Mixing RGB LED lights with incandescent

[gspence]

I'm interested to hear from people who have a mix of RGB LED lights and incandescent lights to see how you are going about matching the RGB colors to the rest of your display. This is my first year adding some RGB strip lights to the display and they are so much brighter than the incandescent that they sort of stand out like a sore thumb.

For example, when I want my RGB LED strips to be red, I need to set them to about 64 so they match the brightness of the red incandescent bulbs. Green needs to be set around 32. When I want to display white, all 3 channels at 255 is WAY different than white incandescent bulbs. I've found that the closest color value to match my white incandescents is 64,32,3.

What I've found when trying to work with the RGB lights in LOR S3 is that its very hard to see what is going on because the intensity's are so low. The visual editor barely displays any color on the screen with these values and my saved tools are unrecognizable.

Is anyone else running into this issue? There are a few ideas I'd like to see that would make it easier to work with RGB lights.

1. Apply an intensity change to a range of events equally. For example: Reduce intensity by 50%. All events selected would have their values cut by 50% equally. This would preserve fades and other effects.

2. Set a max DMX value per track. For example: I'd set my red channel to have a max DMX value of 64. So now I can work in LOR's scale of 0-100 but setting the value to 100 would translate to 64 in DMX. This feature alone would allow me to fix all my tracks pretty easily I think.

3. Apply names/labels to my saved tools so things like color fades could have text over them. This way if they are very similar and visually indistinguishable, I could label them and choose the tool by reading the text label.

I'd love to hear what you guys are doing and if you've experienced any of these issues? Are you just winging it and letting the RGB lights look different from the rest?

Thanks,

Greg

[George Simmons]

Call me dense, and maybe I need to read your post again, but what exactly is the purpose of trying to match incans with RGB?

If that's the look you're after, why oh why spend that kind of money for RGB? Incans have exactly the look you seek and at a much, much, much, much lower cost. What am I missing here?

Looking at it from another angle, have you considered that maybe the incans have been misleading your eyes all these years and that RGB actually gives more of a true and precise color?

[gspence]

You might be a little dense.

Why match RGB and incandescent?

The aesthetic of my show is important to me. I want all of the pieces to look like they belong together. If one particular piece seems out of place, it detracts from the entire show. Eventually I may move entirely to LED, but for now I have a mix and I don't want it to look like Frankenstein. Don't you think that's reasonable? If I have a scene where I make all of my elements white, having the incandescents and RGB pieces a different color of "white" looks bad in my opinion. It's not about which version of white is more accurate, its about how the whole thing looks together.

Why spend money on RGB and not stick with incandescent?

I'm a DIY'er. I haven't spent 5k on CCR's, I've built everything myself. Compared to incandescent, it hasn't been that much more expensive so the money isn't really a factor. I don't think I need to go over the pro's and con's of RGB or LED because I'm sure you're aware of them.

As far as your last statement, I don't see where it makes sense at all. I never made any claims as to which lights were more true or precise nor did I say I was striving for some sort of color perfection. If my goal was to have the most accurate "white" possible, then yes I would ditch all of the incandescent and use RGB LED. We all know that incandescent bulbs don't produce a white light, yet that is the look and feel that people associated with Christmas. I've seen many people that are starting to cover their house with LED's and I don't think the displays look as nice as a typical incandescent setup. However, I like the flexibility and advantages of RGB LED.

I think I can have the best of both worlds by making artistic decisions about how I use the LED lights. And for me, that's making them look closer to the color spectrum of incandescent. You might not agree and that's ok too. Having variety in everyone's show is what makes this hobby great.

Now I'm hoping other people have experienced the same issues as me and might have some pointers for making it easier to work with LOR S3. But who knows, maybe I'm the dense one.

[GaryM]

Ouch.

[Caleb Linburg]

Try reading this, sadly every brand of lights are a little bit different so you might have to change these a little to make them match perfectly. http://planetpixelemporium.com/tutorialpages/light.html

[shfr26]

gspence, do you also change all of your ican lights at the same time so they are exactly the same color and not faded?

[khays]

I had the same issues. My display is 3 color; red, green & white. The lights along the gutter were faded to a point of having to replace them this year. I had a desire to start into led and decided on the lor ccb100 as a replacement. They were just the right length and spacing. But I knew the whites would not be acceptable without work. I too was concerned about the aesthetics of the display during a change over. I experimented with RGB values to make the difference less noticeable but was missing the mark. In reading around on the forum I found someone ( I wish I could find it again to give credit where credit is due) suggesting RGB values of 255,107,10 as a good match for the incandescent bulbs of the icicles that would be hanging on the same clips as the new ccb100 string. I tried it and it was a great match. The reg & green at any intensity matches without a problem. The only challenge I found so far is that a slow fade to black will show a red glow toward the end of the fade. This of course is due to the red fading from 255-0 over the same period of time as the green and blue which start out at much lower value. Quicker fades are fine. Hope this helps.

Edited December 5, 2012 by khays

[mmkooiman67]

....suggesting RGB values of 255,107,10 as a good match for the incandescent bulbs in the icicles hanging on the same clips as the new ccb100 string.

How do I go about changing that value? I added about 30 of those RGB strips to my display and they are really bright. Would love to tone them down.

[khays]

I haven't been at the RGB thing that long so I not sure I'm addressing your question but... I use LOR a cosmic color device(CCB100). When I set a pixel's color, I set the Red, Green and blue channels of the pixel to those values(255,107,10). I usually use the Color Fade tool within the sequence editor to set the color. If I want something least than 100% on for my white color I just divide each value e.g. for 50% I use 128,54,5 -

[Guest Don Gillespie]

Ouch.

I think you meant to say OCD didn't you

[gspence]

gspence, do you also change all of your ican lights at the same time so they are exactly the same color and not faded?

I haven't really experienced this problem so far. I started doing this about 4 years ago so all my lights are fairly new. I imagine they will continue to fade at about the same rate, so yeah, I'd probably replace them at the same time.

[gspence]

....suggesting RGB values of 255,107,10 as a good match for the incandescent bulbs in the icicles hanging on the same clips as the new ccb100 string.

How do I go about changing that value? I added about 30 of those RGB strips to my display and they are really bright. Would love to tone them down.

You just need to set the value using the color fade tool. I wish there were an easier way. I'd love to see something like Adobe Photoshop where you have an active foreground and background color. Then if I select a set of cells in the RGB channel and hit "On", it would fill them with my active color, not just 255,255,255. For my white, I use 64,32,3 and I find it matches really nicely. Unfortunately with the way it displays RGB colors on the strip, its hard to tell the difference between having the channel on using my white color and completely off.

I'd like to see RGB displayed differently rather than fading the color towards black. This isn't really how lights work as intensity changes. A dim white actually still appears white in reality, but in LOR S3 it shows as a yucky brown. I think a better way to display RGB lights would be to have a series of dots in the track. The dot would always be the bright version of the color, but as intensity grows, the dots would get bigger. So a dim white would be a series of small white dots while a bright light would be a series of large white dots. Its not a perfect method, but at least another option to make it easier to see what you are working with.

[gspence]

I think you meant to say OCD didn't you

I won't deny being a little OCD, lol. But what's the point of spending countless hours and lots of money to make an amazing lights display if we don't want it to be perfect?

[GaryM]

You just need to set the value using the color fade tool. I wish there were an easier way. I'd love to see something like Adobe Photoshop where you have an active foreground and background color. Then if I select a set of cells in the RGB channel and hit "On", it would fill them with my active color, not just 255,255,255. For my white, I use 64,32,3 and I find it matches really nicely. Unfortunately with the way it displays RGB colors on the strip, its hard to tell the difference between having the channel on using my white color and completely off.

I'd like to see RGB displayed differently rather than fading the color towards black. This isn't really how lights work as intensity changes. A dim white actually still appears white in reality, but in LOR S3 it shows as a yucky brown. I think a better way to display RGB lights would be to have a series of dots in the track. The dot would always be the bright version of the color, but as intensity grows, the dots would get bigger. So a dim white would be a series of small white dots while a bright light would be a series of large white dots. Its not a perfect method, but at least another option to make it easier to see what you are working with.

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