Understanding pixels

[wilrac13]

I’m hoping someone can give me a basic understanding of smart pixel lighting. I have read until my eyes can’t focus and I can’t seem to make much sense of it. We started off with the showtime central package and bought an additional controller, used our normal LED lights(loved the control over what comes on and when, etc) and now we want to be able to control more details, hence wanting pixels. We were thinking of starting out by just doing the outline of our roof to get the hang of it. We have a ranch style house with a roof that’s 75 x 24. So we would need total of roughly 200ft. Where do I start? I understand you can only plug in so many strands of pixel’s together and they need to be controlled by a pixie but which one and how do you come to that conclusion? What else would I need besides a pixie and the strings of nodes would I need? Like I said I need a rundown of pixel lights starting from square one but in normal words. I’m am not a technical genius, just an everyday average person who wants to help the community celebrate the holidays by looking at lights ☺️

[TheDucks]

I will assume bullets due to the roof location (brutal sun). so

1st Q How close are the nodes to be?  My 3" spaces works out to 12.5' per 50.  There are 4" and 6" spaced nodes available.

Without Power injection, 100 nodes on a port is pretty easy (25'). Put the controller (Feed) in between (a T with the controller at the bottom of the T)   another 100 and you have 50' 

Next is to stop trying to do this all (200') with 1 controller (No just buying the biggest for just this).  25' is a safe length of feed cable (controller port to string). So draw a 25' dia circle that centers on the feed end of the planned strings Do this for all strings you plan (inc futures). Now place controllers as needed at a place that circles overlap (most coverage from a single controller. eg Ridge and gutters and side edges might be done with 1 Pixie8 [5 ports])

But in your case: 2 Pixie2  or a Pixie4 , might work.  50 - p2 - 25 (rest of ridge and down 1 edge (total 200 nodes at 3". Then do 50' of drip- p2 - 25' for the rest of the drip, the up the edge 25'.   P2 is the feed points (1R, 1L) so you could put a Pixie4 up there and cable it (within 25' of the ridge feed p2)  BTW Pixies have a setting to reverse the logic so the Far end becomes node 1 for the string to the left)  

Note: A standard level license will not do for Pixels