Nutcracker: Vixen, Halloween and my wife

smeighan

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Joined
Jan 19, 2012
Messages
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Location
4217 Greenfinch Dr CO 80126
Well , I managed to sequence 3 songs on Oct 30th.
Monster Mash
Ghostbusters
This is Halloween from the Nightmare Before Christmas


I used audacity to mark the phrases on all 3 songs
Next i created a single strand model using 7x128 pixel strings.
I defined 16 segments, 8 for the spiderweb and 8 for the spider body
Used nutcracker and projects, created vixen and hls files


In the end , i used Vixen because it loaded the files faster.


I sequenced a 4th file, 30 seconds of thunder and rain.


A made a 5th file , just lighting effects, no audio.




Now , I am ready.


Opened 5 files in Vixen.
2012-11-01_1152.png



I am using
(1) Dell 620 laptop with Windows XP
(1) Lynx 16 port active Hub
(1) Lynx Etherdongle
(7) Smart Controllers.
(7) 128 node rgb lights
www.*aliexpress.*com/*fm-*store/*701799/*209889132-*495658226/*128-*node-*LED-*pixel-*string-*DC12V-*input-*new-*model-*IP68.*html
(1) Behringer 302USB 5-Input Mixer , http://www.amazon.com/Behringer-302USB-Premium-5-Input-Interface/dp/B005EHILV4/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1351791889&sr=8-1&keywords=xenyx+302
This takes audio from the usb port and will eventually feed it to my FM transmitter. It worked nice since we could adjust volume as people walked up to the house
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(1) Sony 100w audio deck


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So now we are ready. I load up the 5 vixen files
(1) Ghostbusters
(2) This is Halloween
(3) Monster Mash
(4) 30 second rain and thunder track
(5) Animations without sound


It is almost 6pm, Halloween night. We have had only one boy come to the house. It looks like this Halloween is going to be light on kids.
My 11yo twin's want to get out and get candy. What to do?
Ok, I quickly show my wife, here is Vixen, there is a play button here. Click on the window you want to play and click play.
"Got it?" "Got it!", she says


I leave with my boys planning to be gone 30 minutes. I am pretty sure i will come back with windows munged up or something.


It turns out i am gone 2 hours. As i come back to our house. I notice something strange, the one color chases that i created are now two color??


I am thinking my wife was going to be having problems using Vixen.


Well, she tells me:


"I am running the lighting only sequence in a loop. I then run one of the three songs (1-3) above. As children turn into our driveway i then launch the 30 second thunder track. It takes 4 seconds before the Thunder and lights go off, so if I launch it as they turn into our driveway the children are directly under the web when the lightning fires."


So she has 3 sequences all running at the same time


background chases
one of three songs
thunder track.

I was unaware that vixen/lynx would logically OR the three sequences together or that the audio would mix between the two concurrently running sequences.


It worked perfectly. On demand thunder in the middle of a song.


Her comment, "I though you said this was difficult?"




We had larger and larger crowds. Last year we went through 1/2 bag of candy, this year 3 bags. My wife took one son around our neighborhood. She was behind a group of ten teenagers. One group met another , the first group said "Are you going over to the party house?". We had kids dancing to ghostbusters in the front yard.


People taking pictures of the spider and web.


Sequencing not perfect, but it worked.


we will see what next year brings


sean


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fasteddy

I have C.L.A.P
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Albion Park NSW
Nice work, simple and effective and its great your wife taught you something without even realizing.
Looks really cold, im glad im on the other side off the ball where its warm
 

smeighan

Dedicated elf
Joined
Jan 19, 2012
Messages
1,109
Location
4217 Greenfinch Dr CO 80126
ɟɐsʇǝppʎ said:
Nice work, simple and effective and its great your wife taught you something without even realizing.
Looks really cold, im glad im on the other side off the ball where its warm


in denver, snow doesnt last.


the last picture was taken two days after the first.
 
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