New setup but not typical

[reven45]

Hi everyone, 

I'm new to the forum and I've been scouring it looking for someone in a similar situation. Before I begin, let me say I understand it's late in the season to be jumping in but I accept my fate and understand the implications such as cost to jumping in now. But I'd still like to get my feet wet (even just getting a single strand up and running this year). So here goes.

I'm looking for advice for decorating two large evergreen trees in my yard. I am Strongly leaning toward pixels because I want to leave the lights up year round and do different light effects for different events and holidays. The trees are both about 30 ft tall, about 15 ft at the base. I'm figuring I need at least 1500 bulbs each. I have no desire for music or really any kind of a 'show' - I just want to be able to do some cool lighting (chasing, cycling color, etc) and of course change colors as I see fit. 

So two questions in general.

1. What type of controller should I look for considering I need a lot of lights?

2. I assume I'll need to run several 'home runs' to the controller and possible need several controllers but my wish is to keep it as simple as possible keeping in mind my intentions in the previous paragraph. Any advice for this unconventional design? 

 

thanks in advance!

Kevin

[PJD]

I'm somewhat of a newbie also, so you may get better answers from others once they get around to posting (as you probably know, this is a very busy time of year for this hobby!)

We started with pixels this year at my house.  After looking at the options, we decided to go with DMX and E1.31 networking rather than sticking with the LOR system.  We still use the LOR controllers for all the traditional lights and the software to control everything.  Our pixels are all using Alphapix controllers (from Holidaycoro) but there are other options out there including LOR.  I believe the pixel controller LOR recommends for "advanced" users can be on either a LOR network or an E1.31 network.

Personally, I would get one 16-output controller per tree.  (I currently have an Alphapix16 for each of my 2 pixel trees).  We are finding that most of the time, we can put about 100 pixels on an output without having to deal with power injections.  (However, power injection isn't that hard, so if you want to have longer strings that is certainly possible.)  If using power injection, our Alphapix16 can have up to 340 pixels per output (2 DMX Universes).  This will vary by the type of controller you choose.  We also use Alphapix4's in our setup and they can handle 640 pixels per output (4 DMX Universes) with power injection.  I assume other brands have different features.

If you are using E1.31 and controlling it from a computer, the easiest setup would be to run 1 ethernet cable from the PC jack to a switch and then from the switch to each of the controllers.  I kept my switch inside by my computer and ran 2 long (100 ft) ethernet cables out to the controllers by my pixel trees.  It would also work to run a single long Ethernet cable to a switch near your controllers (assuming they are near each other).  If you are looking at not using a computer and using one of the director thingies, I am of zero help since we have never done that.  We have been running our traditional light show on LOR for years on a PC and now are just addung pixels to that show.

E1.31 uses IP addressing to locate the controllers (each has it's own address).  I have set up our network so that the PC that controls the show uses it's WiFi adapter to connect to the same IP network as our other PCs, printers, IoT devices, router to the internet, etc.  The wired Ethernet port adapter is configured to the IP network that the pixel controllers use.  By not having everything on the same network, I don't have the light show traffic interfering with everything else in the house or having heavy traffic on the house network effecting the light show.

When I was figuring all this out, I found a lot of good information at the holidaycoro Knowledge base.    There are probably other good sources out there as well.

 

Edited November 25, 2019 by PJD

[reven45]

Thanks PJD. This has been helpful.