G'day and your advice on next years set up

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sydbs01

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G’Day ACL Community,
So I have been lurking around this forum for the last few months, reading post after post to learn what I can.

I have always been into electronics and technology, started out at 15 years old going satellite television broadcasting for Sky racing and from there moved into motion picture film technology (in 1998 I helped create the camera setup for the famous matrix freeze frame shot Im sure you all have seen) worked in film camera equipment for 4 years and from there I went completely sideways and now work in locksmithing and security as a project manager. But I still have the bug to play with electronics, this combined with the fact that my late grandparents always loved Christmas and handed down to me last year was all their decorations has led me here.

For this year I wanted to start off in the kiddy section of the pool, so I just played around with putting some dumb RGB strips on my unit balcony, made a few RGB 10 watt flood lights to light up the cut outs I made, and made some dumb rgb trees, all running off 2x 27ch ray wu controllers and 1 x power supply.

In the next few months I will be moving into a house and will not be restricted to a unit balcony, finally!!!So its now time to step up into the deeper end of the pool.

I have already committed to buying a F16V2 and I already have 2 x 27ch ray wu controllers and 2 power supplies.

I am attaching a pdf with my planned layout for the yard and walls of the new house, for 2016 I want to start off with the yard, 2017 I will move on to the roof. For 2016 I want to build a mega tree and 2 star poles, I want to build 4 leaping arches and 5 pixel poles to go between them. I have added some photos from other displays I have seen to show what I am looking at building and my proposed wiring plan. Now I know I have to take in to consideration cable length for each of the runs but I am planning on having my F16V2 in the center of the yard to minamise runs, but at this stage I don’t know exact lengths.



So Community, Id like your input:

What recommendations would you make on this set up?

What would you suggest I do differently and for what reasons?

Is there anything I am doing wrong here?



Thanks,

Brendan
 

Attachments

  • 2016 christmas set up.pdf
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sydbs01 said:
Is there anything I am doing wrong here?

Thanks,

Brendan
Click to expand...

Yes. You're spelling pixel wrong :D

It may be the way you've drawn it but dmx boards get daisy chained. What is the dmx device/dongle that you've got there? I may be wrong but the F16 may have dmx outputs on it.

The 27 channel boards are limited to 15A (without modification) so you need to be careful when loading them up with things like RGB nodes.

Other than those few things your layout looks good.
 
I think it is a usb DMX thingy which you wont need as the falcon board will have DMX outout on it.

The only thing I can see is that you will need to be care full with the distances of your first pixel from the controller.You may require some Null pixels in there to regenerate the signal.

Other then that it all seems to be there, Just a lot of hard work ahead and lots of testing. START NOW!!!!
 
if i can give someone in their first year from someone in their 2nd year have all your plans together by end of january , buy all you can before march or april so you have heaps of time to sort any problems and get things built and ask questions if need be and one thing i am glad i did if nothing else is buy my controllers in oz as there is heaps of backup ,support and technical people in here who use the same gear
 
G'Day Brendan,
From one Lockie to another, Welcome to ACL.

Your plans look like a minimum of 20 universes there so I believe the F16 will handle that. I haven't used one myself, but I am also looking at one with the expansion board that goes with it, for future plans.

You'll also want something to run it all, and having used a Raspberry Pi with FPP for the first time this year, it was so reliable and pretty simple to set up. So maybe add one of those to the list.

Again, Welcome to ACL
Dave
 
I agree your plans look good.

You can significantly increase the distance between the controller and first WS2811 or WS2812B pixel if you use coaxial cable or null pixels. This doesn't work with every controller available but it will with the F16v2.

There are only a couple of little things I'd point out. It is probably a typo but I've never heard of a strip with 20 LEDs per metre. Also you might want to consider choosing numbers of pixels to more effectively use the supported number of pixels per controller output. If you get the F16v2 expansion board you'll be limited to 340 pixels per output instead of 680 but you can have 32 outputs instead of 16.

It's also a good idea to have a 3 pin connector at both ends of each pixel strip and have a couple of spare strips. That way if a strip becomes faulty you can easily swap it out. There are other things worth having in your order including strip end caps and a pixel tester.
 
Welcome to ACL
I have what ditto what lizardking (Adam) said, start as early as you can trust me I have a box of stuff not even looked at that I thought I could do this year and ran out of time. But on the bright side I can at least start building stuff next week for this year.
Stuart
 
welcome47.gif
 
Welcome to ACL, imo I would also look into the advantages of the other manufacturers pixel controllers. There is a lot to choose from and they all have different features.
 
Welcome to ACL Brendon.
That is a few elements to get going in one year, but sounds like you have your head around most of it anyway. Half the battle is deciding what to do so having a plan this early is certainly to your advantage.
Ask as many questions as you need during your builds.
 
Yep, I agree with everything already suggested, I can only suggest one thing.
If you have the funds to get an extra f16, I would get that now. You said you want to do the yard this year and the house next year, so you will most likely need another anyway.
But the advantage of having a second one is you can then plan better where you have them so as to centralize them for least wiring distance.
I have 2, the first one is in a box with the raspberry Pi, power supplies and dumb controllers. Then a long cat5 cable out into the yard where the second one is.
Neither of them are running at full potential so there is plenty of room for adding more, but when I do add an element I work out the closest controller to save on cable and so far have not required any "null" pixels.
 
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