grump010 Posted January 29, 2015 Share Posted January 29, 2015 Whoa, this is literally a show changer. I will finally be able to use my Pi to run a show with the LOR usb option. CheersDaryl B. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Deacon Posted January 29, 2015 Share Posted January 29, 2015 The falcon Pi Player is the best thing I did for my 2014 show. Part of the month I ran the FPP using an LOR usb dongle to run five ctb16pc controllers and Ethernet out to a five port switch that was hooked up to a E682 and a Komby sandwich. I ran everything in unicast so I was able to integrate it into my existing home network. Everything seemed to work perfectly fine. Next year I'm going to separate it but it was fine running within the same ip range. Then the last half of the month I ran everything in DMX mode and ran the LOR controllers off a port on the E682 so I was able to eliminate the LOR usb dongle, worked fantastic. There are so many cool features of the FPP that make it very worthwhile. I liked the ability to access it from my iPad and laptop from my home network. I also liked the feature to manipulate the timing of the sequences, I could advance it 50 ms or more to compensate for some conversion issues. I could also play music for a few hours prior to the light show. There's a lot that can be done with this tiny little computer, and it runs better than my laptop and has more show specific features. You just can't go wrong with it. Im norMally not the biggest poster, but this is something I believe is a great asset to any show and the FPP team is great group of people that has been super helpful and created an awesome tool. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
smeighan Posted January 29, 2015 Share Posted January 29, 2015 Sean: sorry do you mean the FFP can run LOR in LOR protocol through the LOR controllers as well as DMX (E.131) simultaneously? U. Should verify with capt Murdoch, but yes I believe you could run USB LOR USB Dmx USB renard E1.31 All at the same time. You can do that in xLights scheduler now (and xlights has had that ability since 2012). The raspberry pi B+ has 4 USB ports, 1 Ethernet port, hdmi, composite video and 3.5mm audio jack. The biggest advantage is the FPP dev team (I am not on that team), they are amazing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jerrymac Posted January 29, 2015 Share Posted January 29, 2015 Sean: just to be clear on the question. the pi through xlights could run LOR controllers in LOR mode through the USB 485 or only in DMX mode? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
smeighan Posted January 29, 2015 Share Posted January 29, 2015 You do NOT need to run lor controllers in Dmx mode from either the xlights scheduler or the FPP, it is just recommended to switch to DMX . Now, I am relaying info from users that have posted on the falconchristmas.com forum. I have never run anything except DLA and falcon hardware. The Eason to switch to Dmx, as I understand it, is it reduces lag and allows higher channel count. Again, u can run lor protocol controllers directly if u want. Maybe someone who has actually done this could comment. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Deacon Posted January 30, 2015 Share Posted January 30, 2015 When I initially setup the falcon pi player, I ran it using the stock LOR dongle using LOR protocol and it ran perfectly fine. Although I only have 5 ctb16pc controllers and a few thousand Rgb channels, I don't consider this anywhere near high channel count, it ran smooth and perfectly fine using the LOR protocol and dongle. I changed over to DMX because I could run everything from the E682 and what ultimately sealed the deal to run in DMX was I later bought some LOR 10w floods and cmb24 controller. One side note, the cmb24 didn't like running in LOR protocol after my sequences were being converted from xlights to falcon fseq file. Xlights was only seeing the cmb24 as a 16 channel controller. It worked but the sixth light only used red(16th channel). Soo, I just converted over to DMX and everything was happy and ran perfectly. In hindsight I should have made the switch to DMX a long time ago. Hard to break free of what I knew but it wasn't that hard to change over. Xlights/nutcracker made it nice to integrate my nutcracker made RGB sequences and LOR S3 made sequences for ac lights, then court everything into a .xseq file, then finally convert over to a .fseq file to load up on the FPP. I think there are other ways to do this but this was my path and it worked. I don't want to speak for Sean but it sounds like his teams new version of Xlights/Nutcracker is going to be AWESOME and make things even easier. I just can't say enough how happy I was switching over to the FPP and use Xlights/Nutcracker to work my lights show. Took some time to figure out but it worked awesome! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jerrymac Posted January 30, 2015 Share Posted January 30, 2015 This is GREAT, sealed the deal. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darryl Lambert Posted January 30, 2015 Share Posted January 30, 2015 And there on sale! http://www.microcenter.com/single_product_results.aspx?sku=442707 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Grinch Posted January 31, 2015 Author Share Posted January 31, 2015 Last Night I got my Raspberry PI B+ setup, now I am waiting for the Sandevices to come in next week to get them configured and then start testing.In the meantime I will start learning Xlights to bring it all together. THANKS TO EVERYONE FOR THE HELP AND SUGGESTIONS Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
friskybri Posted February 1, 2015 Share Posted February 1, 2015 Amazon has some nice kits with the Ac 2.5 amp cable, wifi n hdmi cable and box. If you plan on using all the USB connections Ethernet. You will need the higher amp cord. I got this one first http://www.amazon.com/Raspberry-Complete-Starter-Quick-Start/dp/B00L87YMGM/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1422754457&sr=8-2&keywords=raspberry+pi+b%2B Then I got this one that has a 2.5 amp plug. http://www.amazon.com/CanaKit-Raspberry-Complete-Original-Preloaded/dp/B008XVAVAW/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1422754457&sr=8-5&keywords=raspberry+pi+b%2B Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Grinch Posted February 1, 2015 Author Share Posted February 1, 2015 Amazon has some nice kits with the Ac 2.5 amp cable, wifi n hdmi cable and box. If you plan on using all the USB connections Ethernet. You will need the higher amp cord. I got this one first http://www.amazon.com/Raspberry-Complete-Starter-Quick-Start/dp/B00L87YMGM/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1422754457&sr=8-2&keywords=raspberry+pi+b%2B Then I got this one that has a 2.5 amp plug. http://www.amazon.com/CanaKit-Raspberry-Complete-Original-Preloaded/dp/B008XVAVAW/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1422754457&sr=8-5&keywords=raspberry+pi+b%2BThey look like nice kits and a good price Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
caniac Posted February 1, 2015 Share Posted February 1, 2015 Moderators, can we get a section under hardware for this topic!!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lightzilla Posted February 2, 2015 Share Posted February 2, 2015 If you go to the Canakit web site they have the Ultimate Kit. Remember the prices are in Canadian dollars & so you will save money with the exchange. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
friskybri Posted February 2, 2015 Share Posted February 2, 2015 Now the raspberry pi 2 just came out today. Much faster then the b+. Kind of bummed but I will find a use for them somewhere else. Right now it work with the falcon player so until they get the software to run on the new architecture. I will use the b+. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
smeighan Posted February 2, 2015 Share Posted February 2, 2015 (edited) The FPP team says the Pi 2 will be supported on FPP 2.0 scheduled for summer release. But what is different between a pi model B, B+ or 2?. Not enough to worry about. All 3 can run at least 64k channels, all 3 have audio output, all 3 have 1080p video. I ran my three fpp's at christmas on model B's, no issues. The only place where I think u might notice is u have huge matrix, megatrees and are creating effects dynamically. You can do those now, so maybe the extra power of pi 2 would allow more real time stuff. I ordered one 2, but this stuff is like crack. I now have r model B's, 2 model B+'s, 1 pi 2. I will use the pi 2 as my master this year, I may add another projector, . Dave is releasing a new controller that uses the beagle bone black . This controller will also be running FPP and will be another slave.. So rpi or BBB will be in the yard. It will be a fun year. Edited February 2, 2015 by smeighan Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dennis Laff Posted February 2, 2015 Share Posted February 2, 2015 Sean quick question if you run multiple raspberry pi can you run a video projector off each pi so for one sequence projector 1 plays only and another sequence projector 2 plays only is this possible . thanks Dennis. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
smeighan Posted February 2, 2015 Share Posted February 2, 2015 you can do it dennis. First understand how the FPP master/slave works. If I have wizards of winter and i save my sequence in xlights. Our sequences can use either a sound file or a video files as the media. two years ago i hadwizards.xml (This is the xlights sequence data). This file is NOT sent to the FPP, it is only for xLights to use.wizards.fseq (this is the rendered, binary data of my sequence.) This file is sent to the FPP to run the lightswizards.mp3 . This is the sound file last year that last file becamewizards.mp4 . This is the sound filethe other files are the same. So i schedule the master FPPat 5pm to run the sequence wizards.fseq The fseq file does have the name of the media file to use.so it looks up and finds wizards.mp4. Sound is puled from the mp4 file it is either sent out the hdmi port or the 3.5mm jack. The point is sound for your show is being driven from the master. What about the slaves? Before l;launch the show I copy wizards.fseq and wizards.mp4 to all slaves, I had two slaves soFPP_SLAVE1FPP_SLAVE2both receive these two files before you run the show. The master now sends out a signal to the slaves saying "I am running wizards.fseq"Slaves look for wizards.fseq and also open their copy of wizards.mp4 So if I want Slave 2 to have a black screen, i copy OVER that wizards.mp4 with an all black video. I use a video editor (Power Director 13) to create this dummy video. Slaves start when master runsSLAVE1 has a video output that matches the masterSlave 2 has a black screen a few packets per second keeps everything in sync. Massive data for show is never sent out the E!.31 since each FPP has a full copy of all the sequence files. I think this synced video was in version FPP 0.4 but officially released in FPP version 1.0 BTW, slave software looks for base name to start stuff up. So if i have wizards.fseq on master and wizards1.fseq on the slave, nothing on the slave will start. Not a big deal , but the file names are important Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ebrown1972 Posted February 3, 2015 Share Posted February 3, 2015 http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2476188,00.asp Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dennis Laff Posted February 3, 2015 Share Posted February 3, 2015 Thanks Sean I'am going to try and set it up thanks . Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
caniac Posted February 7, 2015 Share Posted February 7, 2015 Just got my PI in and am in the process of setting it up with NOOB, what are the next steps after that? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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