ACL101 - what's missing from the 2nd revision?

AAH

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Ryan and I are currently doing a fairly extensive update to the ACL101 to reflect changes that have occurred in the couple years since it was last edited. There's dozens of changes that have been made so far but if people can think of anything that might have been missed then sing out here and we will look at getting it implemented.
 

AAH

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There's a whole bunch of boards going in that weren't around when the last 101 came up. These include ones from myself, David_AVD, Falcon and Advatek. Fusing and faultfinding are the 1st major topic additions that have been added so far. There's been lots of typo corrections (still in there after MANY revisions and edits), format changes, corrections due to changes in sequencers and much more. What we are looking for is stuff like the fact that fusing never made it into the earlier releases.
 

ElSalZi

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Not sure if this is too basic, but from our perspective, just starting out the manual has a massive amount of info that is difficult to absorb all at once. And that made it a little hard to figure out "Where" to start... may be Ima special kind of stoopid?!?

Wondering if a couple of designs/set ups of a display could be "modelled"?

What I'm trying to get at is something more specific than the general models already in there... Say a Star/spinner - size, # of pixels, pig tails, wire, PSU, signal cables to controller to show PC...

Most of this makes perfect sense to the long timers and the sparkies and the electronics/IT Technicians but there are some of us that are not as gifted or trained...

Just a thought.
 

AAH

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Tonight I started a section in 101 on extending the pixel distance with nulls, buffers and differential/long range outputs. I don't have any pixel controllers that aren't Pi/FPP based so I am chasing screenshots of the null pixel configuration pages from Advatek, Falcon F16 and San Devices if anyone has any plugged in and is willing to do a screenshot or 2 for me.
 

Bill Ellick

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Nice to see the update on a very important piece of material that should be in everyone's inventory of blinky references!

I recommend this to anyone who asks on any forum about doing animated lights whether it is just static, AC, or full-blown pixel craziness!

I will try to sit down in the next few days and go over it and see what I can think of from the past couple of years of answering questions for others as well as my own experience.
It certainly is a big help to people over here "across the pond" so keep up the good work, please and Thank You, AL and Ryan!
 

DavidJ247

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Tonight I started a section in 101 on extending the pixel distance with nulls, buffers and differential/long range outputs. I don't have any pixel controllers that aren't Pi/FPP based so I am chasing screenshots of the null pixel configuration pages from Advatek, Falcon F16 and San Devices if anyone has any plugged in and is willing to do a screenshot or 2 for me.
Hey Alan. Here are a few screenshots of the Falcon F16 string ports page where you setup nulls as well as other functions such as virtual strings, zig zag, colour order, etc. These are screenshots from the past season as I don't have this controller plugged in right now but it would not be difficult to plug in again if you need any specific screenshots, let me know.
 

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AAH

I love blinky lights :)
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Hey Alan. Here are a few screenshots of the Falcon F16 string ports page where you setup nulls as well as other functions such as virtual strings, zig zag, colour order, etc. These are screenshots from the past season as I don't have this controller plugged in right now but it would not be difficult to plug in again if you need any specific screenshots, let me know.
Thanks David
I've never seen a F16 running and the screenshots have confused me a little. A couple of the ports have 2 lines that seem to be assigned to them. Am I assuming correct that you can assign a null/s at the start of each subsection and is there a limit on how many lines there can be per output?
 

DavidJ247

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Thanks David
I've never seen a F16 running and the screenshots have confused me a little. A couple of the ports have 2 lines that seem to be assigned to them. Am I assuming correct that you can assign a null/s at the start of each subsection and is there a limit on how many lines there can be per output?
Yes correct, this a feature of the Falcon boards called virtual strings and it's a great feature if you have more than one prop/element on a port as it allows you to set any of the parameters independently for each prop on a separate line(virtul string) such as start channel, colour order, direction, brightness an others as well as nulls. Yes the null is counted at the start of that virtual string, though as you can add additional virtual strings before or after on the same port it allows you to cater for null nodes wherever they are physically located along the run whether they are at the start or not. I'm not aware of a limit on the number of virtual strings, but I'm not certain.
 

adski

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Here's a screen shot of the E6804 setup web page. Null pixels are defined in the Output Configuration section. In this example, 3 of the 4 outputs are in use - there are 2 null pixels on the 1st output, 3 on the 2nd, and 5 on the 3rd.
E6804Setup.jpg

The E682 has 16 outputs organised in 4 groups. While there are some restrictions on how the output groups can be configured, the number of null pixels can be individually defined for each of the 16 outputs.
E682Setup.jpg
 

AntinOz

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What about a basic networking setup... with a lot of people using XLights/vixen with FPP etc, setting up the network. Dedicated presentation network. DHCP vs static addressing etc.
 

AAH

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What about a basic networking setup... with a lot of people using XLights/vixen with FPP etc, setting up the network. Dedicated presentation network. DHCP vs static addressing etc.
Network setup, DHCP, IGMP, bit snooping and all those things are above my pay grade. I'm hoping that there's a network guru who can give me some input. Andrew/multicast has talked about them at Melb mini a few times and he's convinced me that I don't know anywhere near enough to offer anything like expert opinion. I added a very brief network setup section in the version 2 years ago that I started on and what Ryan and I are now updating.
 

AAH

I love blinky lights :)
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Network setup, DHCP, IGMP, bit snooping and all those things are above my pay grade. I'm hoping that there's a network guru who can give me some input. Andrew/multicast has talked about them at Melb mini a few times and he's convinced me that I don't know anywhere near enough to offer anything like expert opinion. I added a very brief network setup section in the version 2 years ago that I started on and what Ryan and I are now updating.

Actually after a bit of thinking I reckon @damona who I'm sure has attended a mini or 2 and knows a lot more about networking than I do might be the person I reach out to to offer some 101 networking knowledge.
 
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