New Display question

xmaskids

xmaskids

New elf
Joined
Oct 12, 2019
Messages
45
Location
Gold Coast Qld
Ok back again i think were winning and going head first into this we do a big xmas display on the Gold Coast for the last 13 years and looking to upgrade to Pixels
Never used any controllers but i see everyone is using Falcon but a bit of a head spin reading all the specs
2019 we used Node MCU with Programmable strip lights around the house and worked ok with WLED (Dr ZZZ)
Display were looking at is going to have 10 5mrt 12mm led pixel for around 30 meters for around the house and wife also wants a mega tree with about 8 sets of 12mm led pixels (No pressure :) )
Have not even worked out power yet but i thinking 12v due to less voltage drop and Xlights to program which i started to play with after i brought a 50 Led Pixel 5v to play with.
Pixels might be brought from Ray as i like to easy plug in and T piece for power injection but still unsure
What controller would work and be easy to setup i now see Falcons can be shipped to Oz but unsure what model would be good or should i go for a PixLite 4 MkII Control Board
Total number of pixels on house is 500 which i hoping will be 1 string and then 400 for mega tree which i hope will be 2 string separate network router outside so can plug Ethernet into what ever board outside.

Sorry for all the questions and thank you in advance for your knowledge and help
 
Falcons are definitely a popular choice and rightly so. If you're thinking of getting a Falcon, you might want to wait until the next version is released later this year. It'll depend on your exact plans and which model of Falcon you want but the next version might suit you better https://falconchristmas.com/forum/index.php/topic,13929/
In the meantime, you can get everything working and tested with a cheap pixel tester. It would be worth having one of these for when you test out your wiring for the first time; it is better to accidentally damage a $4 tester instead of a Falcon https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32261108366.html

PixLite controllers also have a good reputation.

Depending on the distances involved, you might want to consider a setup with differential receivers. These are good for when you want to have your pixels spread out over a large area. What is the distance between the house and the mega tree? I think that pretty much any controller will work for your current setup. What are your future ideas? The controller to choose might depend on what else you can use it for as you (presumably) add more pixels in future.

On the topic of voltage and voltage drop, 12V does suffer less with voltage drop compared to 5V. The tradeoff is power consumption and therefore the number of pixels that can be powered by each power supply. I generally recommend 5V when you have a large number of pixels in a small area and 12V when you have a small number of pixels spread over a large area. I decide it on an item-by-item basis because you can run 5V and 12V pixels end-to-end if you wire them correctly with power injection. Similarly, you can have pixels running at a different voltage to the controller that sends data to them (e.g. the Falcon). If you want a continuous string of 500 pixels (which is a realistic number), you'll definitely need to inject power regardless of the voltage that you choose. To minimise the number of required injection points, you can order pixels with shorter spacing, thicker wire between them or you can run them at less than 100% brightness.
 
Thank you for that info mega tree will be in front of house so not that far I will read up on the updated Falcon with 5v will I need more power supplies to keep up only looking at 50 60 brightness
 
5V requires more injection points but fewer power supplies compared to 12V. In reality, more injection points can mean more power supplies because the voltage doesn't like to travel a long distance between the power supply and injection points. Keeping this distance short and using thick cable helps. That's why I recommend 5V when there is a large number of pixels in a small area (injection points are close together and can be from the same power supply) and 12V when there is a small number of pixels spread over a large area. They're both a compromise but in different ways. You're running 900 pixels this year so it isn't a large scale decision. You're not going to need a big total number of injection points or power supplies to run 900 pixels at either voltage, especially when you turn the brightness down. It's personal preference but I'd lean more towards 5V if you plan to put more pixels near the existing ones in future. Future pixels can share power supplies with the injection points for the nearby existing pixels. With 12V, the power supplies would get maxed out sooner but you would have the convenience of wiring up fewer injection points. There's no perfect answer. You could use 5V for the tree and 12V for the house if you wanted to. If you want all of your power supplies in one central place (meaning further from the lights) then 12V generally works best.

For a mega tree (400 pixels) close to the house and a single run of 500 pixels on the house, pretty much any controller will do the job just fine. What are your future expansion plans? You may as well use your future plans to decide on the controller because any of them will suit your current plan.

Another point to consider when planning a display is that a failed pixel can stop passing data on to all of the pixels after it. If it is near the controller, this could take out most of the 500 pixels on the house. It is therefore a good idea to have a couple of spare runs of pixels ready with a connector on each end so that you can easily swap them out if a pixel fails.
 
Sounds good ok will go 5v tree as thier very close to each other a.d 12v for the long run on the house is it worth waiting for the new Falcon 48 or wait till new ones arrive no plans for expansion
Will 5v and 12v work together or get a smart receiver for the house controller or will I need a booster
Very much appreciate all the help
 
xmaskids said:
Ok back again i think were winning and going head first into this we do a big xmas display on the Gold Coast for the last 13 years and looking to upgrade to Pixels
Never used any controllers but i see everyone is using Falcon but a bit of a head spin reading all the specs
2019 we used Node MCU with Programmable strip lights around the house and worked ok with WLED (Dr ZZZ)
Display were looking at is going to have 10 5mrt 12mm led pixel for around 30 meters for around the house and wife also wants a mega tree with about 8 sets of 12mm led pixels (No pressure :) )
Have not even worked out power yet but i thinking 12v due to less voltage drop and Xlights to program which i started to play with after i brought a 50 Led Pixel 5v to play with.
Pixels might be brought from Ray as i like to easy plug in and T piece for power injection but still unsure
What controller would work and be easy to setup i now see Falcons can be shipped to Oz but unsure what model would be good or should i go for a PixLite 4 MkII Control Board
Total number of pixels on house is 500 which i hoping will be 1 string and then 400 for mega tree which i hope will be 2 string separate network router outside so can plug Ethernet into what ever board outside.

Sorry for all the questions and thank you in advance for your knowledge and help
Click to expand...
if you need any help to set up controller with xlights go in the zoom room xlights.org they help me out im new here
 
On buying pixels, pigtails and T pieces, there are more vendors than Ray, https://auschristmaslighting.com/wiki/Lighting-suppliers#RGB-and-pixels All of them these days will supply any of the 4 common types of connectors, with xConnect being more common lately.

If you're not in a massive hurry for a controller, the new versions of Falcons are due out June/July, besides doing more pixels (esp at 40fps), I believe they have a few other improvements.

There's a few ways to mix and match 5v and 12v displays, one is to use 12V power supplies then 12V to 5V buck converters, another use receivers and have 1 at 5v and 1 at 12 v. I think the falcon can even do both, half (ch 1-8) at one voltage and the other (ch 9-16) at the other voltage.

There's no law saying you only need 1 controller :) If you're only going to use 5V on a megatree (for example) then maybe you could buy a Falcon F4V3 which can drive 4096 pixels and another Falcon (F16V or F48) to drive all your other pixels.

In this hobby there's multiple ways of doing things.
 
5V and 12V will work fine together. They'll run end-to-end if you power with power injection which you're planning to do anyway. You don't need a separate controller input for 5V and 12V in order to run both. In this diagram, the two power supplies and the controller can all be different voltages https://auschristmaslighting.com/attachments/16394/
I question whether it is worth bothering with multiple voltages for a display of 900 pixels which you don't plan to expand on. 12V pixels max out the power supply faster than 5V but you might not quite max out a 320 or 400 watt 12V power supply with 900 pixels depending on the brightness setting. I recommend having a spare power supply for each voltage because power supplies can fail. DC-DC convertors are an option and I do use them but IMO they become uneconomical when you have more than a couple of hundred pixels that are close enough together to just use another power supply instead.

If you're considering buying 12V pixel nodes, there are different types https://auschristmaslighting.com/threads/12161/

Any controller will do the job. They can all run thousands of pixels. The F4v3 on its own can't run as many pixels as the F16v3 but it'll still be more than enough for 1200 pixels. Adding expansions to the F4v3 can triple the number of pixels that it supports whereas with the F16v3, adding expansions generally divides the same total number of pixels across more outputs. Adding expansions to the (not yet released) F16v4 should triple the number of pixels that it supports like with the current F4v3.

How did you end up with a total of 1200 pixels in your above post? I thought you were going to use 400 pixels on the tree and 500 on the house and this adds up to 900.
 
yep was only 900 but allowing miscalculation up to 1200 also saw on the Falcon was only 1024 pixels per string so got a bit muddle
Ok so does this sound good
Falcon F4v3 and all 12v lights for both runs with say 3 power supply's one 30mrt run and one for mega tree and 1 spare
This should get me into the starting grid until i get more experience on this stuff and look at expending or selling the lot.
would it be worth to wait for the upgraded boards from Falcon only problem i see is they probley wont ship until September which i have no time to setup and trail and get use to the Falcon

Thank again for your help
 
I don't know whether there will be a F4V4 or what its capabilities will be. I do know that the current F4v3 will run your setup just fine. You don't need to have the Falcon in order to start sequencing and (assuming you buy a cheap pixel tester) nor do you need it to test your display items. The main reason to get it sooner would be to become familiar with how to use it.

I think "expending" was a typo and maybe you meant "expanding". Assuming that Falcon continues to sell compatible expansion boards, you'll be able to triple the number of pixels on the F4v3 in future. I think you'll want to expand in future once you get some pixels working. It's really satisfying getting the lights blinking with music.

The current Falcon controllers support up to 1024 pixels per output but that's at the expense of frame rate. If you keep their maximum at 680 pixels per output (this is the figure that you would divide up when expanding the F16V3 or using more than four receivers on the current F48), they can do 40 frames per second. You'd also need your sequences to be 40 frames per second in order to achieve this and many of us don't bother. The F4v3 without expansions can have four outputs of 1024 pixels at 20 frames per second or four outputs of 680 pixels at 40 frames per second. A display item can use more than one output.

I notice that you say you've had a display for 13 years so I imagine that you'll already have other types of lights. It is often possible to convert your existing lights so that they can be controlled along with the pixels but you'll need additional hardware. I did this in 2013 and I'm happy to help if this is of interest.
 
I only started in the pixel world in November last year and I put together a very small config using a raspberry Pi and an Rpi28d from @AAH

This setup would get you going immediately (you could have it within a week) and would handle your ~1,000 pixel goal for this year. Then you can decide if it’s for you and grow for the following year (if that’s your plan of course). It’s also very well supported here on this forum & directly from Alan.
 
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