Controller xLights settings to reduce future headaches

[Kimbo3000]

The Problem:
Small changes in pixel numbers on a controller causes knock-on effects to other outputs and other controllers. This causes the sequences to look all messed up.
The Fix:
Re-render and re-upload all the sequences to all the controllers.

How this affects me:
I have about 45 sequences and 5 controllers to upload the sequences to. 1 of these is a pi controlling a projector which has fair number of channels associated to it... so it takes awhile. Rendering all sequences takes about 1-1.5 hours and uploading the sequences takes three quarters to an hour.. (FPPv7.3 and xLights 2023.20)

Controllers we have in total:
1x FPP show player Pi4
2x HE123 FPP Controllers
1x Pi + Colorlight card for tune-to sign
1x Pi + HUB75 hat for panels
1x Falcon F16v2R
2x Falcon F16v3
1x Pi connected to Projector (virtual matrix)

Last year I decided to add a couple more flood light and forgot to re-render all the sequenes.. so they were messed up. From this I learnt the importance of the order of the controllers on the controller tab in xLights - having the static ones (projector and panels) at the top and controllers where changes are made more often toward the bottom of the controller list.
This year we have had trouble with a prop having to bypass the first pixel on it a couple times - therefore reducing the number pixels by 1

My Question:
Given I have a fair number of elements and controllers now, I dont really want to go back to the days of universes and starting channels.
If i leave 'full xlights control' and 'auto layout models' turned on.. and just turn off 'auto size'.. and allocate more available channels to the controllers (the max the controller can handle - 115,200 for the HE123 @ 40fps).. to avoid knock on effects of future changes.
If I did this.. would this allow me to only upload to the 1 controller where the pixel number changes were made... and not upload to other controllers?
- Is there downsides to doing this?

Cheers
Kimbo

 

[Kimbo3000]

This is for anyone who finds this in the future (and probably me next year after I forget this)

After discussing this in chat, the general consensus is to put the static, unchanged controllers at the top of the list (ie panels and for us the projector pi) and the pixel controllers at the bottom. If a change in the number of pixels is needed on a controller (ie due to a fault), then a re-render of all sequences is needed, but would only have to upload the sequences to the pixel controller that changed and all controllers below it in the list on the controller page in xLights.

I have fixed this issue on our display and uploaded the re-rendered sequences to ALL controllers due to some changes I made to some sequences. Only having to upload to the pixel controllers and not the panel/projector Pi's would probably save 30-45 minutes... worthwhile if time is an issue.

Thanks to all that assisted me in chat with the 'best way' of sorting this problem out.
..
Kimbo

 

[dkulp]

To go a step further, I personally leave "auto size" turned off for each controller and give each controller a block of channels large enough for everything it has along with a bunch of extras. For example, the controller with my arches and pixel stakes currently has about 8K channels of pixels on it, but I have it configured for 10200 channels. Thus, if I add something of reasonable size to that controller, I just need to upload to that one. xLights will warn about large blocks of unused channels, but I ignore that. They will use up some memory while sequencing so don't go nuts, but they compress down to almost nothing in the compressed fseq file and wouldn't be included in what's uploaded to the controllers anyway so it's not a big deal.

 

[Skymaster]

Thanks for the insights into the inner workings @dkulp - I take it the main memory issue is whilst rendering? Would it affect the speed of this at all?

 

[Kimbo3000]

Yeah, I might think about adding these extra channels to the controllers that I may add to in coming years.

As I have had to re-render a few times lately (61 sequences yesterday when I did it last), I've taken notice of the system resources whilst rendering. System memory is at about 60% usage, but CPU is at 100% a lot of the time (Windows11 - laptop).. so obviously constraint by the speed of the CPU.

I assume rendering is mainly down to single core speed of the CPU? Can anything be done to make rendering of sequences any faster?
..
Kimbo

 

[dkulp]

Best option to render sequences faster is to get an M3 Max based Mac.