Shimmer vs Twinkle Question

[Gordon Gower]

I'm too new to be a NOOB. Tested my 1st controller to ensure all the channels worked and was disappointed in the TWINKLE effect. I'm a big fan of LED Icicle lights and I was hoping to twinkle each bulb randomly. I will have 4 channels of 4 colors, 30 strings of each red, green, blue, and white. I was hoping to fade twinkle in and out of each color to end up showing all combinations in a smooth transition. As far as I can tell from my own testing and what I am reading here the TWINKLE  and SHIMMER are the same thing except the timing of the flash. Is there a way to randomly twinkle the bulbs as opposed to the entire string / channel?     

[Don]

7 hours ago, Gordon Gower said:

 Is there a way to randomly twinkle the bulbs as opposed to the entire string / channel?     

On the 16 channel controllers, no. The effect is for the entire string, on/off/fade up/fade down, etc, will affect the entire string. 

You'd have to get into RGB strings and controllers to affect individual segments of a string of lights/pixels.

[EmmienLightFan]

7 hours ago, Gordon Gower said:

I'm too new to be a NOOB. Tested my 1st controller to ensure all the channels worked and was disappointed in the TWINKLE effect. I'm a big fan of LED Icicle lights and I was hoping to twinkle each bulb randomly. I will have 4 channels of 4 colors, 30 strings of each red, green, blue, and white. I was hoping to fade twinkle in and out of each color to end up showing all combinations in a smooth transition. As far as I can tell from my own testing and what I am reading here the TWINKLE  and SHIMMER are the same thing except the timing of the flash. Is there a way to randomly twinkle the bulbs as opposed to the entire string / channel?     

This is an old thread. I was surprised that I remember this thread when I saw the email come in.

You cannot twinkle each LED individually, as they are all connected together. With standard LOR controllers, everything on each output does the same thing. There is no way to control individual bulbs.

[Gordon Gower]

Thank you for your responses. I guess at least some of my early expectations have been dashed on the rocks of reality. I knew this was going to be a steep learning curve, but I didn't expect it to be impossible. Thanks again for your time.

[Don]

You have to think of a 16 channel controller as a glorified light switch/plug. If you turn off the switch, everything attached to it will turn off. If you apply a fade down to lights, everything attached to that circuit will fade down. If you have 10 light bulbs connected to a single circuit, you can't affect just one of them, unless the bulb has some smarts to it.

Incandescent and LED strings are dumb. Everything on the circuit will do the same thing. They don't know how to do anything different.

RGB strings, however, have 'smarts' built into them, and thus the controller can direct different parts of the string to do different things.