Managing your show...

firebug

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Hey everyone,

We were thinking at home last night about how people manage their light shows. I mean the majority of the workforce work Monday to Friday at a respectable time of the day. This leaves you home at night to be ready to put on a show along with any associated tasks that go along with it. I am making an assumption only.

What of those that aren't there every night? Without an inch of programming know how what so ever I was wondering if displays can just go into like a demo, or general twinkle mode for those times that you want to blend in with the surrounding displays in the neighborhood? Say set the program to a basic display, lets say no music, turn on at dusk, go off at an appropriate time.

Reason I ask is I'm a shift worker and work a lot of nights including weekends. So any musical shows will probably only happen while I'm home...

Bill :)
 

caffeine

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Nearly all schedulers allow whatever you like.


You can have 'silent' displays going on schedule and then run musical displays on request.


Mine ran on an animated schedule until about 8:30 when the lights were properly visible and then went into musical sequences with an animated sequence in between each song for a minute or so.


Then there's also remote access to control the display wherever you are.
 

Superman

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Getting a show to turn on whether its just an animated one or a musical show is much the same. all the software choices have some sort of Scheduler function attached to them.
I choose not to be home all the time when mine is running and it can be as simple as just making sure the power is on.
I have a circuit in my house fuse box that is just the front yard I use for the display. If i'm not going to be home one of the nieghbours will flick it on for me.
 

AAH

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I'm always for a show that runs from dark until sometime later than dark with no gaps and no missed nights or whatever. If you have people who might have driven up to an hour (depending on the size of display and town) you don't really want them to leave disappointed if you're not there. I personally try to stay around for switch on time every night but I have on a number of occasions just turned on a few power points and then let lor scheduler do it's thing at 8:30. It doesn't get dark till 9 but at least with LEDs these days you can actually see the lights for that 1st half hour.
 

fasteddy

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This will be fine doing this at first especially if you have a small show or its not known very well or you live in an area that is fairly remote

The issue is that once you become known then they will still come because of word of mouth, so there will still be traffic but instead there will be a lot of disappointed kiddies and parents. So depending on the situation, would depend if this is a good thing to do.

I think your best plan would be to find someone that could help in those times because from the amount of CLAP you seem to have caught, then I expect that your show wont be very small and will get known very quickly in your area.
 

firebug

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I'm happy to put some sort of program out the front advertising when the shows will happen. If I had the odd Friday night at work I could have that on the program (no sequenced show) or something to that effect...
 

David_AVD

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I used the startup and shutdown functions in LOR to turn my display power supplies on and off each night (via some DMX relays) and run the animations.

Worked a treat. All I had to do was make sure the PC was on and the LOR scheduler was active.
 

kane

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My complete display requires no input from myself, so no matter whether I'm home or not, the whole show runs - including the 240v supply to all my power supplies (via David_AVD's relay controllers), the show computer wakes up 5 minutes before the show and runs the show.

About the only thing I do manually is adjust the volume for my speakers, or at least when I remember to do so. I tend to try to turn the volume down at about 8:30, and generally off after 9 or 9:30 (show finishes at 10).

This year I actually had 4-5 nights that I wasn't around for, so there would have been a few disappointed visitors on those nights if I hadn't run it.

I did have one issue on one of those nights though - because I knew we were out for dinner until quite late, I wanted the lights to be on when I arrived home - so I went into the LSP scheduler and in the calendar view, I dragged the bottom of the show down, in order to extend the run time by an hour. But I think I may have uncovered a slight bug in the scheduler - I got a call from my Nephew who was looking after my kids to say that the show hadn't started and there were about 40 people out front waiting for it to start! I was able to talk him through remoting into the show computer and adjusting the appointment, and it started up (much to the delight of the waiting crowd!)
 

fasteddy

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Kane said:
My complete display requires no input from myself, so no matter whether I'm home or not, the whole show runs - including the 240v supply to all my power supplies (via David_AVD's relay controllers), the show computer wakes up 5 minutes before the show and runs the show.

About the only thing I do manually is adjust the volume for my speakers, or at least when I remember to do so. I tend to try to turn the volume down at about 8:30, and generally off after 9 or 9:30 (show finishes at 10).

This year I actually had 4-5 nights that I wasn't around for, so there would have been a few disappointed visitors on those nights if I hadn't run it.

I did have one issue on one of those nights though - because I knew we were out for dinner until quite late, I wanted the lights to be on when I arrived home - so I went into the LSP scheduler and in the calendar view, I dragged the bottom of the show down, in order to extend the run time by an hour. But I think I may have uncovered a slight bug in the scheduler - I got a call from my Nephew who was looking after my kids to say that the show hadn't started and there were about 40 people out front waiting for it to start! I was able to talk him through remoting into the show computer and adjusting the appointment, and it started up (much to the delight of the waiting crowd!)

I suspect with the exposure you got this year and the fact that you don't really need to manage the show or traffic would mean that you have a great location that can handle the masses without causing KAOS.
 

Adam007

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Make sure to disable Windows updates or your show PC.

The only night I was out... the PC had been rebooted!
 

David_AVD

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caffeine said:
Kane said:
About the only thing I do manually is adjust the volume for my speakers, or at least when I remember to do so. I tend to try to turn the volume down at about 8:30, and generally off after 9 or 9:30 (show finishes at 10).

http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/nircmd.html

Sorted.

I'm pretty sure I heard you say you were going to do up a wiki page for that? ;)
 

kane

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caffeine said:
Kane said:
About the only thing I do manually is adjust the volume for my speakers, or at least when I remember to do so. I tend to try to turn the volume down at about 8:30, and generally off after 9 or 9:30 (show finishes at 10).
http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/nircmd.html
Sorted.

Yeah, I did look at something similar to that (might have even been nircmd), but I'd prefer to leave the FM transmitter at full volume, and just turn down the speakers (I have a small amp hooked up to the speakers, so can easily adjust it).. So in order to do that, I'd probably need a way of externally adjusting the volume electronically .. David_AVD ?? :)
 
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