Hello

Eagle

New elf
Joined
May 18, 2017
Messages
5
Hello, my name is Paul and I'm honor of my son who passed away of Cerebral Palsy. I'm in the very early stages of creating an 80 channel display using 2 pixcon 16 controllers and the new falconv3 with 2 expansion boards with ribbons. I plan on using the raspberry pi. My goal is to have 98 channels to which that was the year my son was born. If anyone is willing to answer any questions that I may have or if you live near by and would like to help out I would appreciate all the help I can get. Thank You!! The trouble I'm having at the moment is where to store the music and sequences that I will creating, should it be stored on the computer, jump drive, or SD card? As well as nutcracker and LOR?
 

OzAz

Senior elf
Global moderator
Joined
Dec 29, 2015
Messages
997
Location
Newcastle
Welcome Eagle, sorry to hear about your son, we come to Christmas Lighting for all sorts of reasons and your is a heartfelt one.

First up. have a read of the 101 manual https://auschristmaslighting.com/threads/auschristmaslighting-101-manual.1889/
Most of us will recommend xLights (nutcracker) as software of choice for sequencing, a) because it's free; b) because it's quite powerful but (relatively) easy to use.

The music and sequences are all stored on the computer you use to create the sequences; then, if you are going to use a Pi to run the show, you copy the relevant files to an SD card to run off the Pi. In brief, there's two different files created in xLights, the .xml file is the one created when you are doing the sequencing, the fseq file is the one that runs the show (a sort of binary version of the xml file, if that makes sense.)
xLights also has an option to back up your files to a secondary location, like a 'jump drive' or online like dropbox, for added convenience and security.

Drop into chat anytime to ask questions, or post specific questions in the relevant thread/topic. Chat can get a bit silly at times but there's heaps of guys who are way more knowledgeable than me there.
 

djgra79

My name is Graham & I love flashing lights!
Global moderator
Generous elf
Joined
Dec 27, 2011
Messages
2,164
Location
Cranbourne West
Welcome to ACL Eagle, you'll find lots of info in the forums and as Oz said above, jump into chat for some live feedback on any questions you may have.
 

videoman3857

Full time elf
Joined
Apr 21, 2016
Messages
445
Location
Glass House Mountains
Welcome to ACL Eagle. So sorry to hear about your son. I started Christmas lights in memory of my mother when she passed away from Cancer.
Christmas was her most favourite time of year and it always brought out her inner child.
Although I don't do smart pixels (yet) All my sequencing is done on my computer. I make back up copies onto a flash drive so I may go between a tower and a laptop.
I also save all my sequences to Drop box. Call me paranoid, but I don't want to loose all those hours of work. Especially those singing Christmas trees.
 
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