My Shot At A Program

[JonathanG]

Been at this for a little less than a week....been fun, stimulating, and just a little but confusing (ok...a lot confusing).

I wanted to create an extremely simple program - Lights on at 5:00, three songs at 7:30, and lights off at approx 10:30.  (Don't think the neighbors would take much more than that!)

This is what I came up with - it works perfectly....but is there a simpler way of doing it?

Thanks so much for any advice.

 

[MichRX7]

Unless you have really crummy neighbors, I think you'll find that they will take much more, but I don't know them, so maybe they will. I have never created a 3 hour lights on animation, but that would have the first thing I'd have tried. In that case I'd have created a show with that in the shutdown, a show with my 3 songs (and use the delay in seconds for the 10 second gap, which actually is a long time when you see it, I personally use 3) and in that show put the 3 hour lights on at the end. Then I would have scheduled show 1 to start at 5 and shutdown at 7:30. Then schedule show 2 to start at 7:30 and run until 10:30. Which I believe should do exactly what you want (you could also use the multiple 30's you've already created).

This way, if I get bored over the next two months and sequence another song it is really easy to slide it in and the scheduler starts/stops appropriately rather than trying to adjust everything again since it will shutdown an animation when it is told to shutdown. Just how I'd do it, especially if I want to hit that 7:30pm time of musical lights right at 7:30pm. There are a few other threads about this scheduling that you can find on the forums as this seems to be the topic du'jour this week.

http://forums.lightorama.com/topic/50416-is-it-possible-to-keep-lights-on-when-not-in-a-show/?tab=comments#comment-465038

[k6ccc]

What you came up with will work just fine.  Like a lot of things, there are several ways to accomplish what you want to do.  I would agree with MichRX7, that you should plan on running the show more.  Personally I run mine from 5:00 until 10:00 during the week and till 11:00 on the weekend.  My neighbor across the street (who is most affected by the show) loves it.  She has told me that she turns on the stereo to my FM channel, open the drapes and just sits and watches the show somewhat regularly.

You could also run three separate shows.  The first is just one of the lights on sequence.  If the lights on sequence is an animation sequence, it will end at the scheduled end of the show.  On the other hand, if the lights on sequence is a musical sequence, it will continue to run to the end of the sequence, which could mess up your timing.  The second show would have your three musical sequences.  I agree with MichRX7 that 10 seconds of dark between songs is an eternity.  I use zero.  The third show would be the the lights on sequence again.

 

[MichRX7]

Yes, I have 30+ songs in my show and it runs from 6pm-9pm Sun-Thurs and 6pm-11pm Sat-Sun. During setup/testing I walk to the end of the drive and test the volume of the music many times (but, I have a good size front yard). I also transmit on over the radio like @k6ccc does (because it gets cold up here and people like to sit in their cars). I always ask my neighbors if it is too loud or obnoxious, and believe it or not the one I thought would really hate it started crying and telling me how much she loved my show, appreciated the effort I put into it and brings all her friends over on weekends, then walks them down to watch it. Go figure, you never know.

[k6ccc]

You may be surprised at your neighbors.  I have been doing a Christmas light show since 2012.  The past two weekends I have been in the yard or on the roof setting stuff up.  Many neighbors have walked by and either commented about looking forward to the show, or looking good; or stopped to chat about the show.  This has been good for me, as I've been a little un-inspired about the show this year.  With all the comments, I am back to my normal fired up about it. 

16 days, 10 hours, 47 minutes till opening as I type this...

 

[tlogan]

Glad you're fired back up! 

[JonathanG]

You are all great - thanks so much for the feedback.....sure appreciate it.

Yes - I will stand-by with a re-load if the need demands.

[MichRX7]

The most important thing is if you got it to work for you, and feel comfortable, maybe leave it for this year since it is November 13th (and I'm already starting to sweat my show, lol...)

[Orville]

I actually have a 6 hour animation file that will run during my show.  The 6 hour animation is for my clear incandescent lights that illuminate my Handicap Ramp {66' long}.  Since the lights in the actual show blink, flash, twinkle and shimmer, if someone were to try to get to my front door, they wouldn't be able to walk up the ramp safely.  And this is why I created that long animation file, my show runs from 5:30pm-11:30pm 7 days a week this year, so since the show runs 6 hours, I needed a way to keep my ramp lights on at the same time the show runs, again for safety.   And the lights are on full, but they are not very bright, just enough to light the walkway of the ramp.

So long animation files are possible, take your last setting for example, 10 Min GAP, 20 Min Lights On, then the four 30 Minute Lights On could all be combined in one Animation file instead of having a 20 minute and several 30 minute animation files and the GAP files, you could create an animation file for 2 hours 30 minutes hours, and for the GAP part, you could just add in that 10 minute GAP section at the beginning of the sequence, then at the end of the 10 minute mark in the file, start turning on the lights you want on Steady until the end of the Sequence.  If you needed a GAP at the beginning and end of a sequence, juts add the time you need to the beginning for Lights Off, the Turn the Lights On you want on Steady, the add the next timing GAP. you need.

I do this all the time with my lights, this way I don't have to have or use the same sequence in multiple settings, especially if you use LIGHTS OFF AT END OF SEQUENCE, at the end of each sequence you'd have a small OFF TIME for the next LIGHTS ON sequence to load.  Having one long animation sequence will prevent this.  I use the LIGHTS OFF AT END OF SEQUENCE so my show sequences don't leave unwanted lights on when it ends.

Just so you know, this can be done and animation sequences can be as long or as short as you want them.  When adding the time, for example my 6 hour sequence, the time is entered like this: 06:00:00.00

So your Animation sequence time would be entered as: 02:30:00.00 for a 2 hour  30 minute sequence {Gap 10 Minutes} Lights Off -  {2 Hour 20 Minute}Lights On sequence.

Now you know another way to do it and nopt have to enter the same sequence over and over to repeat one could be done in a single animation sequence.

Have Fun.

Edited November 14, 2019 by Orville