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Regular Light o Rama and Pixel combined


OgeXam

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Greetings,

I have been using Light o Rama for about 8 years now, and each year I add something new.  I am up to 6 controller boxes now.

 

I was looking at the signing faces that are RGB Pixel controlled. 

 

I have all my sequences programmed and I am comfortable with them.

 

Is it easy to add in a Pixel element into those shows?  Is it as easy as adding another box?  Anyboyd have them mixed and have any advice?

 

Thank you,

 

Wesley

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If you still have a Basic license as your profile states you will need to upgrade if you are going to get into pixels.

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11 minutes ago, Mr. P said:

If you still have a Basic license as your profile states you will need to upgrade if you are going to get into pixels.

I think the profile is wrong. because Basic would not run 6 LOR AC boxes

OgeXam You will also need to get another  adapter (High Speed. We used to refer to them as RED, But LOR seems to make them in black now. Be sure to mark them). as Pixels need lots of fast data.  Besides, you probably do NOT have Gen3 controllers, so those  MUST run on a slower network.

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Hello TheDucks,

 

How can I find out what Gen my current controllers are?

 

When you say adapter do you mean the show time part that I put my SD card in to run my show?  Can you link  me to products?   Taht way I can see how much it would end up costing me to move up to pixel.

 

thank you,

 

Wesley

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There are two ways to determine the generation of the controllers: 1) It will tell you in the HU when you do a search for the controllers or 2) It is printed on the actual controller board itself.

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LEDs - red (old) vs green (G3 and higher) are a good hint for controllers and as noted, the G3 say that right on the board. 

Since you mention SD card, that indicates you are probably a show director.   These will support pixels but may require a firmware upgrade.   with 2 connectors, you can have your older devices on one network and your pixels on another.   I did that the first year I had pixels because I had some real old ones.   I eventually updated these so I could run then on the same network, which simplified cabling but wasn't required. 

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Red led, green led is a basic way. Again, you need 2 networks (at proper speeds) if you are mixing old and new. Also complexity of you Pixel sequences (and node count) determines if you need even more networks.  (when you really load up a Pixie 16, you can get real close to network max with 1 board)

Go with the HU method, because as @TexasLights mention, you need to know the firmware (place a sticker in each with that info so you know in case...). I also keep a device log.

Your black adapter will work for HU use, but not for running (pixel) lights (while sequencing)

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2 hours ago, Mr. P said:

There are two ways to determine the generation of the controllers: 1) It will tell you in the HU when you do a search for the controllers or 2) It is printed on the actual controller board itself.

With the exception of the Gen3 that have Gen2 stamped on them. For those you need to look at the status light or the HU.

JR

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Since you are using an MP3 Director, which Director type are you using?  Are you using a Mini Director?  An older DC-MP3 Director {which will not run pixels!}?  Or one of the newer N2-G3/N2-G4, N4-G3 or N4-G4 MP3 Directors with the real time clock?   For pixels, you will need at least an N2-G3, better is the N4-G4 {the latest MP3 Director, as it has 4 Network connections, Regular{1}, Aux A{2}, Aux B{3} and Aux C{4}, but you can now link the N4-G4 to another Director and Daisy chain them as your display grows {But you need the LOR S5 software and Pro License{minimum} to support the linking of Directors}.

Adding the LOR RGB singing faces is easy enough, but at first it can be very confusing, but there are a lot of folks here that can help you with getting them set up correctly, if you can't figure it out.

And using, or going into RGB and Pixels, if you haven't upgraded, I would strongly suggest going full on PRO license, as that will open up everything in the LOR Suite {except SuperStar, that's an extra cost for that option/software license}.

Edited by Orville
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I have been running a mix of reg, dumb rgb and pixel since 2014 with lor.  I have no issue running any of my show on the same network.  I run all my pixel controllers and lor controllers in DMX mode.  It's just easier that way.  I do not use anything special to do this. I run a cat5 a 8 port network switch then  to my first pixel controller and then out of it to my reg lor controllers. The other pixel controllers also come off the switch.  I have no issues running my show this way. 

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I have also been told I can not use a director on my show due to the number of pixels in my show. The director just can not run that many. So this is a downfall. I have to use my pc. 

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21 minutes ago, rtrip9 said:

I have been running a mix of reg, dumb rgb and pixel since 2014 with lor.  I have no issue running any of my show on the same network.  I run all my pixel controllers and lor controllers in DMX mode.  It's just easier that way.  I do not use anything special to do this. I run a cat5 a 8 port network switch then  to my first pixel controller and then out of it to my reg lor controllers. The other pixel controllers also come off the switch.  I have no issues running my show this way. 

Since you said you are using a 8 port network switch, I assume you mean you are using E1.31, and then using one or more pixel controllers as E1.31 to RS-485 DMX bridges to drive dumb RGB and LOR controllers.  That works fine, but this entire topic relates to LOR networks.  Just pointing that out to avoid confusion.

I also can't run a director because during Christmas I use MIIP, and during my year round landscape lighting show, I use interactives (and the early directors could not handle those - although I understand the newer ones can).  I also run large portions of both Christmas and year round via E1.31 which the directors can't deal with.  I also much prefer the degree of control and monitoring that a show computer allows that can't be done with a director.

 

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