Need some advice

[Lighted Christmas Balls]

I am new at this light control business and need some advice on how to set up what I have in mind, and what it would take controller wise, as i have no experience with sequences yet. I have constructed for this year, 112 lighted christmas balls for my display. 16 trees with 6 each(1 each of gold, red, blue, white, purple, green in each tree) and 16 larger balls lighted to look like giant christmas ornaments that are set on the ground underneath the trees. A pic which covers most of the current display is attached) I imagine in my mind being able to control each tree separately ( have all 6 different colors come on at the same time) as well as possibly being able to program all of the same color ball in each of the 16 trees to come in at the same time. I would use the ones on the ground as secondary to come on as accents. They are LED so watts will not be a problem. I have read the get started pdf and it talks about 4 groups of 4, but i cant get my head around what i want to see happen and what LOR controllers and software can do, and how many controllers it would take. Any help or opinions would be greatly appreciated. This is a looking ahead to next year plan

[George Simmons]

First of all, forget the 4 groups of 4.  You can't do that with your display and have it come out looking like anything but crap.  Plus, the sequencing options are extremely limited.  (How many different ways can you count from one to four?)

What you need to do first is count the number of individual channels you want and go from there.

[Lighted Christmas Balls]

So any idea how many channels it would take to do what I imagine. Since they are LED and about 10  watts per 100 lights,(each ball has 100 lights) the 16 of each color would only be  160 watts, and i there are 6 colors, 6 x 160 is 960 watts, does it make sense for 1 controller for all the balls in the trees, and 1 for the balls on the ground? 

[B.Y.R.G.]

If you want to control each of the 112 lighted balls independently then you will need 112 channels.  Each LOR controller has 16 individual outlets/channels.  So with that in mind you will need 7 controllers for this setup 112/16=7.  You will have no open channels as they all will be used.  Power is not a problem since they're LED.  I see a lot of SPT wire in your future.

Edited December 8, 2016 by B.Y.R.G.

[Al Saunders]

Hi Lighted Christmas Balls,

 

As BYRG mentioned each element you want to control individually will need a controller channel. So for the 112 in the trees you'll need 112 channels which is 7 controllers plus you'll need another 1 controller for the 16 balls on the ground. Each channel of the controller is rated for 8 amps so you need to make sure none of the balls draw more than that and also that if at any time the controller will be full on for each channel that it doesn't go over the total rating of 15 or 30 amps. The total depends on which controller you go with. Since you mention everything is LED I seriously doubt you'll be anywhere near the max amps. I'm no electrician or mathematician so I would look at a post Developer Mike posted a while ago called something like Amps are everything. It's very informative.

As for sequencing, you'll need to some how identify each tree or number each tree then associate a color for that tree. Obviously the easiest is to just decide where to start and number them 1-16 then decide on a starting color so you end up with something like below.

1-red, 1-blue, 1-green, 1-white, 1-purple, 1-gold, 2-red, 2-blue, 2-green, 2-white, 2-purple, 2-gold, etc..

As you sequence you can either leave them in that order or create a new "track" and put all the colors together so it might be easier to do fades across groups of colors. I hope this helps, good luck.

Later,

Al

[Lighted Christmas Balls]

Thanks to George Simmons, Al Saunders and B.Y.R.G for their helpful insights, as this will be my first time delving into computer controlled lighting, I am going to rethink my starting point, and start the first year with a little smaller setup, and expand as I go along. The area involved naturally breaks into 3 zones of trees, so I may start with that . Does anyone know if any of the pre programmed sequences  available from lightorama could be used for a setup like this, or will I have to start from scratch and program it all ?

[B.Y.R.G.]

14 minutes ago, Lighted Christmas Balls said:

Thanks to George Simmons, Al Saunders and B.Y.R.G for their helpful insights, as this will be my first time delving into computer controlled lighting, I am going to rethink my starting point, and start the first year with a little smaller setup, and expand as I go along. The area involved naturally breaks into 3 zones of trees, so I may start with that . Does anyone know if any of the pre programmed sequences  available from lightorama could be used for a setup like this, or will I have to start from scratch and program it all ?

Since you are just starting I would recommend going to the Sequence Sharing forum and see what you can find for free.  There are many generous individuals who share their sequences just give them an e-mail address to send them.  This way you can get a feel for how the sequencing is like and get examples of different effects.  You can copy and paste effects you like into your setup to create a custom sequence for your particular setup (which BTW is really cool and different).  You can also setup your display in the Visualizer and group your trees into zones and see how that looks too.  If you don't mind but where did you get all these balls?  Good luck!

Edited December 8, 2016 by B.Y.R.G.

[Lighted Christmas Balls]

Thanks again for that advice I will certainly do that!