How to handle a multi-house street display in S5

[SteveBrighton]

For the last 5 years, I have been programming the lights for my house and the neighbor next door.  When I did my display this past Christmas using S5, it didn't present any issues because I was able to take a nice picture of both homes together that I could configure in the Preview.  Now I have an issue because another house 7 doors down from me wants his house to be included.  I have taken a picture of his house and I am getting them to work with me on defining how they would like to see the layout on their house and property.  I purchased all the necessary wifi controllers at the spring sale and I told him that he has to purchase his own 16 channel controller.  How can I get multiple images loaded into the Preview so that I can setup his channels?  If I can't, what other method do you have to allow me to include their house configuration into my sequences.  Before Preview, the grid would allow you to setup as many controllers as you wanted.  Anyone doing multiple houses on a street or a layout in a park may run into the same issue.  It would be handy to link several individual Previews into a sequence.  That way you could have more detail per house.

[k6ccc]

As far as two images into Preview Editor, no, you can't use two images, but that is easy to resolve.  Use your favorite image processing program (Paint will work fine) and combine the images, then use the combined image.

You can have as many channels as you want.  Just add their channels to your preview.  Here is my stats from my 2018 Christmas Preview:

Preview Name: 2018 Christmas

Number of Master Props: 137
Number of Sub-props: 12
Number of Hidden Props: 0
Number of Bulbs: 29,805
Number of Channels: 66,635
Number of Groups: 22

Number of Traditional Props: 62
Number of Traditional Bulbs: 4,111
Number of Traditional Channels: 62

Number of RGB Pixel Props: 22
Number of RGB Pixel Bulbs: 22,138
Number of RGB Pixel Channels: 66,414

Number of Dumb RGB Props: 53
Number of Dumb RGB Bulbs: 3,556
Number of Dumb RGB Channels: 159

 

[GriswoldStyle]

4 minutes ago, k6ccc said:

Number of RGB Pixel Channels: 66,414

 

 

HOLY SMOKES BATMAN!!! You sir got your hands full lol  Hats off to you 

-Bows to the channel god- lol

[k6ccc]

Just now, GriswoldStyle said:

HOLY SMOKES BATMAN!!! You sir got your hands full lol  Hats off to you 

-Bows to the channel god- lol

Keep in mind that 55,296 channels of that is the P5 and P10 matrixes - seen hanging in my family room.

[GriswoldStyle]

8 hours ago, k6ccc said:

Keep in mind that 55,296 channels of that is the P5 and P10 matrixes - seen hanging in my family room.

Lol even still. I'm going crazy trying to sequence with 4 ac controllers and 3 cmb24... I can only imagine the work you put into yours. 

[debtoews]

On 8/15/2018 at 6:05 PM, SteveBrighton said:

For the last 5 years, I have been programming the lights for my house and the neighbor next door.  When I did my display this past Christmas using S5, it didn't present any issues because I was able to take a nice picture of both homes together that I could configure in the Preview.  Now I have an issue because another house 7 doors down from me wants his house to be included.  I have taken a picture of his house and I am getting them to work with me on defining how they would like to see the layout on their house and property.  I purchased all the necessary wifi controllers at the spring sale and I told him that he has to purchase his own 16 channel controller.  How can I get multiple images loaded into the Preview so that I can setup his channels?  If I can't, what other method do you have to allow me to include their house configuration into my sequences.  Before Preview, the grid would allow you to setup as many controllers as you wanted.  Anyone doing multiple houses on a street or a layout in a park may run into the same issue.  It would be handy to link several individual Previews into a sequence.  That way you could have more detail per house.

Hi Steve- I do multiple houses ( 38 this year) and I have never used pictures for viewing.  I just use several dots for example: Upper eves - four colors- one for each, lower eves - four colors, one for each, mini trees- four colors ( we use 6 mini trees per house, so 6 sets....and so on...you really dont need to have that much detail until you go pixels and matrices...hope this helps- thanks!

[k6ccc]

Steve,  I also do not have a photo of my house in my preview.  I also make no effort to make the preview exactly like the actual layout - it's somewhat close, but there are parts that are not at the correct angle simply because it's easier to make it fit on the screen than if it was accurate.  For example, below is my 2016 Visualization.  The Pixel star actually sits right on top of the tree and is a little smaller.  The lights on the right are actually at an odd angle, and the arches are the same odd angle.  The eves are fairly accurate, but actually close to the tree.  There are other differences too, but that's the major ones.  This layout, while not accurate, works very well for me.  I have a very wide layout.

[SteveBrighton]

Thanks Everyone for your input.  All your suggestions and feedback has become very handy for me.  I took the first advice from k6ccc and was able to join 2 images together.  The scaling of the props was no problem to fix with the ability to select all the props to move and scale in both directions or individually.  I'm okay for now, but if I get any further houses getting involved I will be taking some of the other advice to use coloured dots.