saying Hi and introducing myself

R

rfostrow

New elf
Joined
Jan 9, 2016
Messages
4
Location
florida, USA
Hello all,


My experience so far...
I have been doing a slowly expanding Christmas show for the past 5 years (skipped last year though as I moved homes). All done with Renard controllers and SSRez (110V AC). This year I used 184 circuits with all incandescent lights - mostly mini lights and C9 lights. All done with 3 interwoven strands of RED, GRN and WHT. I have been using Vixen 2 software as I understand it, and find it highly flexible (although time consuming). I have, but did not use, an additional 128 circuits of Renard controllers and SSRez.


You may view a sample song from my show 2 years ago here :> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3j2sSY4Iqs


What I want this year:
1st - I want to learn about LED Megatrees - and likely will spend this year converting to one. I am not sure that i need to go to individual pixel controls, but I do want to have full color capability.


2nd - I may decide to write my own controlling software (along with my son who does open source stuff regularly), but I would rather fine existing software that meets my needs.


And a bit about me:
Almost 59 years old, heavily motivated with family, work and Boy Scouts.
Family - married 40 years, 3 sons (all grown and on their own), 2 grandchildren (hoping for more).
Work - I am a self trained hardware/firmware/software designer, but have spent the past 10 years as project management rather than design.
Boy Scouts - Formed a charity and charter Boy Scout troops - this is a big deal for me. Was a Scoutmaster for 12 years, but retired from that.
 
Welcome to ACL.
Re-inventing the wheel probably isn't necessary. Vixen 3 and Xlight 4 are 2 excellent sequencers that are both open source if you wanted to customise them. With only 1 years development Xlights 4 is now the sequencer that leads the pack imho. It does things that you couldn't even dream of with Vixen 2 at a speed that is amazing.
Sean who is 1 of the driving forces of Xlights 4 is/was involved in the scouts as well. I myself was a Cub who never went on to Scouts.
Make sure you grab and have a read of the ACL101. It's got massive amounts of blinky information in it.
 
Firstly welcome aboard and looks like you have a great start.
Personally I would push you in the way of pixels for your mega tree rather than dumb LEDS. You will find that not only do you get better control surprisingly you need less cables as well.

We can always use more people playing with software, especially cause that is my weakness. But there are a few really good software options out there,
 
Welcome to ACL, im sure you will achieve your goals for this year with a bit of persistence as you have some great skills and experience already.
 
'Vixen 3 and Xlight 4 are 2 excellent sequencers that are both open source if you wanted to customise them.'
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[/size]I wouldn't want to customize an existing open source, as that leads to fragmented and hard to support/enhance software.
[/size]I would be willing to participate in an existing open source project - either in the form of documenting what has been done, developing code, or project management. I consider the lack of accurate and easily usable documentation to be a major problem with most open source projects - the other common fault being the lack strong project management to achieve a clear goal.
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[font=tahoma, sans-serif][/size]I rejected upgrading from Vixen 2 to Vixen 3 last year (about 8 months ago) as I found it very difficult to combine multiple effects - even something as simple as dimming all active channels at the end of a song with multiple effects running was hard to achieve in Vixen 3 but simplistic in Vixen 2 (used Boolean and arithmetic operations). Happy to look again to see if this has been resolved. [/font]
 
Make sure you grab and have a read of the ACL101. It's got massive amounts of blinky information in it.
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[/size]WOW - really nice document. Thanks for the pointer.

[font=tahoma, sans-serif][/size]And a comment about the scouts - glad to hear you and Sean had some experience here. I trust you have good memories and encourage you to be involved even now - Adults get a great deal of joy and satisfaction from guiding the scouts (even co-ed in many countries, but not mine) and I can't express the pride and satisfaction I get when I hear from a young person that I helped grow up and discover the good things now being accomplished. It is all about the character of the person.[/font]
 
Welcome to ACL !
Do have a look at xlights. Sean welcomes developers who are all volunteers . There is normally a new small release every week or so.
 
welcome40.png
 
Welcome to ACL, pretty sure your going to find all you need and then some, trust me your plans will get bigger and bigger quickly when you see all the different options around,
 
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