My Cart

[LisaG]

Hi, So after watching videos and reading about this stuff I'm making sure I have created a list of all I need. My objective is to make some pumpkins light up to music. I would also like to get a singing pumpkin:

Showtime Central with pre-loaded SD card

lights

Does this sound right? Not sure what to do about the singing pumpkin.

 

[dibblejr]

It sounds as if you are new to LOR. If so you will need a lot more than just a card, software and lights. As well as the pumpkin(s)

It all depends on your budget.

If you could expound in you opening statement a little.

You will also need lots of time to create your sequences, unless you plan on buying them or getting them from others. 

Best of luck

JR

[George Simmons]

2 hours ago, LisaG said:

... Not sure what to do about the singing pumpkin.

My advice would be to hold an open audition in early September.  You'll need that much lead time.  Once you find your pumpkin, there's still all sorts of things to finalize like contracts, royalties, vacation and retirement benefits.  It's not as easy as it once was, but still doable.

[LisaG]

Well George that would probably be easier to do then what I was trying to plan :0)

[LisaG]

Dibbler, 

So what I wanted to do was the animated face. Coordinate the face to music. This is going to be my first RGB project.

[dibblejr]

I can't help with RGB. I'm old school I guess. I had singing pumpkin face at Halloween. (Incandescent)

For Xmas singing trees, singing bulbs, singing Santa. Setting up for next year I'm adding singing Rudolph, mrs Santa, guitar snowman and snowman face. (All LED's)

None of which would have been possible without the help of many forum members.

So do you have controllers? If not that is where you need to start.

The good news, you are planning early. It's a learning curve but the good LOR community are always willing to help.

JR

Edited December 17, 2016 by dibblejr

[dgrant]

Hi Lisa, So to make this happen, you've got plenty of time between now and next year's season. For an RGB setup for a pumpkin, you'll need an RGB controller, appropriate power supply and some form of enclosure. I'm going to assume you only need dumb RGB, therefore you'll need the strips to light them up but you'll need a DC controller from LOR and a 12 Volt power supply that's capable of the load you'll place upon it. LOR's DC controller will typically handle 8 RGB channels, 3-each for RGB, times 8 sets for a total of 24 channels which their card supports easily. This card will connect via LOR's RS485 buss but do not mistake it for Ethernet or TCPIP since the connector looks identical to those and uses Cat5/6. It is NOT the same. Depending on which pre-loaded card you are purchasing will determine how the channels are programmed and I'm not sure about the license level needed to make this run.

Now using RGB in a pumpkin is fine, its only benefit is the ability to make the face lines or whatever, change color. If you don't need that capability, then just get an AC controller which will handle 16 channels of lights, therefore you could control two pumpkins instead of one. I think most faces need like 7 channels. I don't have any faces here yet so truly I'm not sure. Most likely, you'll need a computer to alter the channel configurations and so on, before sending to the SD card that the director will function from.

[mpageler]

A single large singing pumpkin face and a munber of small pumpkins, sync'ed to musics would be a nice 1st year begining.   

For sequencing, holidaycoro has a number of single pumpkin and 4 monter face singing sequences..$8 pr so.  Many  of their  sequencs inlcude additional chanlels for say pumpkins, thombstones, etc. I made good use of these sequences for some 4 and 8 channel display elements.  They have videos on all their seques.

For the 4 singing face sequences, you could just use the lead singer part for now.  

To construct a 4ft or so pumpking face, holiday coro has a corrugated plastics sheet that have the face outline on it.  You buy the lights separately.

FrameDlite (sp ?) makes/sells pumpkin face steel frames that you add lights to...$100 or so.

For lights, you could use mini, dumb pixels or rope light.  Many like myself, use rope lights on faces.  I just like the look versus bulbs. Since the mouth/eye movement is the 1st priority, I would use a single color and not mix color in a face frame. 
It's good that you are planning already for next Halloween.

Take a look at holidaycore\s site to look at some of the items I mentioned. 

[LisaG]

Mpagler, thank you so much. I have been looking at Holiday coro too. So I can get the controller from LOR and then the faces and sequence from Holiday coro. Actually I can get the ShowTime Central kit from LOR, then the sequence and face from Holiday Coro, and use regular LED lights as I'm not going to change colors this year (baby steps).  And that should do it right?

[dibblejr]

Just now, dgrant said:

Hi Lisa, So to make this happen, you've got plenty of time between now and next year's season. For an RGB setup for a pumpkin, you'll need an RGB controller, appropriate power supply and some form of enclosure. I'm going to assume you only need dumb RGB, therefore you'll need the strips to light them up but you'll need a DC controller from LOR and a 12 Volt power supply that's capable of the load you'll place upon it. LOR's DC controller will typically handle 8 RGB channels, 3-each for RGB, times 8 sets for a total of 24 channels which their card supports easily. This card will connect via LOR's RS485 buss but do not mistake it for Ethernet or TCPIP since the connector looks identical to those and uses Cat5/6. It is NOT the same. Depending on which pre-loaded card you are purchasing will determine how the channels are programmed and I'm not sure about the license level needed to make this run.

Now using RGB in a pumpkin is fine, its only benefit is the ability to make the face lines or whatever, change color. If you don't need that capability, then just get an AC controller which will handle 16 channels of lights, therefore you could control two pumpkins instead of one. I think most faces need like 7 channels. I don't have any faces here yet so truly I'm not sure. Most likely, you'll need a computer to alter the channel configurations and so on, before sending to the SD card that the director will function from.

All of my Pumpkin faces and bulbs are 8 channels each, I forgot to mention in my above post

JR

[dibblejr]

Just now, LisaG said:

Mpagler, thank you so much. I have been looking at Holiday coro too. So I can get the controller from LOR and then the faces and sequence from Holiday coro. Actually I can get the ShowTime Central kit from LOR, then the sequence and face from Holiday Coro, and use regular LED lights as I'm not going to change colors this year (baby steps).  And that should do it right?

Yes, if you get the Showtime Central Starter Kit you will be good to go, however if you want to add additional lighting with the capability to have a different beat that the faces you'll have to get at least one additional controller. But that also depends on which faces you buy. My faces are 8 channels each, so one controller will handle 2 faces. But you can get away with not having blinking eyes and save some options for additional lights.

I will share I jumped into the singing faces head first, it was a bit of a learning curve plus I do not have full use/ feeling of either of my arms but I am having a blast. I had/ have some great support from members here.

RGB adds more of a learning curve but just as I did you can prob get it figured out but id suggest starting with LEDs or Incans. 

Please if you don't remember anything else THANK those that help you. I will be forever indebted to many people here. I can only pay them back by using my time to sequence and pass the sequences along.

JR

Edited December 17, 2016 by dibblejr

[LisaG]

Absolutely, everyone here has been a huge help. I've been bugging the help desk and kept opening tickets. Felt bad about that then I saw this. All the posts have been very helpful. Including the one for auditions for singing pumpkins lol. I've been taking notes, and feel like I'm getting a little better grasp on this.

You're right I don't need the RGB I'm just going with LED's instead. Maybe next Christmas I'll get crazy and do RGB trees lol. But for now orange lights are good for me.

Thanks for all knowledge! 

[dibblejr]

Just now, LisaG said:

Absolutely, everyone here has been a huge help. I've been bugging the help desk and kept opening tickets. Felt bad about that then I saw this. All the posts have been very helpful. Including the one for auditions for singing pumpkins lol. I've been taking notes, and feel like I'm getting a little better grasp on this.

You're right I don't need the RGB I'm just going with LED's instead. Maybe next Christmas I'll get crazy and do RGB trees lol. But for now orange lights are good for me.

Thanks for all knowledge! 

I do separate color lips ect. instead of just single color, I wouldn't have it any other way, stands out from everyone elses Christmas decorations while driving through my nh. Get the bulbs during the xmas sell outs from your local favorite retailer.

JR

[LisaG]

Awesome! Great idea about the lights!! I'll have to start my shopping list lol!

Thanks ?

[George Simmons]

On 12/17/2016 at 10:58 AM, LisaG said:

Awesome! Great idea about the lights!! I'll have to start my shopping list lol!

Be careful dealing with Holiday Coro.  Many have had acceptable experiences,  Others have filled forums with HC horror stories - more than I've EVER seen (in nine years) for any other vendor.  Just saying ...

 

[LisaG]

Thanks for the heads up about HC!

[dibblejr]

I have mixed experiences from HC. I purchased several (a lot) of singing face seq. from them, just to get me started for Halloween.

1) I purchased all of their xmas singing props (coro type) and when I attepted to create a vis file I asked them for the clip art. Well they sent me the exact thing I had copied from their site. It has watermarks and they were interfering with the LOROC. I explained that to them, but they never got back to me.

2) some of the sequences were not being recognized in the SE. I created a ticket, no reply. I tried to call, got the "its an LOR issue".

To solve my issue I went outside the box and contacted Mike at WL's. As soon as I explained my problem he knew exactly what it was. I gave him access to my computer and within 1 minute he fixed that one and I knew what to do from there.

Lesson learned, I will give LOR and Mike all of my business and referrals!

** Props are great, some bulbs went in loose but I figured out how to use the light string excess to assist with keeping them in place. Sequences are good but I learned to watch the entire sequence before editing.

 

JR

Edited December 18, 2016 by dibblejr

[Mr. P]

Don't you just hate it when HC says contact LOR and LOR says contact HC.