.....and then she took my money

[Sean Wright]

I was Christmas lights shopping in Melbourne last year and wandered into this big Christmas shop. Down the back was a humungus display of LoR lights. I stood there and drooled for about half and hour before managing to get out the words "Gotta have! Gotta have!" As was handing over my hard earned dosh I said to the woman "Is it easy to set up?" "Oh God yes!" she explained "just plug it in and away you go!" Well call me naive if you like but parts of me are not entirely stupid, so I thought that somewhere along the line this is going to be an awful lot harder than she said it was.
Come 1st October and it's light planning time. So I haul out the new LoR gear, send it off to my local techy who encased it in a box and hooked it to 32 female plugs (cost $NZ 500) then I went off to find out how to get it to flash lights in time to music.
OMG!! It was then I discovered that by some accounts it can take 10-15 hours/per minute of show tiime to create a sequence! I figured that there must be a better way. I searched the sequence I was looking for (disco Beethoven's 5th) and had the idea that I could just download it and overlay it onto a blank sequence editor, modify it a bit to fit my creative game plan and (as the lady in the shop said) away we go!

Murphys Law instead came into play and said that the difficulty in achieving my dreams is conversely ten times more complex than the level of simplicity expected.

Any file I try to download has an extension that is not recognisable by Windows Media Player, WinAmp, Real Player or any other programme I have.

Can someone please give this techo-dipstick some help please???

[Donald Puryear]

You need the LOR software. Did she give you a disk with the hardware? You can download a demo version from the promts on the home page.

[tikilights]

I have a Ge lights and sounds of christmas ready to go if ya wanna trade, lol!

Really though get the software, don't know how many channels you are using, but I'd start small 16-32 channels, and start buying ext cords, you're gonna need lots of em. You still have a good 2 months of sequencing, I'd say whover told you 15 hours for sequencing a minute probably has hundreds of channels.

Some songs I can do a in 1-2 hours, some I do a bit at a time here and there as I get a better feeling of how I want it to look. May take me a few weeks doing that way. I keep tweaking things as I learn.

Get your layout planned first and go from there, you can do it, I'm just starting on christmas myself, been doing halloween since april, I have almost 2 hours of tunes, I expect to have maybe a half hour or so for christmas, but then Halloween is my big deal.

Trying to use someone elses sequences can be more of a pain than doing it yourself. You can get good ideas and cut and paste as needed to save time, but overall, noone has the same display.



Good luck!

[evan.a]

sequencing is easy. just have fun with it.
fyi. start earlier. I started planning in december for the next year display. get ideas and draw what you want to try and do next year. that way your not overwhelmed with trying to figure things out, in short time.

[Dale W]

You can also find many sequences at http://www.LORSequences.com Membership is free and you are not spammed after joining.

Simply find the song that you like, download it. Using the LOR Sequence editor, assign the music file to the downloaded sequence and you are ready to go.

You may need to edit your music file to fit the sequence. If so, you can use a program like audacity to do so.

[ShowProKevin]

tikilights wrote:

I have a Ge lights and sounds of christmas ready to go if ya wanna trade, lol!

LOL, thats not nice!

[tikilights]

sorry--- but if I had bought it that long ago, I would have been synching the next day, as soon as my wife finally caved and let me buy the controllers, I downloaded the demo and started. A week later I decided to just buy the full software then as the beat wizard makes it so much easier. Had to wait til the june sale to buy the controllers, then deal with ups losing my package, and when I finally got my controllers had it setup in the garage checking it all out the next day...

---So to me, this guy needs a lights and sounds of christmas, plug it in and go!

Sorry if this upsets ya-just my opinion!

[evan.a]

Jeff Millard wrote:

evana wrote:

...sequencing is easy...

I was just telling someone on SCL that you were a certifiable sequencing nut! LOL Thanks for helping to prove my case.

One word of advice. Don't open any of Evan's sequences... You'll want to hire him to do all of them for you... and that's not what this is all about...LOL

Jeff

BTW... Evan... I expect you will be writing some instruction for the new and improved Wiki that is currently in it's infancy stages... Hmmm?

Jeff, this is highjacking a thread. but, I do spend a lot of time travling and alot of time in a hotel room with nothing to do. but sequnece.
leavin restin,virgina and going to columbus, ohio tomorrow. I'll be home on satuarday for one week. than off to texas.

I've always shared my work. I think mountainman called me a nut too. after he saw one of my sequence. but he said, it was great.

[hbomb341]

evana wrote:

than off to texas.

Where in Texas?

I travel a lot and do the same.

Harrison

[Guest wbottomley]

Jeff Millard wrote:

BTW... Evan... I expect you will be writing some instruction for the new and improved Wiki that is currently in it's infancy stages... Hmmm?

Where?

I'd love to see how evan sequences.

Hopefully this new wiki will be online soon as I would love to contribute to it.

[Sean Wright]

Thank you Jeff, Evan, Tikilights and all the other posters. I ended up finally working out what I was supposed to be doing firstly by watching the first 2-3 minutes of the home-made beginners tutorial and then by clicking and fiddling! I finished A Fifth Of Beethoven tonight. The song is exactly 3.00 minutes long and has taken me 7-8 days of about 6 hour nights to complete. So whoever guessed at 15hours per minute of programming had it pretty much on the button although the third minute came together a helluva lot faster than the first one did.

I am using 32 channels and I have already discovered that I desperately must have at least another 300!!! I can easily pay for them just as soon as I can get my wife to agree to let me sell her car and also to get another mortgage.

I have a couple of questions. I have not actually seen my sequence in action yet of course as we don't start putting up lights until next week-end but I already can envisage a problem with those strings and ropes that have an automatic built in 6-8 channel controller. Is it possible to open up the controller and snip a wire leaving the light string/rope permanently ON (so that I can take control of it though LoR?)

Also, I have been playing around with the various fade in - fade out - twinkle - shimmer. Is it possible to fade in (or out) a shimmer or a twinkle??

Once again, thank you all for your help and encouragement in getting this exciting light effect up and running.

Sean

[evan.a]

Sean Wright wrote:

I have a couple of questions. I have not actually seen my sequence in action yet of course as we don't start putting up lights until next week-end but I already can envisage a problem with those strings and ropes that have an automatic built in 6-8 channel controller. Is it possible to open up the controller and snip a wire leaving the light string/rope permanently ON (so that I can take control of it though LoR?)

Also, I have been playing around with the various fade in - fade out - twinkle - shimmer. Is it possible to fade in (or out) a shimmer or a twinkle??

the answer is yes. alot of members always modify the light sets. just use a male vampire plug and test it before hooking up to the controler. some member even modify led lights, by using resisters.
as far as fade on shimmer and twinkle, no thats no possible. but it was asked in the wish list of s2.