Plans for first year

Micro16

New elf
Joined
Dec 29, 2021
Messages
4
Ok. I'm trying to do some planning and need to ask some questions so I can go a little further with the plan before making any purchases.

I'm thinking for the first year to go with something a little smaller, perhaps a few mini trees and candy canes and making use of my existing string lights so some renard outputs as well to make them do some blinky stuff.

  1. Thinking ahead and trying to not force myself to be limited if and when I make changes and additions, what would you recommend for controllers? I'm mainly looking to decide between something like the falcon boards or something that is using a R PI + Pi hat / beaglebone + hat.

  2. I'd like to minimize the amount of cords and wires all over the place, do these controllers (and xlights) support something like the main controller being e.g. in the garage, while daughterboards get their data wirelessly and I just need to get power to them instead of power + cat 5?Assuming something like this is possible, thoughts / experience with it?

  3. Let's say I do a 16 / 50 megatree. When buying lights, is it best if I get strings of 50 pixels, or would e.g. a couple strings of 300 and some 50s work too? Is there an advantage to going one way or the other? Save channels on controller for expansion? If I go with strings of 50, can they be daisy chained / put in series if I need channels later down the line?
More questions to come, I'm sure...
 

Notenoughlights

400,000+ twinkly lights
Joined
Oct 16, 2016
Messages
639
Location
Christchurch, New Zealand
1: I would suggest the Hanson Electronics HE123Mk2 BBB run controller. Features 16 onboard outputs, with expansion for a further 32 more ports, and plenty of grunt to run thousands and thousands of pixels, so upgrading in the future will be easy. This board can do local connections or remote/daughter board receivers via cat5/6 cable.

2: avoid wireless where ever possible, you will run into issues fast. Would highly suggest you take a cat5e/6 cable along with your power to each of the receiver boards if you wish to have a controller located some distance away.

3: ask your chosen supplier if they can manufacture you some strings to your exact specifications, i.e 50 pixels, with ray-wu pigtails on each end for easy connection. Strings can be daisy chained, that is what is good about pixels. You just require power injection every 100-150 at 12v and every 50-75 at 5v if you want to run at a high brightness level.
 
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