Nutcracker: Vixen, Halloween and my wife

[smeighan]

Well , I managed to sequence 3 songs on Oct 30th.

Monster Mash

Ghostbusters

This is Halloween from the Nightmare Before Christmas

I used audacity to mark the phrases on all 3 songs

Next i created a single strand model using 7x128 pixel strings.

I defined 16 segments, 8 for the spiderweb and 8 for the spider body

Used nutcracker and projects, created vixen and hls files

In the end , i used Vixen because it loaded the files faster.

I sequenced a 4th file, 30 seconds of thunder and rain.

A made a 5th file , just lighting effects, no audio.

Now , I am ready.

Opened 5 files in Vixen.

I am using

(1) Dell 620 laptop with Windows XP

(1) Lynx 16 port active Hub

(1) Lynx Etherdongle

(7) Smart Controllers.

(7) 128 node rgb lights

www.*aliexpress.*com/*fm-*store/*701799/*209889132-*495658226/*128-*node-*LED-*pixel-*string-*DC12V-*input-*new-*model-*IP68.*html

(1) Behringer 302USB 5-Input Mixer , http://www.amazon.com/Behringer-302USB-Premium-5-Input-Interface/dp/B005EHILV4/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1351791889&sr=8-1&keywords=xenyx+302

This takes audio from the usb port and will eventually feed it to my FM transmitter. It worked nice since we could adjust volume as people walked up to the house

(1) Sony 100w audio deck

So now we are ready. I load up the 5 vixen files

(1) Ghostbusters

(2) This is Halloween

(3) Monster Mash

(4) 30 second rain and thunder track

(5) Animations without sound

It is almost 6pm, Halloween night. We have had only one boy come to the house. It looks like this Halloween is going to be light on kids.

My 11yo twin's want to get out and get candy. What to do?

Ok, I quickly show my wife, here is Vixen, there is a play button here. Click on the window you want to play and click play.

"Got it?" "Got it!", she says

I leave with my boys planning to be gone 30 minutes. I am pretty sure i will come back with windows munged up or something.

It turns out i am gone 2 hours. As i come back to our house. I notice something strange, the one color chases that i created are now two color??

I am thinking my wife was going to be having problems using Vixen.

Well, she tells me:

"I am running the lighting only sequence in a loop. I then run one of the three songs (1-3) above. As children turn into our driveway i then launch the 30 second thunder track. It takes 4 seconds before the Thunder and lights go off, so if I launch it as they turn into our driveway the children are directly under the web when the lightning fires."

So she has 3 sequences all running at the same time

background chases

one of three songs

thunder track.

I was unaware that vixen/lynx would logically OR the three sequences together or that the audio would mix between the two concurrently running sequences.

It worked perfectly. On demand thunder in the middle of a song.

Her comment, "I though you said this was difficult?"

We had larger and larger crowds. Last year we went through 1/2 bag of candy, this year 3 bags. My wife took one son around our neighborhood. She was behind a group of ten teenagers. One group met another , the first group said "Are you going over to the party house?". We had kids dancing to ghostbusters in the front yard.

People taking pictures of the spider and web.

Sequencing not perfect, but it worked.

we will see what next year brings

BTW, I posted this to all the forums (LSP,LOR, HLS,Vixen) because the technique for creating single strand animations on the spider web and spider would apply to all the sequencers.

sean

img]http://meighan.net/nutcracker/images/halloween/IMG_0004.JPG

Edited November 1, 2012 by smeighan

[n_gifford]

Her comment, "I though you said this was difficult?"

This says it all..... Nice work Sean!

[k6ccc]

Glad it all worked for you.

That's a cute little mixer. I did not know anyone made a mixer with a USB input (never looked for one either). Too bad it's only unbalanced RCA connectors on the line inputs and outputs. But I guess I can't really expect professional features on a $50 mixer. I can see some uses for something like that. I would be interested in knowing how well it holds up. I may have to ask you in a few months...

And from your picture, you have WAY too much snow.

[75redman]

I am thinking my wife was going to be having problems using Vixen.

Well, she tells me:

"I am running the lighting only sequence in a loop. I then run one of the three songs (1-3) above. As children turn into our driveway i then launch the 30 second thunder track. It takes 4 seconds before the Thunder and lights go off, so if I launch it as they turn into our driveway the children are directly under the web when the lightning fires."

So she has 3 sequences all running at the same time

background chases

one of three songs

thunder track.

I was unaware that vixen/lynx would logically OR the three sequences together or that the audio would mix between the two concurrently running sequences.

It worked perfectly. On demand thunder in the middle of a song.

Her comment, "I though you said this was difficult?"

Looks like you may have some competition.

[smeighan]

Glad it all worked for you.

That's a cute little mixer. I did not know anyone made a mixer with a USB input (never looked for one either). Too bad it's only unbalanced RCA connectors on the line inputs and outputs. But I guess I can't really expect professional features on a $50 mixer. I can see some uses for something like that. I would be interested in knowing how well it holds up. I may have to ask you in a few months...

And from your picture, you have WAY too much snow.

the good thing living in Denver is at 6000 feet we have intense sunlight. Colorado has the highest incidence of sunburns in the 50 states. That intense sunlight melts snow pretty fast.

here is 3 days after the snow

[smeighan]

What the heck is that spider body made out of?

Drew

PS:

I am so getting that mixer thanks for posting the link!

body was 1/2" drip irrigation pipe ($10 for 50 feet), made a 6 foot half sphere, cable ties, multiple circles of pipe. Covered all with a black trashbag held on with duct tape. we then used 10 cans of expanding foam insulation both inside and out. spray painted body gloss black.

entire body (without legs) weighs something like 10-15 lbs, very light

there is a 1/2" sch 40 pvc frame inside of it that has 1" eye hooks. I was planning on hnging it from teh side of my house, maybe next year.

thanks

sean

[smeighan]

So is the irrigation pipe still part of it or was that only to give the foam something to take shape on? I kinda thought it looked like that great stuff but the black color kind of fooled me... didn't think of paint.

Drew

i guess i didnt answer his. The 1/2" irrigation is basically the skeleton of the spider. It is covered with black trash bags and held in place with duct tape. I then spray the foam insulation all over the outside and also on the inside sandwiching the pipe . It is lightweight and strong. I then spray painted the outside black.

I really wanted to let people know. This Behringer 302USB 5-Input Mixer has improved my FM audio broadcast tremendously. The line input into my transmitter and just some minor control with the equalizer provided on it are really so much better then the speaker output on the PC sound cards. Having been into amateur radio I don't know why this didn't occur to me earlier to use such a device. I should have known that the audio from the PC no matter the volume would over modulate the signal and distort carrier. I mean before every song had a different volume so I would sometimes hear one song too loud and turn down the volume and then be unable to hear the next song as well. It's worth the money, even if you don't do this one... If your having trouble with your transmission... something like this could solve it.

I thought it was worth mentioning. So thanks Sean for this post!

Drew

no problem drew, i do think that it has helped my audio. I like the clear feedback and fine adjustment i can make. So i get the USB audio into this unit, and then feed my EDM transmitter from this.

it works great

[k6ccc]

That's a cute little mixer. I did not know anyone made a mixer with a USB input (never looked for one either). Too bad it's only unbalanced RCA connectors on the line inputs and outputs. But I guess I can't really expect professional features on a $50 mixer. I can see some uses for something like that. I would be interested in knowing how well it holds up. I may have to ask you in a few months...

Well, Christmas has ended and I wanted to follow up on this. How well did that cute little mixer work out?

[TheJackal]

the good thing living in Denver is at 6000 feet we have intense sunlight. Colorado has the highest incidence of sunburns in the 50 states. That intense sunlight melts snow pretty fast.

Where in Denver are you?

[smeighan]

Well, Christmas has ended and I wanted to follow up on this. How well did that cute little mixer work out?

It worked perfect fpr my Christmas show.

My show was

Dell 620 laptop running Windows XP

EDM fm transmitter connected to the cute mixer

xLights running the vix files created by Nutcracker

Where in Denver are you?

4217 Greenfinch Dr

Highlands Ranch (or Littleton)

80126

[MCas4380]

That's cool I will have to look into the mixer