LOR Cosmic Color Ribbons/Bulbs in xLights

mikey8it

New elf
Joined
Dec 30, 2024
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Hello all.. Brand new member.. Looking forward to conversing with this group. Currently running Light-O-Raman ( LOR ) but wanting to change to Xlights. A few questions, maybe a lot of questions?? I have a few Cosmic Color Ribbons / Bulbs, CR150D and CB100. anyone know how I would address these in xlights?? Or how to put them in DMX mode?? The other LOR equipment I have, CTB16D & CTB16PC, I have figured out to put them in DMX mode and what the addressing is.. Thanks for your help.. Mike..
 
Unless you're really trying to avoid spending money, I'd try a different controller board. The CCR and CCB lights are compatible with a lot of xLights-friendly controller boards... so if you want you could assemble one with LoR pigtails on it and see what happens. If it doesn't work, you'd only be stuck with a controller, but you could offload that pretty easily, or swap the pigtails to xConnect and use for a new project. The controller would also have a serial DMX port for the CTB16s, the "newer" (non-ancient) ones will automatically lock on to a DMX signal if you cable it properly, and then it is just unit ID (minus 1) * 16 + plug number to control the A/C stuff.
 
Hello.. thank very much for your reply.. hey that's awesome.. not married to the controller, just want to save / use the rgb lights!! Any suggestions on the controller I could use / build with xlights to control these lights.. thanks..mike
 
Many will do it, but in this case I would say Falcon, as it has a few handy features for LoR migration (jumpers on the DMX port for LoR pinout, good support for older pixels), generally positive view within the community, good versatility, decent value, and can generally be resold if you change your mind.
 
Thank you.. I was looking at falcon a while ago.. won't harm anything by picking one up and playing with it.. ?? Thank you very much.. mike
 
Nothing technical will get harmed.
I can't make any promises about your future free time, bank balance or wife acceptance factor as you go down the rabbit hole 🤣
 
Thank you.. I was looking at falcon a while ago.. won't harm anything by picking one up and playing with it.. ?? Thank you very much.. mike

If your Cosmic Color Ribbons are the original version then I understand these use an older pixel IC known as LPD6803. LPD6803 strip has a separate clock wire for a total of 4 wires.

Before purchasing a separate controller, do check that your CCR strip is compatible. If they are indeed LPD6803, the Falcon F16 would be fine, but not the F48 as this only supports 3-wire pixels (aka pixels without a separate clock wire).

For the Light-O-Rama CB100 (bulbs) I am not sure what IC it uses. A post from fasteddy in 2016 suggests that the bulbs might be WS2801, but I am not sure. WS2801 are 4-wire pixels with a separate clock wire. These would have the same controller limitation as the original cosmic color ribbons (F16 ok, F48 not).
 
I’m still using Cosmic Color Ribbons in my show with xLights. The original controller works with DMX512, you just need to swap the pins on the DMX cable to LoR pins (same for any old LoR controller.
I normally run each LoR controller on its own DMX port as they sometimes change addresses year to year and can overlap. Easiest way to find the right addresses for your CCR is to set up 1 controller in xLights and then use the test window in xLights to search through addresses. Find the address where the first CCR pixel only lights up and use that on a string of lights in xLights.
 
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