Christmas Lighting Control Software

[AussiePhil]

What are the choices.....

Vixen
Vixen is very much the champion of the DIY community and with the greatest of thanks to KC, the developer, is made available free of charge.
Vixen can be found for download over at vixenlights http://www.vixenlights.com, with the current (2010/05/03) release being 2.1.1.0, a later release 2.5.0.8 is available but not recommended by everyone. Personally i used 2.5.0.8 for 2009 without issues but your own milage may vary.
The main support forums for Vixen are at http://doityourselfchristmas.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=12 and all support issues should be posted over at DIYC.

Lightshow Pro
Released in 2008 and now at version 1.5, LSP can be considered the new kid on the block. A demo is available but a full version will cost a few dollars. It has many exciting features that look to be the way forward in the RGB world.
LSP can be found over at http://www.lightshowpro.com/content.php
The main support forums are also located there.

In many aspects LightShowPro could be considered the "Auto-CAD" of the lighting animation scene, software that has such depth that it requires some dedication to unlock it's full potential, once this potential is unlocked you may very well never use anything else.

If others would care to chime in with other choices i'll update the first post.

Cheers
Phil

 

[fasteddy]

LOR S2 from Light-O-Rama

Licences

Basic - 2 controllers support - $49.95
Basic Plus - 4 controller support - $69.95
Standard - 8 controller support - $99.95
Advance - Unlimited support - $139.95


Another software package out there is LOR S2, this software is made by Light-O-Rama (LOR) to run LOR equipment.

LOR S2 is becoming a bit dated, it still requires the majority of work to be done in the sequence grid manually, but it still works well for sequencing under 120 channels without RGB, but once you start going into RGB, matrix's and large channel counts, then its nearly impossible to do any decent sequencing and a software package like LightShow Pro 1.7 would be needed.

LOR will allow you to connect up to DMX gear in the LOR universe but this comes at a price, the LOR iDMX dongle costs US$259.00 for each 512 channel universe. That is only 4 of MPH pixel strings, so for future scalability this could end up being very expensive if you want to branch away from using LOR gear and instead take advantage of all the gear that runs on DMX.

LOR has a new release in the future which claims to include RGB tools and matrix tools but there has been no release date as such (sometime this year) and the feature set has mainly been kept a secret.

More information and the free demo can be found at http://www.lightorama.com/


LightShow Pro 1.7

License

LSP Full version unlimited controller & channel output - $89.00


LightShow Pro (LSP) 1.7 is the new release of this software which will supersede version 1.5. What version 1.7 brings to the user is a whole bunch of new tools that manipulate and auto generate effects in the sequencing grid for you. What this does is allows you to create great looking transitions and colour blends with minimal effort. Programming 1000's of channels will not be difficult at all with LSP, because you don't need to manipulate the sequencing grid manually.

The other advantage that LSP has over the other software packages is its scalability for the DIY enthusiast. LSP 1.7 will allow you to communicate with many different types of universes and thus allow you to mix and match your equipment

The list of supported hardware is extensive as listed below

LOR 8/16/256 channel hardware
D-Light 8/16, AC/DC and Firefli hardware
X-10 ActiveHome hardware
Renard (Protocol I/II) Hardware
Animated Lighting Hardware
Enttec OpenDMX 512 support
Enttec USBPro support
Lynx DMX hardware support
Software DMX generated Effects

More information and the free demo can be found at http://www.lightshowpro.com/content.php