What's wanted

RF is magic stuff. I used to work with a guy who is a god when it comes to RF but it's not something that I ever had anything to do with. It actually takes a lot of specialised equipment to test RF gear.

@bluzervic . I had hoped to get some FPP support for the Orange Pi and if that happened I had halfhearted plans for a dumb DC controller and possibly an AC controller based around FPP and the Orange Pi. These versions of the Pi are much cheaper than the Raspberry and imho they would make for a nice front end for a cheap controller.
 
might seem insignificant as this would only be useful if using older dumb leds , but personally I'd like to see a fuse board micro ato fuses that plug into either for example Alan's 2811DC boards etc etc or Ray's 27 Channel as the only other choice is using wires to jumper to each fuse and usually using either large automotive type fuse blocks or messy inline fuses
a small as possible board something like this

mini fuse board.jpg
with this pin sort of thing solder to the input of the fuses so all that has to be done is unscrew all the connectors on the original board lineup the pins slide it in and screw them back up
pin-header.jpg
hope this makes sense , as to how many people would want them I don't know what sort of cost they would be to manufacture is also a consideration
 
Are you talking about a board that connects directly to the outputs of dumb rgb boards and has 1 fuse for each positive common?
If thats what you're talking about then it's not hard to do but overall it's likely to double the cost per channel at least when adding external to a dc dimmer.

drakky said:
might seem insignificant as this would only be useful if using older dumb leds , but personally I'd like to see a fuse board micro ato fuses that plug into either for example Alan's 2811DC boards etc etc or Ray's 27 Channel as the only other choice is using wires to jumper to each fuse and usually using either large automotive type fuse blocks or messy inline fuses
a small as possible board something like this

View attachment 12209
with this pin sort of thing solder to the input of the fuses so all that has to be done is unscrew all the connectors on the original board lineup the pins slide it in and screw them back up
View attachment 12210
hope this makes sense , as to how many people would want them I don't know what sort of cost they would be to manufacture is also a consideration
Click to expand...
 
AAH said:
Are you talking about a board that connects directly to the outputs of dumb rgb boards and has 1 fuse for each positive common?
If thats what you're talking about then it's not hard to do but overall it's likely to double the cost per channel at least when adding external to a dc dimmer.
Click to expand...
yes Alan that's what I'm talking about , not sure how much you mean it would cost for a board like this but it would make everything so much easier and more tidy I'm surprised that all these dc boards aren't fused , I like to fuse everything others don't which is why I think an add on board would be an option the pins should be set so the bord just slides into the existing screw terminals and do up the screws
 
I suggest stuff which can be used with range of Pi stuff from the mico Pi to the Pi3.
I think people have said PC power supplies are no good for Christmas lights, never really understood why. Still have not see a good Pi hat to control a PC power supply.
 
damona said:
I suggest stuff which can be used with range of Pi stuff from the mico Pi to the Pi3.
I think people have said PC power supplies are no good for Christmas lights, never really understood why. Still have not see a good Pi hat to control a PC power supply.
Click to expand...
PC power supplies dating back years ago used to regulate the 5V and the 12V was semi unregulated. It would go up and down somewhat depending on the load of the supply. It was also a requirement that there was some load on the 5V rail. This may have changed in the many years that ATC power supplies have been around. The biggest issue for using them is that they are primarily designed for a fairly constant load. When connected to blinky lights the load can vary from almost nothing to full load at the 20Hz update rate of the sequencer/FPP. The load variation depends entirely on how you sequence and whether you do step changes from black to white across a lot of your display or just the props connected to a given power supply.
 
AAH said:
PC power supplies dating back years ago used to regulate the 5V and the 12V was semi unregulated. It would go up and down somewhat depending on the load of the supply. It was also a requirement that there was some load on the 5V rail. This may have changed in the many years that ATC power supplies have been around. The biggest issue for using them is that they are primarily designed for a fairly constant load. When connected to blinky lights the load can vary from almost nothing to full load at the 20Hz update rate of the sequencer/FPP. The load variation depends entirely on how you sequence and whether you do step changes from black to white across a lot of your display or just the props connected to a given power supply.
Click to expand...

PC power supplies have changed a lot over the years, with the rise of high powered graphics cards, when graphic requirements intensify so does the load requirement on the power supply so no more does the power supply just sit at the same utilisation for the whole time the computer is working, and with multiple graphics cards in a computer the load can shoot up pretty quickly.

Yes your cheaper power supplies will still be pretty cheap and nasty but the higher end ones do work very well, there was even a time when people had multiple power supplies in their PC's one to power the main hardware and another to power just the hard drives so they didn't need 1 big power supply and could get away with 2 smaller cheaper ones.

I would still recommend a dedicated non PC power supply since with a PC power supply you are generating 5v, 12v, 2.5v and 1 other voltage that slips my mind that you won't be using, and the rated watts of a PC power supplied is designed to be shared across all of those voltages and not just 500w of 12v or 5v.
 
I thought the Pi could run off the standby power, and then switch the Power Supply on when the show starts and off when it finishes.
The 5v could be used to power controllers (and leds if you have 5v leds). And the 12v power leds.

In the hot weather I turn off the outside power supplies, so that Power Supplies do not get damaged in 30-40c days when the lights are off.
 
AAH said:
David_AVD and I were having a chat earlier about what else we could build to supply the blinky community. We both make and sell a fair range of stuff and neither of use came up with anything to set the blinky world on fire so I'm throwing it out to the community to offer suggestions on what could be built or what is needed.
Click to expand...
Alan, how about an input hat for the pi/fpp? An interface to connect a number of physical triggers (buttons, switches, sensors, etc) to trigger events or sequences within fpp. I know the software is capable of this but what hardware would be required? How many physical connections could there be? Would this be limited by the number of free gpio pins? If you were to allow for pins already used for power, WS28xx, DMX etc how many connections are free on the pi?
 
I haven't looked at how many are free. I have 1 allocated and brought out to a header on my rPi-28D and when I initially made the board I had that setup as a power down input via a script. Sadly when I went to write up the user manual for the board I couldn't even remember how it was done.
 
What would be awesome is some sort of identification & 2-way communication "protocol" for pixels with telemetry, ideally the end game would allow a consumer to connect a prop to a controller and the prop to identify itself, and with that identification information should also provide how many pixels, pixel type, voltage / current requirement & some sort of unique ID string .. and then with user applications like vixen and xlights they would simply know what these props are and what port they're connected to.

Unfortunately theirs alot of us who are good at electronics, construction, prop building or sequencing .. people who are good at all 4 are few and far between, and unfortunately I'm none of them but someday I'd like to be able to buy a prop from Boscoyo or Holidaycoro, plug it in and let the controller figure out how many channels to allocate to that physical port and Vixen / Xlights to pop up a warning window and tell me I've not got enough power, and also obviously figure out if another prop is daisy chained to it.

All in all .. what I want is some sort of plug 'n pray auto magic configuration wizard thing so I can simply purchase pre-made props or just connect a string of pixels and concentrate more on sequencing & construction.
 
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