That new Christmas guy Posted November 9, 2020 Share Posted November 9, 2020 I am looking at the residential series 16 channel starter with pro software and a fm transmitter. I would also like to buy some smart pixels. Do I need a seperate pixel controller for those? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheDucks Posted November 9, 2020 Share Posted November 9, 2020 5 hours ago, That new Christmas guy said: I am looking at the residential series 16 channel starter with pro software and a fm transmitter. I would also like to buy some smart pixels. Do I need a seperate pixel controller for those? YES. A Pixie series (easiest) or a Pixcon (a bit more difficult, but more flexible) 🥴 It is a little late in the season to be jumping in with Pixels. So unless you have a canned sequence. Help will be hard to find as folk are putting the final touches on their stuff. You also need a RED (485HS) adapter for the Pixies network (a Gen 3 AC controller can run at the faster speeds that a Pixie needs. Or you can just run both adapters: Just more CAT5 to run) 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
That new Christmas guy Posted November 9, 2020 Author Share Posted November 9, 2020 Thank you very much. It is appreciated. Have a great holiday! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dgrant Posted November 12, 2020 Share Posted November 12, 2020 My always suggestion for starting out, take a picture of your house or whatever you are decorating and print out a couple of copies. Then draw strings on the copies as desired and decide how you wish them to appear. Constant colors, changing colors, chases, animation and so many more possibilities. This will dictate your hardware requirements. Now once you have a plan in your head and on paper, you need to consider the infrastructure to make it all work. Wiring, cables, types of wire and cables, connectors and so on. Also, music....the front yard or FM Transmitter or both? Tune too sign if FM transmitter as the people watching will need to know what frequency to tune too. Just about everyone in here suggests starting in January for planning, acquiring and building. Of course watch for end of Christmas sales on lights. DO NOT BUY Martha lights from HomeDepot. They do not like our controllers and have been reported to start fires. Always try to find full-wave led strings. For RGB, there are two flavors or types. Dumb and Intelligent. Dumb are where the entire string or strip, will light up one color, any color you wish but all one color. Intelligent strips or nodes, you can address each led individually therefore create chases, animation and so on. Yes, AC strings use an AC Controller. Dumb strips use a DC controller and Intelligent use a totally different controller and no, they are not interchangeable. Also, all of these controllers use CAT5 cables but just because they are CAT5 does not mean you can just plug them into any ole CAT5 connector on these controllers. You will fry things. Some controllers use RS485 communications and others might use E1.31 or ethernet. They are not the same, so in your communications planning, you must need to insure you never mix them up. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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