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Getting started in ccr from lor


John Emmerling

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When you buy the ccr you get a power supply and a controller with each one. Do you need 12 controllers on a 12 ccr tree and 12power supplies. These ccr are smart ribbons or dumb? If I buy all the stuff I need for a 12 ccr tree about how much. Thanks

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Two years ago, I bought a single LOR CCR. Normal price is $250 for one. It contains the controller and power supply and is designed to be ready for the LOR network. Its a "Smart" strip therefore you can program each set of LED's as you desire. There are 150 LED's, grouped in 3's therefore 50 LED's that you are commanding along the 16.4 feet of strip. If you bought 12 of them, its $3,000. Wait to purchase at the spring or summer sales and you'll save a bit, if they are available. Yes, you would have 12 power supplies and 12 controllers and No, they are not waterproof so you would need a weather proof encloser for all of them or some way to protect them. CCR's are delicate too. You cannot have them flopping in the wind so they need to be carefully mounted on something that doesn't move. They are best programmed using SuperStar and the number of them you buy will require the appropriate SS license, which is above the normal "Advanced" license. Extra cost for the SS license. 

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I wasn't clear about the water-proofing...the power supply and controller are not water-proof. The CCR itself is somewhat water-proof but not on the ends so I wouldn't have the ends upright, rather down, sealed or whatever. People have reported water getting into the ends so examine them carefully.

 

The power supply and controller need to be enclosed in a water-proof container such as a cable box for the side of a house. I have mine mounted in one, on a stand, so its upright and off the ground. Works just fine for me. When you are talking about 12 sets of these, not sure there but there's lots of people in here who have a 12 CCR tree so they can advise you better.

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I don't know if I can make it to the rgb light. I have been using lor for 6 years and still get into trouble programming and getting them to play the lights. I have some ideas but it looks to me that programming and all the stuff like E682 controllers or the 485 hs or all the stuff from holiday coro. I am already crazy with what to do. I have lor updated 3.10.14 and super star but do not know how to hook it all up from there. Bought some ribbons but probably the wrong ones.i will continue to watch lol forums and hope to learn. I am going to make some new arches out of the landscaping edging and play with that. I also thought about buying holiday coro starting kit. May that will help.

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I'm a newbie in RGB as well, so here, I'm like you, learn mode. If you order from HolidayCoro, email them first on what you are interested in, asking specifically what is needed for you to make it work with LOR. Their products work with numerous different types of systems, one of which is LOR but requires different communication setups.

 

There are smart strips or pixels which allow you to address each LED individually and are controlled by cards/controllers designed for this purpose. I've just acquired a Joshua1Systems ECG-P12S/X card which will do this. I have pixels on-order right now. I also have power supplies, one on-order and one here for those pixels. The pixels and strips come in two voltages usually, 5V and 12V. 12V is the more common but I'm trying the 5V pixels this first time. Enclosures needed too.

 

There are dumb strips which are where the whole length of strip is all one color but you can change the whole color together. It requires a DC controller or similar. LOR sells a 24 channel DC controller which will run 8 strips of nominal length. You have to buy the power supply(s) too along with enclosures for the controllers and power supplies as needed. I ordered and just yesterday, received 8, 16.4 foot dumb strips and tested them already with the DC controller I have from LOR. They worked.

 

I can tell you that the LOR network is an RS485 system, serial data. Their software now allows for E1.31 and its always done DMX. E1.31 is supposedly TCPIP communications to the controller so you have a different line connected from your computer connected router, going outside to these RGB controllers that run on E1.31. Their own DC card will run on the LOR network which is RS485 that you are already using. The nice thing about LOR, their devices will run on their network and saves you from trying to figure the rest out as I'm doing now. But, their items cost more. I noticed they have a device called IDMX1000 or similar but no price on it so who knows about it yet.

 

Sequencing is time-consuming. If you are having problems, there are only two suggestions that I have for you. Either get in there and figure it out "early" which is what I did or buy sequences already done. You would still have to modify those purchased sequences for your display. Sequencing is more of an "art form" than technical work. As so many have said before, its not a plug and play hobby. Personally speaking, when I'm sequencing, I use the LOR Visuallzer a lot, creating the strings, props and fixtures in it so I can see what I'm doing. Then while listening to a song, I'm picturing in my head, what I want the lights to do at any particular moment. Once I have a decent picture in my head going, then I start sequencing to make that happen. The visualizer allows me to see the effects without having the lights connected to anything and the controllers aren't even out there yet. Sequencing takes time and a lot of it. Some report times of 3 hours per minute of music as an average and others are 1 hour per minute. Some who are more computer literate, can go faster but WE ALL come back many times during the year and clean up what we've done, looking for mistakes and making enhancements.

 

Sorry this is so long but was trying to talk about the things you mentioned

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Idmx 1000 is $260 .00 . So I take it that I cannot program each pixel from supper star. If I wanted to do this I will need to buy a board like what you said. Dmx is all new to me so here what I need to run rgb. A lor 485 , enttec $67.00 , 5vdc or 12v dc for what I am going to run rgb strips pixel or ccr,from holiday coro or e-bay. Ray wu . Need to read more on the ECG -p-12s/x. Thank you for helping me. I started early this year so I can play

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I bought an LOR CMB-24D board which does dumb RGB real easily on the LOR network. It'll control 8 strips or 8 rgb devices within current limits of course. I also purchased a HolidayCoro RGB star along with its 3-channel controller with power over CAT5. Now that's been a challenge to get it to work. I bought a dongle from them, but they canceled it saying I didn't need it...excellent customer service there! I did order their USB programmer cable for it to change the addressing, which arrived today. So, got to thinking...dangerous...but if this programmer cable can see or transmit DMX protocols to the controller, I should be able to use it to control from LOR too. Well, after lots and lots of failures, something I did which I really am not sure what, suddenly it was able to do exactly what I needed it to do. I did see that LOR self-launched a port monitor program. The changes I made were in the sequencer, edit pull-down, preferences, network preferences, dmx. One port appeared there so I selected it but even then, it wouldn't work.

 

Then I remembered forum member "ryebred" telling me that for him, he needed to have the LOR control panel running to get things to talk. So I did that but it didn't work. Then enabled it which tried to start my normal shows, disabled immediately...then all of a sudden, the holidaycoro star started working!

 

Supposedly this ECG-P12S card has two CAT5 DMX ports on it, which are obviously there, but without documentation for them, there's no way for me to know how they are wired. The documentation for the P12R (older card) doesn't have this.

 

I'm contemplating changing out 16 led minitrees in the front yard display for 16 coro rgb trees but to do that, I'll need two more CMB-24D cards, plus the trees and modules.

 

Still on order and just shipped, my 14 strings of WS2811 pixels from Ray Wu. Those will be controlled by the P12S card, actually 12 of them plus the two spares left over just in case.

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  • 1 month later...

I got the WS2811 5Volt pixels from Ray Wu. They are fairly large but will hopefully do the job I envisioned from someone else here on the forums, member Ryebred. I've got them working as planned. Still need to fabricate the frames to hold them. Then it'll be onto the sequencing.

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... I envisioned from someone else here on the forums, member Ryebred.

I'm also making a copy of his tree, which I will now call a "Ryan Tree", with the following changes:

 

The pixels from Ray Wu had many failures, so I'm paying a bit more and buying mine from Seasonal Entertainment, because I trust their quality and customer support more than Ray's. I did order (and have already received) the power supplies and connecting cables from Ray, and they seem to be fine, although I haven't powered up the supplies yet.

 

I'm also using the controller from San Devices instead of Joshua Systems because I've ordered from them in the past and like their stuff.

 

I have plans to allow the branches to rotate so the pixels can be pointed towards the visitors. I plan to use 8-gauge steel wire and JB weld, but this idea hasn't been tested yet. Ryan told me he would prefer to be able to rotate the branches.

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