XLights
From Nutcracker Wiki
xLights History
- Xlights was created in 2010 by Matt Brown. Matt, a LOR user, wanted a show player that would have low system requirements and high performance.
- Xlights has been a reliable player used by hundreds of Christmas Light enthusiasts
Nutcracker 2.0
- Nutcracker was written by Sean Meighan in 2012.
- Sean, who was new to Christmas Lights, wanted an easier way of creating effects on smart RGB devices.
- Sean came up with the concept of defining a model (Megatree, matrix, arches, .etc.) and then dropping effects (butterfly, spirals, text, .etc.) onto the model.
- Nutcracker 1.0 and 2.0 were developed as a web application. To create effects you would log into the web, define models, and drop effects.
XLights/Nutcracker is Born!
- In January 2013, Matt Brown took the web based code that Sean had written and re-wrote into C++ and made Nutcracker part of xLights.
- It produced a real time Nutcracker product.
- Example:
- The snowflake effect took 5 minutes to generate effects using Nutcracker 2 minutes
- In Nutcracker 3 (The xLights port), that same effect now took less than 5 seconds.
xLights/Nutcracker - The Next Evolution in computer animated lighting!
- In January 2015, a group of courageous men took on the task to develop the next evolution of xLights/Nutcraker.
- Audacity timings have been incorporated into the platform. For those who wish to add and create timings manually, please see below.