How do you power down your controller box?

Dez

Dez

Fueled by Christmas - Inspired by You!
Joined
Dec 16, 2014
Messages
277
Location
Toowoomba QLD
How do you guys power down your controller box at the end of the night? I assume you use a timer on the 240v plug which turns off power supplies. How do go about powering off the falcon f16v3 safely?
 
Mine get manually switched off. I only leave the main Pi and 2 network switches powered up, the rest get powered down. FPP gets shut down correctly, but the falcon F16 needs nothing but the power removed
 
Just turn the power off to it, falcon board doesn't need a "shutdown" like say a Rasp pi etc

Some use timers, some use remote timers

I am a bit old school and simply turn the power points off which supply my pixel controller, PSU's etc.

I do leave my Rasp pi running FPP as a show player powered on however
 
lithgowlights said:
Mine get manually switched off. I only leave the main Pi and 2 network switches powered up, the rest get powered down. FPP gets shut down correctly, but the falcon F16 needs nothing but the power removed
Click to expand...

Ok. I just wasn’t sure if there was a shut down sequence for the falcon. I will connect my rasberry Pi to a seperate circuit then. Cheers!
 
lithgowlights said:
FPP gets shut down correctly
Click to expand...

I just switch off all my components, my F16v3's and my FPP Pi players by flipping a mains switch. I've never had an issue with corruption or data loss on the Pi's. That said, when I switch everything off, there's never anything playing, so the disk IO activity will be very minimal, which I believe where issues generally arise from with Pi's.

I do keep backup images of all my FPP player SD card images during the season so it would very quick to reimage a SD card if needed, though I've never had to do that.
 
To automate FPP shutdown, I have a scheduled playlist that triggers an event to run the FPP shutdown script:

  1. go to Content Setup > Script Repository Browser
  2. scroll down to Category: "System" Filename: "Shutdown.sh" and click the 'install' button
  3. Create a new event, go to Status/Control > Events
  4. Choose an available event id (next unused one?), give it a name, command is "Run Script", script name "Shutdown.sh":
  5. 1592401266083.png
  6. Add a new Playlist (the event ID below is different to the example above as I had already created this event, your event id will be the same)
  7. 1592401448916.png
  8. playlist should look like this after it is added:
  9. 1592401522044.png
  10. (you would be able to add this event this as a leadout from your show playlist also, noting that it would run immediately after your show)
  11. Add this playlist to your schedule, I run mine 15 minutes after my show ends:
  12. 1592401577308.png

I have a DIN pool pump timer infront of my power supplies, FPP, Falcon and switch: https://www.edaonline.com.au/produc...ctrical-24-hour-electricians-tools-pool-pump/
This is rated to 16 amps, I only have a small display and Im pulling less than 2amps AC, so well within the timers spec. Get your sparky to wire this up ;-)

So the pool pump timer will power everything up around 6pm, and then the FPP will shutdown cleanly at 23:15 followed by the pool pump timer switching everything off at 23:30.

Works a treat.

Steve
 
I run my show the same as "Sector30",
with the fpp to remotely power them all down, while the main controller stays up streaming xmas music,
then 240v digital timers are set to turn off 5 minutes after fpp does it job.

Every couple of years a 240v timer might die, (probly the switching load on them)
 
I use the cheap Arlec wifi power controllers found at Bunnings on all AC power points used to power up the show, one year I did have an issue with the PI getting corrupted but I believe that was fixed in a later version of FPP, one year I didn't have any digital timers and was staggering out around the front yard everynight around 11pm to turn the lights off, never again ..
 
tooms said:
and was staggering out around the front yard everynight around 11pm to turn the lights off, never again ..
Click to expand...

All my 240V come back to a single location on the front deck, so I can lean out the door and turn them all off in <5 seconds :)
 
I now have a timer to turn everything on/off
I will see how the PI goes with that later in the year to see what happens everything on/off including the Pi with enough time to get the NTP time and then run the show power down the show then the power will just disappear.
 
SAALTFAM said:
enough time to get the NTP time and then run the show
Click to expand...

I don't have a real time clock or battery on my PI to keep the time, I found it was only 1-2 minutes for NTP to update the time on the PI and the show would start if I turned the power back on late
 
Also if using timers/smart switches I beleive may be a good idea to stagger on times, eg a min or so apart, but those who know more may know if this is a idea or not a big deal, just figured having them stagger be a idea in case switching a bunch of supplies on at exactly same time could be a issue?
 
i use smart switches and have them configured in Home assistant to turn on and each one has a delay of 10 sec. i also do this for turning them off. like others say i have a script to shutdown fpp ones before they are powered off.
 
I use DMX relays to turn my controller boxes on and off. They are triggered by the first and last sequence (that don't get looped) on the pi or xlights.
 
I use these AC timers, set a min or 2 apart from each other. All PSUs, controllers & FM transmitter get switched on and off via these every night. Only my show Pi and network switch stay on 24/7 for access.
www.bunnings.com.au

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Find {productName} at Bunnings. Visit your local store for the widest range of products.
www.bunnings.com.au www.bunnings.com.au
 
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