting onto the xLights zoom channel with a microphone hooked up.  You can try opening a web browser and typing ?fpp? and see if the page comes up.  Maybe just don?t run the show till he gets back.