Falcon16v3 controller and dumb leds

[WesternLights]

Hi all,

I am completely new to this and planning for next year now that I have the bug.

Sorry if this has already been asked. Have been trawling for 2 days for an answer and haven't found it.

I have some very basic dunb lights in my front yard but want to do the music/pixels/mega tree setup next year. I am pretty happy with the reviews of the Falcon16v3 so that looks like a good starting point for me for a controller.

I watched a review at
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EcAXycWNSxM&t=147s
which was apparently sponsored by PixelController. At 4:12 in the video, it says that only smart pixels are supported and using anything else could damage the controller.

I was hoping to run some dumb strings in virtual outputs (sorry if that is the wrong way to say it, don't know the proper terminology yet) to maximise the amount of lights from an output (by using all the available 1024) but don't want to damage the controller.
Does anyone have any experience that running a dumb string will cause damage? I don't see why that would be the case if the voltage is appropriate.

Thanks

 

[darylc]

You can't run dumb strings from Pixel controllers.

Typically you would get a separate DMX dumb string controller and plug that into the DMX ports on the Pixel controller if it has a DMX output (like the Falcon controllers do)

eg
http://www.hansonelectronics.com.au/product/dmx36mk2/
http://www.hansonelectronics.com.au/product/dmx2-18/

 

[WesternLights]

very fast reply and makes sense. Thanks.

 

[AAH]

You can run dumb lights off a pixel controller. The 2811DC15 and 2811DC30 that I make are an interface to allow you to run dumb elements like rgb lights/floods, fairy lights, relays etc from a primarily pixel display. the 2811DC controls do much the same as the 2 DMX boards of mine that Daryl mentioned but the distance between "things" (pixels/or pixel controllers to boards) is much smaller for these pixel boards compared to DMX boards. With DMX you can go up to 1.2km of daisy chained boards. With pixels you're typically limited to under 10m spacing.

 

[WesternLights]

You can run dumb lights off a pixel controller. The 2811DC15 and 2811DC30 that I make are an interface to allow you to run dumb elements like rgb lights/floods, fairy lights, relays etc from a primarily pixel display. the 2811DC controls do much the same as the 2 DMX boards of mine that Daryl mentioned but the distance between "things" (pixels/or pixel controllers to boards) is much smaller for these pixel boards compared to DMX boards. With DMX you can go up to 1.2km of daisy chained boards. With pixels you're typically limited to under 10m spacing.

Thanks AAH. Such a steep learning curve but I am getting there. You and Darylc gave me more to think about than you think so I will do some more research and ask some more questions when I understand it all better. Thanks for your help.