HELP! I can't get Xlights to talk to my PixLite Controller:-(

Hi Goliath, Thanks for that. Please see my Spread Sheet, which should show you most of the details of my display. Hopefully I've made it easy to understand and if you find any errors or mistakes, please just let me know?

Giles, thanks for posting the spreadsheet. It's a big help to me, and I didn't even ask for it.Bet it helps some others too.

Bob

This is the way I would set it up. It is not the only way to do it, but allows greatest ease of future additions without having to redo work already done.



Your wiring schematic looks ok, Does the power to all 400 nodes on transformer 2 go through one fuse? That is a fairly high load, and of course, should have a fuse commensurate with the anticipated load. I generally put an automotive fuseblock in and have several smaller feeds individually fused, rather than one large capacity one.
You are definitely not letting the positives from different transformers mix?

Thank you everyone so much for all of your help. I finally got my lights working (well most of them) on Christmas Eve. It was SO good to see all of the lights come on and my simple sequence to actually run.

However, I am still having a couple of issues with some of my lights that I can’t work out. I’m thinking it must be an addressing issue. On both of my Icicles Runs, not all of the Pixels are working and I’m just not sure why. I have rechecked my channel count and they seem to be correct. Also the problem I’m having is different for each set.

On my Garage Icicles, the last 7 drops (except for one Node on one of the drops) aren’t working.
On my Roof Icicles, only the first 11 drops are working. Any suggestions???

Also on Goliath’s layout (thanks so much for that, it made all of the difference), you showed the two Null Pixels as only needing 3 channels. I thought each Null Pixel would require 3 channels each, or are the Null Pixels different?

I hope everyone had a great Christmas.

Yep. Two null pixels would require 6 channels.
Possibly the icicles have bad chips in the the nodes. It can be the last node that works (not transmitting to the next), or the first one that doesn't work (not receiving). I had another set of Ray's icicles go bad this season. 2811 chips are prone to die with power spikes, I am told, so plugging in while powered up is not recommended. Very pleased to have been of assistance, and glad you got something fired up!

I’m already thinking about my next Christmas display.

I picked up a Falcon Controller on the group’s last Bulk Buy last year and I’m now thinking about the best way to set it up (in a weather proof enclosure with power supplies and probably cooling fans as well).

So, I’m thinking about mounting everything on some sort of mounting board. This way I can work on it out in the open and once it’s all wired up, I can then just insert all of the gear into the weatherproof enclosure and then just connect up all of the external cables.

So I was just wondering, what is the best mounting board to use for this job? I’ve been looking for a plastic mounting board (similar to the weather proof enclosure I already have), but without any luck. I could use an acrylic sheet, but that seems to be quite an expensive way to go. Or could I just use a thin sheet of MDF, as this is easy to come by and fairly inexpensive.

Any thoughts on what I should use and suggestions on where to pick it up from, or an online sight maybe?

I use ply as a base in my controller boxes.