Pixie 16 Controllers + Raspberry pi + Xlights?

[stealth95l]

If we get a raspberry pi and set it up with xlights can we plug into the pixie controllers into the network jack from the pie or do we need the usb to serial adapters for the pixie 16's? Also we have two 16 channel pixies that will run a 16x96 matrix each, I read that if we daisy chain them that the matrixs don't display properly or lag? So Whats the best way to set up 4 Pixies? Thanks!

[Gilrock]

Unless those Pixies are running off DMX there is no way they will run that many channels under xLights.

[stealth95l]

Unless those Pixies are running off DMX there is no way they will run that many channels under xLights.

Each channel supposedly can run 170 smart pixels? Why wouldn't xLights handle it?

[dkulp]

The proprietary LOR protocol is somewhat figured out so we can drive some pixels, but we don't have all the details for the super high speed stuff.   

My suggestions are:
1) Sell them on ebay and get a real e1.31 controller (if you can find any in stock)

2) Get a PixieLink - they would appear in xLights as a normal e1.31 controller.

[Gilrock]

Yep what Dan says is correct.  I'm the one that tried to reverse engineer the enhanced LOR protocol.  The performance varies because the amount of data produced for that protocol seemed highly dependent on the complexity of the effect.  If every pixel has a different color and changes every frame it was a really inefficient protocol compared to normal E1.31 packets which are always equal length for the pixel data.  I had it running fairly well for controller a couple LOR color ribbon strips and their 16 channel boxes and I had a Pixie I believe the 4 channel one that I bought just for the purpose of figuring out the protocol.  But you hook up a 16 channel Pixie and it was so much data we couldn't keep up unless you slow down the frame rate.  Maybe they have some additional magic they do in their code but this is what happens when a company tries to make you unable to use anything but their hardware and software.  I would never recommend anyone buy a Pixie.  At the time I worked on this there was no DMX option for Pixie's but I hear they've come up with a product to solve that which I guess is the PixieLink Dan mentioned.  They must have realized the deficiency and a lot of their customers were switching to xLights and running into trouble which was causing people to have to abandon the LOR hardware.

[stealth95l]

Yep what Dan says is correct.  I'm the one that tried to reverse engineer the enhanced LOR protocol.  The performance varies because the amount of data produced for that protocol seemed highly dependent on the complexity of the effect.  If every pixel has a different color and changes every frame it was a really inefficient protocol compared to normal E1.31 packets which are always equal length for the pixel data.  I had it running fairly well for controller a couple LOR color ribbon strips and their 16 channel boxes and I had a Pixie I believe the 4 channel one that I bought just for the purpose of figuring out the protocol.  But you hook up a 16 channel Pixie and it was so much data we couldn't keep up unless you slow down the frame rate.  Maybe they have some additional magic they do in their code but this is what happens when a company tries to make you unable to use anything but their hardware and software.  I would never recommend anyone buy a Pixie.  At the time I worked on this there was no DMX option for Pixie's but I hear they've come up with a product to solve that which I guess is the PixieLink Dan mentioned.  They must have realized the deficiency and a lot of their customers were switching to xLights and running into trouble which was causing people to have to abandon the LOR hardware.

Do you know if anyone has tried using the PixieLink with Xlights? The problem we have is we already have 4x 16 Channel Pixie Controllers, we kinda stumbled across Xlights looking at sequences or we would of went a different route, we might try to sell our showtime director on ebay. If we can at least use our Pixie's we bought for our show this year with a Pixie Link that would be awesome, we will probably end up going Falcons for the rest of the equipment they sound better / perform better / are cheaper it looks like as well, is that what you guys are running? Supposedly from looking at the Pixielink manual it converts them to read E1.31? And most of the other controllers I've seen are sold out so hopefully we can get these to work so we can do a show this year, if not we might have to wait till next year and can it this year.

[Gilrock]

I have not run into anyone that has used a PixieLink but I haven't been on Facebook and not many users come to the forum anymore.

[stealth95l]

I have not run into anyone that has used a PixieLink but I haven't been on Facebook and not many users come to the forum anymore.

Is there somewhere else everyone is posting? Thanks for the help/information btw we are new with xlights, it's a great piece of software! The guides was very nice to!

[jnealand]

In FB look for the "Official xlights support group"  There are lots of other groups as well and you can get overwhelmed if you sign up for too many.  I seem to recall that there might be a group for LOR users of xlights/FPP, but you would need to post and ask about that.

[tcroak]

The more I learned about LOR and S5 the more disappointed I was with their equipment/software suite. Luckily I wasn't too far into it equipment wise.