Leaderboard

I checked my mail today and this is what I found in my mailbox, a thank you scroll. You have to love things like this.

It's that time of the year again for my annual give back to the community with my personally mixed 2020 Griswold Dub Mix. As always, I custom mixed this which falls under fair use. I created the sequence. It is NOT to be shared outside of my posts or sold. Just because I shared it with you does not mean you can profit from it. Respect those who share their work. If not then all shares will be stopped. Any selling and that will be the end of the mixes. My display includes 5 ac controllers and rgb pixels, floods, and dumb rgb elements... ranging from 5 arch channels, 5 channer fire stick with 3 channel star top. 8 channel spiral tree with 3 solid colors and 5 up and down channels. Also 16 fence chase channels, 16 yard chase channels, 3 color channels for roof, 3 for walls, 3 for over driveway arches, as well as (4) pixel arches, 8 rgb flood channels, and more.. See preview below for an idea of how my display is set up..... The video is slightly lagged due to the screen recorder i used. This is for example only so it shouldn't matter... Download links are included. If you download, Simply show some appreciation. LMS FILE LINK----- https://drive.google.com/file/d/1okWjeSumdK3XENFV2y0PRKIkVzUJHAI8/view?usp=sharing AUDIO DOWNLOAD LINK ---- [Removed by Admin. Sharing audio is not permitted on the forums.] This does not include singing faces or pixel tree. If you create those elements, Please share back with me....

Well Merry Christmas to everyone and a special shout out to all the ones who keep this forum going and to those who help when trouble arrives man you guys are greatly appreciated i can't say enough other than thank you thank you keep on helping

Today I had lunch at a Chinese place a brought home a fortune cookie for later. A couple hours later while taking a break from working on my pixel tree, I ate that fortune cookie. The enclosed fortune seemed very appropriate. It read: YOUR FUTURE LOOKS BRIGHT

It occurred to me that I should share this here. Everything is light O Rama. The pumpkin Arch, the floodlights, and both animatronic puppets. All runs from a mini MP3 director. this is a parody some friends and I did of a song from Frozen. Rewritten for Halloween. One of several songs we do for the folks waiting in line. Love is a Rotting Corpse

I just wanted to give a shout out to LOR for the great work they have done with their software. A lot of people will say that the other software (Xlights) is much better for RGB displays. I don't see it that way. I've used both and have stuck with LOR since 2012. I love the ease of use with LOR and have found it simple to sequence with for the most part. I have also used Superstar since 2012 although most of my sequencing is now done with S6. Anyway, I just wanted to give a shout out to the team at LOR. Keep up the good work! Eric

You can download and run the demo version of the software and check it out before you buy a license. It is fully functional but will not control actual lights until you buy a license. https://store.lightorama.com/pages/download-software

Hello, I know the possibility of using LOR to control fountains is something that has been discussed a few times on here and has been achieved with varying degrees of success. It's something I've been looking at for many years and having a few LOR controllers leftover from Christmas displays at a previous address I thought I would give it a go. It's not been easy. From finding compatible pumps with Asynchronous Motors to tracking down lighting which is submersible and compatible with the LOR/DMX universe. Add to that with me being based in the United Kingdom and therefore having additional complications with using the LOR controllers and wiring requirements. All that said, I have achieved it and wanted to 'show off' a couple of the shows in their most basic format. Over time it will be expanded to include extra jets and lighting effects. Barcelona (Summer Evening): Christmas: I'm curious to see what you make of it! :)

Stuff did not sell out fast enough for me. On Friday night I was in at 9:00 and got 4 ac controllers. Got up Saturday morning and seen they still had ac controllers still in stock, what the heck, so I ordered another 1. Later Saturday morning I jumped back on and seen spt1 was still in stock, what the heck, I decide to get 2 rolls of spt1 cable. With all of this I sent lor a ticket and asked if they could combine the orders for shipping since I done a couple of spur of the moment secondary purchases. I got 2 refund notices that they combined the 3 orders and refunded me $48.00 for shipping. I don't know if other companies would do this or not. But I sure do appreciate them doing that for me. And my stuff looks like it will be here Monday. Thank you Light-O-Rama Wayne

I needed more 2" HDPE tubing for 2 more pillars. One of the things people dislike about it is the high cost of shipping. I paid $52 for 25 ft of the tubing. It would have been $76 shipping. I don't like to brag but I'm pretty sure I beat the system. I decided to drive 2.5 hrs to the Atlanta McMaster Carr. Then my wife got involved and we somehow ended up at the outlet mall with an overnight trip. So...$76 for shipping or... $150 hotel stay + outlet mall haul (yikes!) + overpriced Cheesecake Factory meal. + demoralizing Container Store visit ($100) + gas averaging around $3.15 a gallon. _____________________________________________ = I think it's pretty clear I came out ahead Follow me for more money saving tips 🙄

First a recap of how I saw it prior to the 5.6 update, pretty much back to S2 where I started. Being one who watches Task Manager frequently for the way programs use memory. I have always kept an eye on how the Sequence Editor uses memory. During a config update I would open a sequence, apply the config and close again. As each sequence was opened the memory usage would increase. And after closing, not all the memory would be released. After some number of sequences, probably depending on their sizes, the program would crash, possibly but not always requiring a reboot. This usually happened when the memory in use reached a little over 4 GB according to Windows. To preempt the crash I would shut down the program and restart when the memory got to about 4 GB. During the process of updating my 60 odd sequences, I would restart (or crash) perhaps 7 to 10 times. It almost became a game of chicken. How long could I go before it crashed? Maybe just ONE more…. Now we fast forward to S5 5.6 and the 64 bit upgrade, and doing much the same thing, opening and closing many sequences, the memory usage can go much higher. I have seen 8 GB in use so far and have not had a crash while opening and closing many sequences, one at a time. As an experiment, I also opened 20 sequences at the same time in tabs, consuming a reported 15GB of memory. Disk file sizes total about 4 GB. Still no sign of any instability. The sequences play fine and can be worked on.. This was not possible in the 32 bit versions. So, an upgrade which may have gone almost unnoticed, just may have been one of the most significant of all. A big thank you to all the developers. Phil

Just wanted to share with others my idea for mounting pixels to my house outline I purchased the Offset Pixel Mounting Strips from Boscoyo I purchased a Stainless Steel Marine Grade 3/8" Socket Canvas Snaps Kit from Amazon This pair of Heavy-Duty Snap Fastener Pliers made the installation of the Snaps easy.. I attached the Female Snap to the Mounting Strip and Screwed the Male Snap into the Frame around the opening Note: I used 1/2 Grommets to achieve fold-able corners and to connect the strips together - so as to be able to Roll Up my frames at end of season

I had to add the Griswold drumroll this year, here is my version

Matt, Is there any plans to add functional moving heads to S5 so we can see them operate in the Preview? This would be great for those of us that have them or are adding them. Thank you JR

Here is another video from our Christmas show this year. The initial mouth sequence was supplied by BobO (Thank You!) and I modified it/added to it to meet the effects I was going for. I received a lot of positive feedback from people about the song selection, and the 2020 closure at the end. Hope you enjoy! Videos for all my post-Christmas light show can be found via the links in my signature block below.

We're talking Christmas lights here. There is no overkill!

I don't think your thread is going to get cluttered up any more. It's quite some time since I saw any less appreciation toward members trying to help.

Weatherproof heads are expensive. Domes for non weatherproof heads are even higher. I don't know what size or capability you are looking at, but the cheap typical 60W heads will not make a visible beam except in foggy conditions. Even water proof ones will be problematic as the snow will resist movement. Domes would be better but would still get buried. Think 250W or above for the ones you see on YT videos by Tom Betgeorge and others. Also consider thet skybeams might incur the interest of the FAA, particularly if you live near an airport. I have 6 of the 60W variant pointing at the audience and ground, unprotected but tucked up under my soffits to keep them mostly dry. Programming with LOR is painstaking and time consuming but does get easier with practice.

Eric last year i decided to start to downsize my display after many years. I'm 74 years old so put up only half of my display. so after Christmas every time my wife went shopping people would stop to talk to her and ask if I died because the display was so small 'she would reply just old not dead.

After going dark in 2019 at my house, then coming back with my downsized display in 2020 I had to come up with something new for 2021, this is my new 4 color spiral tree in a special format. Hope you like it. You can copy and past the link to see the video or just key on it. www.vimeo.com/manage/videos/661657096

Two years ago one of techy nerdy friends told me that I should figure out how to start my light show from Alexa. I thought about it and realized it would be easy. So here is what I did. For background, on opening night (last night), I don't start the Christmas show until 7:00 PM, so I have my normal year round evening landscape lighting running from the time it gets dark until just before the 7:00 start of the Christmas show. The landscape sequences are 4 minute musical sequences where the music audio file is 4 minutes of silence (this will become important shortly). The short version is that I set up the Christmas show with the option to start show on a trigger. I connected an input port on an InputPup controller to a 5 volt relay which is powered by a USB wall wart that is plugged into a power outlet that can be controlled by Alexa. I took one of my Echo Dot "Alexa" devices out into the front yard where I would be, and when I was ready to start the show, I told Alexa to Turn on Light Show. That turned on the outlet which energized the relay, which triggered Input #1 on the InputPup which caused the show the start. The 40 - 50 people that were there for the start loved it... Now for the longer version. Because the landscaping show is using 4 minute musical sequences and the show starts running based on a light sensor detecting that it has gotten dark, there is no way to control where in the 4 minute sequence it will be at a scheduled end of the show time. Therefore, it could be up to 3:59 later. Also, from earlier testing, I had determined that when the Christmas evening show starts, it takes the S5 show player about 25 seconds for song "checking" before it can actually start playing. So with all that in mind, I scheduled the evening landscape show to run until 6:54, and the Christmas show to start at 6:54 with the option set to start show based on a trigger. So what happened was this. At 6:54 PM the landscape show went into shutdown mode - so it will continue to play the musical sequence currently running. At about 6:55, that sequence ended, so the landscape evening show ran the shutdown sequence which shuts off a lot of the light, but leaves some still on. Because I do not have the checkbox set to turn off lights at the end of the sequence, the few lights left on will stay on. However because a lot of the lights went off, I knew that the shutdown sequence had run. At that point, the Christmas show loaded, and did all the sequence checking. That should have been completed before 6:56. At that, the show player just waited for the trigger. When I asked Alexa to turn on the light show, the LOR player saw the input trigger and started running the show. Very cool! Just to add to the complications, I run Zara Radio during non-show hours, so I had to get that shut down. So Zara had an event trigger set to Stop with an up to five minute wait time at 6:50. What that will do is cause Zara Radio to stop playing after whatever song currently playing is finished. Just in case a really long song was playing, I had a forced immediate stop command at 6:55. Zara stopped playing shortly before LOR shut down the evening landscaping show. Happily, it all worked right. I had tested this several times in the previous couple days (in daylight), so I was pretty sure it would work right... And yes, the techy nerdy friend who suggested it, was there for the opening last night.

Most of us are busy getting our shows set up. Let's be careful... Yesterday I received a text from a forum member who I have helped with some S5 config problems he was having. He told me that he had fallen off a ladder and was headed for surgery - NO show this year. We all want out shows to look great, but it's not worth getting badly hurt. Like I said - let's be careful....

My daughter said I needed to do this one. It was a catchy tune and a lot of fun once I started on it. Welcome to share if you want, as long as you don't plan to sell...

Yes, it has a little short wire antenna. Unless you are going to put the Whole Room Transmitter right next to where people will be listening, recommend that you do not use that one. The range is terrible. Do a search on Amazon for CZE-05b. Lots of choices. Pick one that best meets your needs. You will be MUCH happier.

The original "Voice of Christmas" is back Dementedelf Productions is ready to provide your with the voiceovers you need for your Christmas/Holiday Display. We've been part of your displays since 2006. Orders taken through Thanksgiving. For information visit www.dementedelfproductions.com or email dementedelfproductions@gmail.com

I am posting this because I see a couple of members have lost their Previews for reasons unknown. Whether due to a software issue, Windows, or something else, I can't say, but whatever the reason, you can protect yourself, (possibly from yourself), from losing your hard work with a few simple precautions. 1) In the Preview slideout window. Use the copy button to make a copy of your "good" Preview and give it a new name. I always make changes to the copy first to avoid making a mess of the original preview. If you apply the Preview copy to a copy of the sequence and it messes up you can go back to square one and start over. 2) Export the whole Preview to a dated filename using the Import/Export button. This creates a file in the ImportExport folder which you can backup elsewhere. 3) This one is only for those who are comfortable mucking around in folders and changing filenames. Caution. Go to the \commondata folder and make a copy of LORPreviews.xml and change the name of the copy to include the date, and a comment if you like. If something does happen to corrupt or remove your Preview you can now recover it from one of these backups. Also you may be able to get your Preview back by opening the last Sequence you worked on and letting it create a Preview from the sequence. Often this works fine and creates a Preview with “Imported from” (name of Sequence). If this Sequence and Preview are correct you can use that Preview for the rest of your sequences. I still maintain that all your sequences should match the same Preview and Grid View on the keep it simple principle, with a few exceptions.

Orville, as you know if the earth was flat ,cats would have pushed every thing off it by now. !

I have never had a facecrap account and never will so I will stay in here.

Here's a sampling of this year's show. Merry Christmas all. Time and Motion/Winter Palace, TSO https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/zd8nh78d1kna54avqfozt/TSO-Time-and-Motion-Winter-Palace.mp4?rlkey=3ksoztktneq0kuhw6ex134n2v&dl=0 Blue Ocean, Flying Colors https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/gdk4zg9dmom0fo1a63hl4/Flying-Colors-Blue-Ocean.mp4?rlkey=ede1eqli9255cenadhwp9yjtq&dl=0 Christmas Eve Sarejevo, TSO. https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/1pzqy4s27ijv07xclwefn/TSO-Christmas-Eve-Sarejevo.mp4?rlkey=jm8ndoec8oxpe9o50687g5jjs&dl=0 Culling Voices, TOOL. https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/8b3ade0wkb1ujodw6apeg/Tool-Culling-Voices.mp4?rlkey=c5tue17gmzqnz8w65uqgyxhxz&dl=0

@MattBrown In this thread you said pertaining to MIIP. The S6 testing we have done with MIIP has failed. The current S4/5 method is to completely recreate the miipshow.lss with the songs in the new order as determined on the miip server by the votes and the last time played in its database. S5 Show player detects the change, begins shutdown, and restarts with the first sequence. For MIIP, this loop occurs for every sequence played. In normal operation, only the first song of the .lss is played. If the show computer loses its internet connection, miip does not replace the .lss which allows the show to continue normal rotation to the next song until connection is restored. We do need your assistance for S6 Matt. It would be wonderful if you could provide a method to change the pointer to the next song to play. There is no need to reorder the entire playlist. MIIP will always know the full sequence list because it will still create .lss one time before show hours. During the show, it polls for votes, determines the next sequence, then it would be fantastic to instruct the player to advance to a sequence after completion of the currently playing one. Please PM me if you want to discuss. Thank you for your support.

Some of you may know me through different sequence forums and know I've dedicated years and personal time towards sequencing singing faces. I'm happy to say, thanks to Luminous Harmony, they are now being offered at a reasonable price. The list of songs will grow as time permits. I have sequenced hundreds of singing face sequences. The sequences are set up as "universal 8 channels, 5 mouth" sequences. As long as you have 5 mouth movements they will work even if they are custom built singing props. The channels are as follows but may be labeled differently by whichever vendor you purchased your props. 1- Outline 2- Eyes Open 3- Eyes Closed 4- Top Lip 5- Ah/ Vowell / Closed Mouth 6- Oh Mouth 7- Middle Lip 8- Top Lip Props include but not limited to, Snowmen, Bulbs, Trees, Pumpkins, Stars, Monsters from the various vendors. They are not sequenced for RGB nodes however they can be used for any 5 mouth position RGB props with some extra effort. These sequences are formatted as an .LMS file. They will open in S4, S5 and S6. Videos are provided in the store front to show you how to import the sequences. As Always I have tried to make this as simple for you as possible. Click on the link to visit the store. LH: Singing Faces (luminousharmony.com)

You don't need to alter it back to two power cords unless you are running higher current draw strings light C9 incans. If you are running only LED's, don't bother.

~ Semper Fi JR

Keep in mind that many of the controllers can run in stand alone mode so you won't need a computer or a director to run a simple animation sequence.

I have shoes older than that.

I'm happy for you that you enjoy sequencing. Personally, I rank sequencing as a small step above pure torture. Most of that is not because I can't make the software do what I want (I can do that fine), but because I lack the artistic creativity to know what I want it to do.

Yes, Programming DMX fixtures is a pain and quite tedious but it can be done and with practice it gets pretty quick. You can use copy and paste and functions like matching fill to speed things up a lot. The benefit is precise synchronization with everything else. My moving heads and lasers are in all my sequences from beginning to end and one laser has 34 channels. I keep a breakdown of all the channel values for every function in a spreadsheet open on a third monitor for quick reference. Of course, I have no life............

Then get people to not post every activity of their day, what they made for dinner, and every picture, joke, etc that they ever see that they like and think that EVERYONE else should want to see it too. Oh wait, not gonna happen... The chaff to wheat ratio is way too bad...

I was sequencing a song the other day and found that while playing the sequence if you press the down or up arrows on your keyboard you will place a Temporary red dotted marker down through your channels. I found this to be incredibly helpful in lining up timing. If you press down first then up you can get 2 marks. This is useful if you want to mark a particular instrument or sound or start and stop to a sequence. I am sure there are lost of details that are not on any videos or anything like that. Since i am new to this I do not yet have a rhythm. i would like in the future to be able to have more of those markers. i would like to be able to play a segment and put more than a few marks. Perhaps someone has some things that we can do while we are playing the sequence.

One thing to note here. Do this as a local drive (as in on site) as opposed to something online (like Google Drive or Dropbox). The reason is that you will be running the show from the common drive, and you don't want your show to crash just because your internet had a hiccup. I realize that most people don't have a file server running 24x7 as I do, but external network attached storage (NAS) devices are easily available and not all that expensive. Frequently available in some sort of RAID array (recommended). And don't forget to back up the NAS regularly. Using an online site is fine for manually moving files from one computer to another or for off-site backup (HIGHLY RECOMMENDED), just don't run your show directly from an online file storage.

This is how I do it! Normally I start out with all white! tlogan this what I was going to show you as soon as I am able. Thank you Box on Rails ! JR

While some of you will see that LOR having an official facecrap support group as a positive, I see it as a decided negative. It means that support will be split. Some people will undoubtedly regularly show up on both, but over time, most will either use the forum or facecrap, but not both. That means that there will be fewer users who are able to provide help and ideas on how to do things with their lights. What I mean by that is if a question is asked on the forum, answers and suggestions will come only from the people who use the forum, and if a question is asked on facecrap, it can only be answered by people who use facecrap. In either case, the best answer may be from a person who is on the other platform - and will get missed I'm sure you can tell from my wording which platform I will use....

This year our show had more traffic because of the news story. I am always outside to say hello and answer questions ,most people are nice and understand others want to see the show also, I do ask people not to stop smack in the front of the house and to turn their lites off. The other nite I had a guy in a very tricked out Jeep wrangler stop crossways of the street, blocking both ways I asked nicely if he could move so people coming into the neighborhood could get by, he politely told me where &^%*$# to go. So I went to the other cars and told them to hang on and I went in and shut it down. Didnt take long ,he left . I restarted. He hasn't been back,if I see him I will do same thing . Don't mess with a 70 year old yall !!!!! David

Update: So, I used to be an IT tech and when a user came to me with some strange issue with their computer my standard answer was "shut up and reboot". I should have listened to my own advice. I rebooted my pc yesterday morning (due to a windows update) and after that my original show has been running perfect - no shutdowns/resets or blinks. Go figure.

Getting motivated to get off the couch.

Five minutes with a TeamViewer session and his problem was solved. Works better when the channels have channel assignment.

Hey everyone! I’ve been making face masks for my neighbors here in Nashville. Came across some Christmas lights fabric and figured I could make them for you all as well. They’re $10 each with free shipping. https://bit.ly/StramMade-Masks

Hey everyone! Check out my tutorial on how to set up a fog machine for your display. It all costs less than $50 with your setup! The Products I used are in the video description.

Yep, then you see it in the show, and remember why you wanted to add it.