Hello!

[Sonny_Jim]

Hi there!

After playing waaaaay too much EVE Online I figured I needed a good old fashioned hobby to keep myself occupied and started looking around for something. I spotted some ws2811 lights on Hackaday and figured they would be fun to play around with, so I ordered 5M of some 12v ones off eBay. Still waiting for them to turn up but they should be here soon.

In the meantime I started reading up on using ws2811's with a Raspberry Pi, which lead me to Bill Porters write up, which was really interesting, as it got me into the FPP rabbit hole.

Long story short is that I've got a Pi 2B with FPP 2.5 installed, hooked up to a 400W (ish) ATX PSU, waiting for some lights to turn up. I've had a little play around with xlights and seems to be a pretty powerful program.

Not sure what I expect to get out of all of this, but it should be a fun past time!

 

[Mark_M]

Welcome to ACL Sonny_Jim!
Wait till the price of this rabbit hole adds up and be prepared for long hours troubleshooting!
I say that most people prefer to shop through Aliexpress rather than eBay as there are good pixel manufacturers that have been known to have quality products.
If you want to get in quick; another member (darylc) has a thread open for making a purchase of falcon controllers. He imports them into this side of the globe so we don't have a huge shipping cost.

Enjoy the rewards from this hobby!
Mark

 

[Sonny_Jim]

Welcome to ACL Sonny_Jim!
Wait till the price of this rabbit hole adds up and be prepared for long hours troubleshooting!

I used to fix pinball tables for a living, so insane prices and hours of troubleshooting aren't alien concepts to me

I say that most people prefer to shop through Aliexpress rather than eBay as there are good pixel manufacturers that have been known to have quality products.

I'm a bit wary of Aliexpress as I've not used it before, but definitely plan to start using it over eBay in the future. I just wanted something to get me started, so plumped for one of these:
https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/173689098308

If you want to get in quick; another member (darylc) has a thread open for making a purchase of falcon controllers.

At the moment I'm just looking for something fun and I'm not quite sure if I want to 'take the plunge' on a Falcon controller quite yet. My current plan is to make a simple display using the 5M strip in the above link on one of the Pi's WS281X's output, with something like this on the other one:

https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/2X-50-X...Pixel-Addressable-led-Strip-C5G5/113301011670

Going further, I might look into running a few more 'non-pixel' lights using relays driven from the Pi's GPIO, but I'll see how I get on with the WS2811's first.

Which section of the forum would be a good place to start asking Pi/FPP related questions?

 

[Mark_M]

Hello Sonny_Jim,
Absolute technical stuff to do with Falcon player is best for their forum's but some of us here might know. Like this new members say hello thread, there's a thread for Falcon things. If you in a pinch, people on the chat might know.

What ever you do please don't make a controller with an Arduino. Anything USB will fail during a show. USB isn't good for the amount of data. Trust me from experience!
I made a thread about controlling ''dumb' strings which I think will be applicable to your idea of using relays if you run out of GPIO pins.
It's a basic idea if making my own dumb string controller that acts like multiple pixels. Saves on spending $40 for one.
https://auschristmaslighting.com/threads/making-my-own-boards-to-control-dumb-strings.11320/

Thanks,
Mark

 

[djgra79]

Welcome to ACL!
If you haven't seen it already, suggest you download the 101 manual and have a read up on all the different options available in the hobby.
You'll find a majority of members will buy direct from vendors such as Ray Wu by emailing them directly and asking for a quote to help reduce on shipping costs. By all means browse the Aliexpress sites for the items you need and then give those web page links to the vendors in your email as reference.
ebay lights can be very hit & miss based on member's feedback over the past few years.

 

[Sonny_Jim]

If you haven't seen it already, suggest you download the 101 manual

I've already had a look through it and whilst it was well written and gave me a good overview of the options, it seemed to be decidedly lacking in anything about using a Raspberry Pi, which is my main focus at the moment.

Still waiting for my first reel to turn up, so I kept myself busy and built a GPIO board for my Pi so I can switch up to 100mA, set it up in the channel outputs of FPP, tested it using the 'Display testing' page and it seems to be working great. Even managed to get something rudimentary working in xlights.

Is there a way to 'connect' xlight to fpp or do I have to upload the fseq file each time?

 

[AAH]

I've already had a look through it and whilst it was well written and gave me a good overview of the options, it seemed to be decidedly lacking in anything about using a Raspberry Pi, which is my main focus at the moment.

Still waiting for my first reel to turn up, so I kept myself busy and built a GPIO board for my Pi so I can switch up to 100mA, set it up in the channel outputs of FPP, tested it using the 'Display testing' page and it seems to be working great. Even managed to get something rudimentary working in xlights.

Is there a way to 'connect' xlight to fpp or do I have to upload the fseq file each time?

You can run FPP in bridge mode where it will act a an E1.31 pixel/dmx/gpio controller. If you're doing testing that's the way I always go.
My 2811DC15/2811DC30 boards can be controlled virtually directly from the Pi and will give you a lot more than 100mA. They are 30A across 15 or 30 outputs.
I generally have 2811 pixels on my site as well.

What part of Vic are you in? I'm in Eaglehawk/Bendigo.

 

[Sonny_Jim]

My 2811DC15/2811DC30 boards can be controlled virtually directly from the Pi and will give you a lot more than 100mA.

Oh these are just a couple of crappy 2n3904's I had kicking around from a previous project, I figured I may as well get something going whilst I'm twiddling my thumbs waiting for stuff to turn up. At the very least I can use them to get an idea of how it all goes together (xlights/GPIO/fpp etc) and use them to trigger some cheapo dollar store strings.

You can run FPP in bridge mode where it will act a an E1.31 pixel/dmx/gpio controller.

Aha! I'm still learning but that just about makes sense to me Will have a go at setting it up like that tomorrow night, thanks.