LOR and RGBW pixels

[Tim Fischer]

Hey all, 

I'm starting a new thread, as there was an old thread in "Coffee Shop" I originally replied to but this is really an LOR discussion so I think it belongs here.

Eventually (maybe later this year, maybe a future year) I'd like to consider swapping out my 12V static landscape lights with pixels. There are some great choices now that have a 4th "Warm White" channel in addition to the standard RGB channel that would be great to use.

My question is, how can these work with LOR? I'm not even sure how they work with my existing controllers... I'm assuming it's 4 channels (in a row) per pixel instead of 3? 

I don't even care if LOR controls the WW channel, so long as I can define it to use the RGB channels during shows. When I'm not running shows I will likely use WLED to just have them on Warm White. 

Thoughts? Not sure who trolls this forum this time of year (I typically don't lol)

-Tim

[Mr. P]

As of right now they are not supported. I do know the issue has been brought up in previous posts, you can do a search for RGBW, and it has been discussed that they would eventually be supported but the IC chips currently are not. Maybe LOR could chime in and say if they have anything in the works for future support.

[Tim Fischer]

2 minutes ago, Mr. P said:

As of right now they are not supported. I do know the issue has been brought up in previous posts, you can do a search for RGBW, and it has been discussed that they would eventually be supported but the IC chips currently are not. Maybe LOR could chime in and say if they have anything in the works for future support.

Just to be clear, I don't need hardware support. I need software (s6) support, via E1.31. Software doesn't need to worry about the chipset.

So if there's some way to define these as a bunch of RGB channels, and maybe a separate group of white-only channels, without doing it one-at-a-time, that would be great.

I had RGBW floods way back under S3 that worked great, you just had to manually create a separate RGB channel set and separate white channel. That's doable when you have 6 floods, but not so much with hundreds of pixels ;) 

Edited May 6 by Tim Fischer

[Steven]

When I did some brief experimentation (brief because I don't have RGBW hardware), it worked as expected. It may not produce the results you want, however.

The software will drive only the W channel when the sequence calls for white. Primary colors will do as expected (yellow will use RG, etc.) The W channel is also used for mostly white colors like pink or sky blue. In those examples, the W channel intensity is reduced by the amount that the R or B channels are lit. E.g. if you pink color is 100% red, 75% green, and 75% blue, then the software will output 25% R, 0 G, 0 B, and 75% W. I once saw a formula where the W channel is set to the minimum of the RGB input, and the other channels are set to the input minus the calculated white.

Unless you use primary colors, I think using RGBW with LEDs that have warm white may not produce what you want, because when you ask the software for pure white, you'll get warm white. On the other hand, if you set up the RGB hardware as a RGB channel, and then add the W channel separately, you will have more control, but more work sequencing.

Edited May 7 by Steven
Typo

[Tim Fischer]

Steven- How are you defining the 4-color strings in S6?

[Zach Carner]

I think Steven is describing the programming the same way I did it. I have the RGBWW flood lights from YPS. You essentially just have to play around with the channel programming in Sequencer to make it work. The RGBWW floods take 4 channels a piece instead of the typical 3. They are as follows:

1. Warm White

2. Red

3. Green

4. Blue

In that order. For my sequencing I have an AC warm white strand modeled as 1 bulb in the flood light display option. That gets the first channel (Unit ID 1 Channel 1). I then have one smart RGB pixel light modeled as a flood that accounts for the next three channels (Unit ID 1 Channels 2-4). That way, if I want to change colors to say orange or purple, the color mixing still works the same way it would for a typical RGB flood. 
 

For the second RGBWW flood, I repeated this process. Warm white channel 5 and RGB smart pixel channels 6-8. 
 

It’s possible, just have to get creative. Like others have mentioned, not too bad when they’re the only things on during the spring and summer, but somewhat tedious when you have a lot of lights to program. I drive it all through a Pixie4 controller run off a director. 

[Tim Fischer]

OK, so you have to model every pixel (or in your case flood) separately. I can probably make that work as I only have a limited number of landscape lights. But that's not very scalable if someone were to buy RGBW pixel strings in quantity.