P5 Panels - Octoscroller or ColorLight card (or something else entirely) and why?

you haven't provided enough information to answer your question
 
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Multiple Colorlight Cards with FPP for P5 Panels (Guide)

Hi All, As this is has been a common question recently I thought I would write up a quick how to guide on how I got my 5x6 p5 panel matrix up and running. Please click spoiler buttons to reveal images. End Result: [A] My Setup: First of all just some basic information about my setup. This...
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I don't care what P5 panel. I am interested why people pick one receiver card over the other... If it is the type of panel that drives that decision I would like to know that also. What I understand today is that any P5 panel with a certain scan rate can run on either card, so why pick one over the other?
 
it all depends on what you want to do. what panels are you wanting to use and what size screen there is no simple answer.
 
For "smaller" matrices, an Octoscroller will produce a very similar video output (if things like brightness and gamma and color depth are reconfigured). For the most part, an Octoscroller is easier to configure as you only need to configure the stuff in FPP. With the colorlights, you have to configure the stuff in FPP just like you would for the Octo AND then configure a bunch of things is a separate App, so more work. For standard "indoor" panels, the Octo setup is very easy to setup. For the "outdoor" panels with different scan rates, MOST will work with the Octo, but it's a bit of trial and error to figure out which it is (unless the vendor, like Wired Watts, knows and will tell you).

For super large matrices, the colorlights can definitely work better as you can daisy chain them. Also, the colorlights do allow the receiver card and the Raspberry Pi to be in two completely different places. The Octo really needs to be within about 30inches of the start of each chain of panels.

Also note that there is another option: any Sender+Receiver combination. That could be Colorlights sender with the colorlight receivers or LinSN or a few others. FPP 4.5 and newer can have the HDMI configured for specific resolutions that the sender card can then grab easily to send out. This allows quite a bit more flexibility and performance. However, higher cost as the senders are not nearly as cheap as the receivers.

The separate App required for Colorlight configuration is also only a Windows app. Thus, for Linux/Mac users, the Colorlights have an extra barrier.
 
dkulp said:
For "smaller" matrices, an Octoscroller will produce a very similar video output... <SNIP> ...The separate App required for Colorlight configuration is also only a Windows app. Thus, for Linux/Mac users, the Colorlights have an extra barrier.
Click to expand...

Thanks @dkulp! Super helpful! Exactly the kind of info I was looking for.
 
So I am thinking about 5 X 5 P5 Panels, configured portrait. so 80 CM X 160 CM. Octo enough?
 
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