How to get started with an RGB light display

Minion mania

New elf
Joined
Oct 16, 2015
Messages
3
Location
Zilzie
Hi Everyone,

Congrats on your amazing displays, I hope you are all sleeping easier and taking a short break, for a day or two anyway.

I have been spending oodles of time researching into controlled light displays and have reached a decision to evolve from traditional lights into RGB, both strip and node, to begin with.

For my trial show I would like to have a mega tree and also borders on the house, roof and windows etc. I have spent so much time researching and not much time doing, so if someone can point me in the right direction that would be amazing.

What I really need assistance with is knowing what components to have to produce the above and where to buy them from. I need an honest opinion, have considered both plug and play and taking up the sequencing challenge. For now hopefully this sparks some discussion on how I can achieve this.

Thankyou in advance,

Minion mania
 

i13

Dedicated elf
Joined
Jul 5, 2013
Messages
1,172
It seems as though you're hoping to get a large pixel display together. A good starting option for a controller would be the F16v2 or the PixLite 16 MKII. These have their advantages and disadvantages over each other but they're both good value for the number of pixels they control.

The pixels themselves are usually ordered from China. Ray Wu on Aliexpress is a popular seller but most of us contact him directly before ordering.

It would help to have a knowledge of pixel types and 5V versus 12V (different in the case of nodes versus strip) so that you can choose the right ones.

Download xLights and Vixen as these are both popular free sequencing software options. See which one suits you best. It's possible to import other people's sequences into xLights if you want to avoid having to make your own.

Put together a shopping list and post it on the forums to get feedback.
 
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