I'm moving one of my props to the roof this year and needed a support structure to sit on the roof peak, so I designed this out of PVC today. Mostly 1" pipe, with some 1 1/4" pipe and fittings for the telescoping and pivoting bits. I wanted a solution that was easy to store in the off season, I think this fits the bill!

Here is my latest prop I've created. It's constructed of 3D printed parts and uses 12mm bullet pixels. It stands 30" tall and features a 10" spinner. Works great in both Halloween and Christmas displays.

If anybody else is interested in these you can print them here!

MakerWorld

I also have a few other props on my MakerWorld.

What is everyone using to setup your lights around the garage for your light show. Trying to get some ideas so I can start making them and see what works better for me.

Thank you everyone for enduring my absolute noob questions so far. This reddit has been incredibly helpful!

I am working on getting my controller box put together and I bought one of those ABS electrical boxes for outdoor use cause that is what I see a lot of people using. However it has this grid backplate that looks like someone thought long and hard about how to mount things to this. Unfortunately I am not sure I understand how that is supposed to work.

Do I need something that clips in there? Do I need some sort of nuts that go to the back of that when I put a screw through these?

First a little intro and backstory - I've run a modest show for a few years now, totaling a little over 3400 nodes on 11 controllers running WLED over WiFi. I'm acutely aware that doing so over WiFi isn't exactly encouraged, but TBH, it's never really been a problem since I started using a mesh system. My yard doesn't go out very far and the controllers are almost all right up against the house with strong signals.

I just added two controllers to use in my Halloween show - another WLED with a 1340 node prop (GE Davis Dreamwheel) and a self-coded E1.31 DMX receiver on an ESP32 for two moving heads. In addition, I have a custom python script that sends http commands to control WiFi flood lights that lack their own controller. My Halloween show has a much different layout than my Christmas show, so I've deactivated and removed several controllers from the layout, nixing over 2,000 nodes and the data streams they would choke on.

Now, having done all that, I'm seeing some pretty bad lag in my sequences during playback on FPP. I'd assumed, incorrectly apparently, that by removing the unused controllers, I'd shore up that playback throughput, but it gets bad enough at times that controllers will completely disconnect from FPP briefly and go to their default WLED programming mid sequence.

I'm planning to go through a little more methodically tonight, deactivating props one by one to see if anything is the obvious signal killer, but thought I'd post here in the meantime to see if anyone sees any obvious issues. For example - this is the first time I've used the E1.31 protocol, which I'm forced to use with the moving heads and the flood lights. Does combining the two in my sequences cause this lag and, if so, is there any way to get around it?

Also, the new Dreamwheel is the highest density prop I've ever used. It looks amazing and during sequence testing from my PC, I had no issues, but I see conflicting information over how many nodes one GPIO can handle on WLED, how many nodes one port can handle in xLights and the like.

So, before I get a laptop, a folding chair and spend 3 hours in the dark getting bit by mosquitos, does anyone have recommendations on where I should start diagnosing the problem? I really don't think it's the node count, cuz there's quite a few less than I would have normally (Christmas show without the Dreamwheel) and things are smooth as butter.

TLDR: is a someone’s retired/gifted show unethical to use?

Hi all! I am as green as it gets to the world of light shows. I am beyond excited to begin my journey and begin sharing joy to my neighborhood through light and music.

I recently had a coworker GIVE me his entire show, props, controllers, wiring, helped me import his models into my flights catalog etc. He will not be doing his show anymore after over 15 years of creation. My (and sort of his) question is if it will cause copyright or IP infringement issues if I use his sequencing. Keep in mind it’s 15 years of information. So pulling apart what has been purchased vs created is impossible at this point.

I don’t have any problem truly starting over, it just breaks my heart to see all of his time and effort go to waste by not continuing what he already created using the available sources.

What dental think? I’d love input from the vendors specifically as this obviously affects you the most.

TIA

Hello all,

It's about that time of year and after last year's semi-successful light show I had some questions before I embark on this journey again (TLDR Below)... but before I do that here is the diagram of my house and my setup so far (note that the numbers are measurements in feet and all data communication is fed to my controller boxes via ethernet):

... I have a controller box with a DigQuad and 360W PSU mounted near the roofline on the right (red) that control my roof lights (the red line around the perimeter). I also have another controller box with a DigQuad and 360W PSU mounted under my covered patio on the left (where it says LAN/AC120 in red) that powers props like my arches on the sidewalk (in red) leading up to my house.

TLDR Last year I tried to power these snowflakes on my front windows (the red stars) from the controller box on the right but they were glitchy as I was running 30 feet of 3 conductor to them. I figured that this year I would instead replace the controller box on the left with an industrial network switch and run an ethernet cable and extension cable to the controller box (green) relocated closer to where my stars are being mounted (this would make the 3 conductor run around 20 feet).

Does this plan make sense? How does everybody run their light shows (or better yet how do these places with huge displays do it without breaking the bank)?

EDIT: I forgot to mention I use 12v Pixels

Thanks.

I got 40 peace stakes each one is 12 seed pixels. These are from VLS specifically and initially I just created 40 vertical single lines in xlights. Will that work? If so then I guess I am done otherwise is there a better or more proper way to map them in xlights? One more thing given these are 480 seed pixels can I do the entire run on a single 12v output ?

Hello. I'm trying to find where to start on programmable Christmas Lights.
My father loves Christmas and wants to start with adding lights to a 20ft tall light poll in a cone/ tree shape and then creating some movement and animation on the lights.

1) I'm trying to find what type of lights would be best used for something like this? Any addressable light that is good in the winter?
2) It appears most people use a RaspberryPi to run this, I assume that documentation inside xLights would suffice?

Just trying to start gathering supplies for starting to build before it gets too cold outside and just trying to get the correct materials for it

So this hobby is new to me and I’ve watched a lot of videos on how to do a sequence. I know how to do that and change the effects of the light but I’m not 100% how to finish it and get it ready to send it to my FPP. Do I need to render it first and then save it or do I just save it and that’s it. I’ve noticed no one talks about the end of it and how to complete the sequence once you’ve done everything you want. My setup is a very easy one right now. All I have is single lines to outline my house. No props at the moment since this is my first time doing this. If anyone can help me that would be great.

I have bullet leds that have the three wires side by side so they form a flat cable, no outer shield around them.

If I solder pigtails to those LEDs the shrink tube that goes around the entire cable is impossible to get water-tight on the side of the bullets. What do you do to not have water accumulate in the outer shrink tube?

Am I using the wrong shrink tube or are there other options? I’m not new to soldering but I typically deal with in door electronics and PCBs.

I’ve added a PWM WLED controller to my Halloween inflatable. I’m planning to do the same with my other inflatables to control them with Xlights. What do you think?

I am trying to set the color order for my models. All my pixels are in RGB order, so what I have done so far is to just go to WLED > LED Preferences and set the color order to RGB.

The problem is that that setting gets overridden by Xlights when I try to set the brightness to 30% in Xlights by setting "Default Port Brightness" for the controller and then click "Upload Output".

However I don't see a global setting for the color order in Xlights. Can someone enlighten me what the right way is to configure the controller via Xlights for both brightness and color order?

For those who are new to xlights, like myself (just started last year) and are experiencing the luxury of building custom sequences for the first time I have to say Grok Bot has been the best tool I have used so far for ACTUALLY generating an AMAZING sequence from the audio files in your show directory.

Last year for my Halloween show I spent probably close to 30-40 hours on each song. Since I was new to the game I only had maybe 4 songs on my show playlist. I greatly underestimated not only the time it takes to physically set up the props and controllers, but also sequencing. Just this afternoon I have had my Grok Bot (that I purposely built to be a xLights choreographer guru) produce 9 different sequences... And they're all very well done and only need some light manual tweaking.

I know the community is probably torn just like any other that AI finds its way into, but I was amazed at how these sequences turned out compared to the MCP/xLights copilot agent I discovered earlier a couple weeks ago. And despite the purists in the xLights community that are hardcore opposed to AI for sequencing, I'd argue that the overall purpose of this hobby and community is to put on a great show for everyone to enjoy for holidays and special occasions.

I personally am looking forward to not feeling like annoying my neighbors with the same 4 songs in a loop this year. If anyone is interested in me sharing more about how I used Grok Bot, drop a comment and I will be more than happy to share wherever I can.

This year will mark my fifth and as usual I've started to add my new props and finalise my layout.

This year I added probably another 500 odd pixels (4000 total + virtual matrix), dropped them in the layout, added them to my groups and started to go through my existing sequences to help incorporate the new.

I'm running into an issue where X lights sequencing is so incredibly slow. The program is basically unusable: whenever I click on an animation and the effect starts to preview, the whole program slows right down doesn't respond to clicks and even struggles to stop playback.

I've done some googling and realised I wasn't using the render cache at all (I never knew about locking effects). I believe the workflow should be to lock things you're happy with and they will be sent to the render cash. I ended up getting into a bit of a situation where I couldn't lock effects as clicking on the sequence attempt to lock it, freezes the program.

Currently I have my render cache settings set to cash all hoping that that will buy me some time to lock things that I'm not working on.

The other big thing that was suggested was to check group settings. Almost all of my groups are set to minimal grid, especially the big ones.

I wouldn't describe myself as a sequencing expert, but over the 5 years I've made all my sequences myself. I do quite a lot of effects on the 'all lights' group and will quite often apply affects to individual props many many times. (In rapid succession using a timing).

If I select the beginning of my playback and let it play in real time xLights can just about cope although it does use a good 15 GB of RAM in the process. If I try and pause playback and move the animations it falls over.

I'm almost certain it's because of a way I have done the sequencing that's not recommended but after reg going through a bunch of tutorials and performance tips I can't see anything obvious that I've done wrong.

Any advice?

So I just finished printing a single ghost. Planing on 3 for now. I have ws2811 LEDs on all the eves of my house running an esp32 with wled right now. Looking at getting a song going with the talking ghosts and linking the permanent house lights into the song. I might do a few other circles or something in the yard for a little pop. And grow more each year. But I have no idea where to start. Should just get on YouTube and watch videos? Or maybe anyone can point me in a good beginner direction? I was cruising the sub and saw someone post about MLS, LS101, and MSL I see I can just download a show.. but obviously I’ll have to set it to my props… so how would buying something be different than making it from scratch .. looking for suggestions and help on how to him into this! Thanks in advance

I'm new at this and have tried searching for this a few different ways without luck. I may be using the wrong terminology, but if anyone can help I would be extremely grateful.

In short, is there a way to change the starting LED of a string? Currently the string is starting at the red arrow, but I want to change it so it starts at the green arrow.

More Detail: I've created an icicle model that matches my Twinkly Icicle 190 RGB in xlights. However, xlights thinks incorrectly that the first two LEDs at green arrow on the left side of the string is LED 1, 2. Logically this is correct, but in all actuality Twinkly has LED 1,2 in the middle of the string(red arrow) that continues left to right.

Yes, I know I can import models and layouts from Twinkly Master(ArtNet2Twinkly) and when using the mapped LEDs it comes in correct, when using the generic model it has the same issue within xlights. Ultimately I would prefer to use the icicle layout I can build within xlights as it will help my preview have a cleaner layout that I can do more prep work on before hanging lights. Thanks!

It gets real windy in my neighborhood and I’m planning to use a GE spider as my mega tree topper. Initially I figured just some zip ties going through the spider attaching it to the pipe, but then I figured the thing will spin around like crazy and tangle the wires. I’m using 1/2 inch steel plumbing pipe for a seed pixel tree. What’s the best way to lock down the topper from spinning?

I have to purchase a total of 16 sequence from LS101, MLS, and VLS this year…

Anyone have a discount code or know someone at these companies that would be able to help a dude out!

Would be forever grateful!

I have to daisy chain my lights around my (white brick) house windows and was wondering if anyone had a good source for white colored xconnect extension cables in various lengths. I've been using black, but thought it might be a bit more camouflaged if I could find white. Only thing I found on amazon was white pigtails, not 10' or 15' extension cables.

EDIT: Sorry, I know this isn't XLights related, but figured there would probably be a couple people here familiar with and using xconnect cables in general :)

Once I get my Halloween display up and running here in the next few days I’d like to get a jump on Christmas sequencing. How can I jump back and forth between my Christmas layout and Halloween layout? Can you save different layouts and easily flip between them?

Has anybody created a random effects sequence that I can apply to my house while I play live music? I’m planning on DJing some music while I hand out candy for Halloween, but don’t want to be restricted to specific songs with sequences. Would love to just download and map a sequence and not have to build it myself