Taking a quick look at the new Smart (chain-able) differential deceivers. Also go through a Falcon F16V3 firmware upgrade to support the new boards.
Canispater
It's Latin for Dogfather
Taking a quick look at the new Smart (chain-able) differential deceivers. Also go through a Falcon F16V3 firmware upgrade to support the new boards.
Hi Jeff.
I have a f16v3 (updated) and 3 smart receiver boards and a differential expansion board (not using it after seeing you recent video) I’m trying to use the receivers on a 1600 pixel 360 degree mega tree with a 90 pixel star on top. I have the tree wired in 8 sets of 200 in xlights configuration in the layout page, all the ports on the 2 receiver boards are used and 1 port on the third is for the star. in color wash they all work great. however i’m not sure how to configure them in xlights since all ports are taken up on boards A and B , but in xlights the tree prop is configured in 8 strings @200 nodes per string @4strands per string and the only give you a single port to assign in the smart receiver portion of the controller connection section of the layout page David pitts says I can run 200 pixels per port on the boards daisy chained with power injection which is how its wired now. Any ideas how to fix this? I’m Stuck and not sure what to do. is there a setting in the f16 i’m missing or overlooked? Thanxs Jeff.
Assign the star as a separate prop?
I saw the whole show. The patriotic part was a blast. My wife would have loved it. She had me do our house with a lot of red white and blue, a task that would have been much easier had I used rgb pixels instead of ac lights. Every sequence fit the songs very well. My favorite was the For King and Country song. Having seen their live show a few times I can say your sequencing fit them very well. I hope to have reason to visit Austin and your show next year.
Don, Glad you enjoyed it! Little Drummer Boy is a downloadable sequence for xLights Around the World this year. Jeff
Yes the star is a separate prop that is allocated to board C port 1. Boards A and B are ver. 1.02 and C is 1.01 which Davis Pitts sent me a terminator plug for board C if that that matters. Not sure how to assign each port of boards A and B in xlights for the 8 strings if 200 so i can save that configuration to my f16v3 like you did in your video. The board dip switches are set correctly. Im guessing with the terminator plug David sent me for board c terminates it and thinking both sets of terminator dip switches will also need to be turned on. the pixels themselves light up in white from the connection point up to about 15 then the top pixel of those 15 notes are lit up either green or red this happens when no data is being sent to the reciever boards. All 4 data led on the reciever boards light up when powered up
I’ll admit that I don’t know all the differences between the different versions of this board, but I’d guess the terminator he sent is if you use on of the 1.01 boards at the end of a chain. With the 1.02 board, you can use it’s on-board terminator (guessing). Using both on “C” doesn’t sound right. As for the xLights config, again, not sure, but I would try setting the tree as the “A” board and the star as the “C” board and see if xLights figures out “B’s” settings based on the other model settings. You can check the Falcon config after you program it from xLights. I am using a DR on a matrix and when powered on, I have several lights at the beginning of the string that light up white, but they go off after about 10 seconds once the controller is fully initialized.
So xlights sent the star layout to board c to the f16v3 and split the strings ports page on the controller to the 3 SR boards. However it did not send the tree string parameters to boards A and B. I was hoping it would do an overflow effect. As soon as 200 filled up the first port it would fill next port and so on. Not the case and still stumped. shoot me an email to where i can send you screen shots of my layout set up, and hopefully you might see something that’s out of place that im missing.
You might try logging into the xLights Zoom room (see xlights.org). You can share your screen and interact live with people smarter than me. 🙂 I really have no other options to try at this point since I haven’t tried to span a prop across multiple boards.
Ok I’ll give zoom a try, i might give David Pitts a call also, and see if there’s something im missing. Thanks again for helping Jeff!
Was there a solution to this issue. I am trying something similar. I have a 2400 MegaTree, 32×75. Its set up as 4 strings, 8 strands/string 600 nodes per string.
Using 2 HP power supplies.
Xlights puts the MegaTree on port 17, using 4 ports, so 17,18,19 & 20
I want to use 2 smart receivers (A & B) 1200 nodes on each smart receiver, follows:
17a 600 17b 0
18a 600 18b 0
19a 0 19b 600
20a 0 20b 600
What i figured is that doing it this way, i can split between the 2 power supplies perfectly evenly.
Can’t figure out how to do this in Xlights for a Megatree model.
I can create the 2 start boards using the Falcon interface, and that would probably work, just not as clean, and anytime I update the controller, I would have to remember to make the changes again.
Any ideas or an i being to OCD about balancing thing, so the data and power are from the same PS?
John,
I’m not sure which issue you’re referring to? I think that’s more of a config problem with xLights. You’re effectively trying to split a prop across non-contiguous ports which may not be possible if I understand properly because there’s no way to assign the pixels that way. If you want to use 2 DRs, split the strings into 300 and run 4 ports on each receiver.
Jeff
I did not see away to do this in XLights,
But I think i can do this in the Falcon, on the “output Setting, / String Ports” page.
17a – 600
18a- 600
19a- 0-
20a 0
17b 0
18b 0
19b 600
20b 600
This is still using ports 17 to 20, is xlights sets it up.
Does this sound logical?
You may want to ask Keith about that. As far as I know, xLights won’t be able to do that with a single prop.