DiyLightAnimation

Awesome... Thanks that clears it up... just double checking to make sure I don't blow something up

Uff no worries there... If only I had the time and the rhythm for that LOL.... Actually someone gave the stuff to me when they got out of DJ'ing and thought I could find something to do with it because of my light display... My wife has been pressuring me to take it to the dumpster but I was thinking wouldn't it be cool to do a Santa Disco Ball.. or well a Disco ball with a Santa on it and some cool elves.. for an after christmas show between Christmas and New Years to adapt the theme from Santa and the elves getting ready for Christmas to a after the work was over holiday party at the north pole... show to run till New Years...  Anyway I liked the idea.. my wife umm maybe not so much   so there was no way I was going to get the OK to buy something to add to the old stuff and I wasn't going to run a separate setup for just a disco ball, and two colored light thingamajigs. However if I can tie this in... hello 70's Santa Disco Ball... and Boogie Nights at the North Pole... limited engagement only from 25th -2nd... Now if I can just convince her to help make the elves costumes we will be ready to boogie down.. well assuming the stuff still works.. guess I should dig it out, dust it off, and see...

Okay this may sound really weird but I was wondering if anyone knows if you can make a ethernet to 5-pin DMX cable.. what the pin layout would be.. Reason I ask if I happen to get given some old DJ lighting stuff and it seems to use DMX cable but was thinking if you could make a ethernet to 5 pin DMX cable it might work with stuff... and that opens more possibilities if I can reuse "free" stuff that I have lying around with my show in some way... Has anyone tried this? Is this even feasible or possible or do I just have a case of wishful thinking....

-Mike 

Well eventually replace all my current lights with them... but in the short term to add some interesting effects to the Halloween display.. It will be cool to be able to give some the characters eyes or buttons or etc.. that can change colors.. right now that is very complex using traditional lights as it takes multiple lights to generate several colors. With SS I can see using very small segments here and there all over the place to give the characters Halloween and other a much more lifelike feel and a few extras.. Santa can wink a bit better; his buttons can sparkle; the skeleton pirates can actually get mad and their eyes can literally glow a different color to express it... Jack Frost can spread his winter blizzard with a bit of twinkle and change stuff from colored to bluish to frozen... None of that is possible or is very complex and only comes out so so with traditional lights.. I think the ability of SS to change colors takes down the number of lights needed to get the same effect which then means you can focus more on the effect and less on hiding all those lights and wires. Literally 4 lights hidden to look like a button is complex; one light that changes colors hidden to look like a button or what else is much easier.

And I am sure there are a lot more things to come but that is some starting ideas I have.

- Mike

I would say half and half. This is my second year and the smart strings for me are awesome because of how I do my display; however in year 1 I would have never have understood that really to know. From a still learning and growing perspective I would really first think about where stuff is going in your display, what you are looking to do (effect, visual wise) and then map it out a bit.

First year  did LE's and even SSRs and yep even a Freestyle. From that experience LE's are by far so much better in my display than all the rest for simplicity, troubleshooting, it is a lot more visually helpful when there are issues. Now from the display side of things what I found was and I'm basing this on a Halloween display that I did prior to the Christmas one because I was eager to jump in and get started seeing how things worked... From that perspective the LE's worked great; what needed thinking out was how I was using light sets. Sometimes I wanted to change from one color to another color in my display rather than running 1 set of lights I need two sets one of each color; two LE channels, etc. My pumpkin display has so many places that I only need like 10-50 lights of a specific color but need multiple colors to change the pumpkin faces; what seemed simple actually became a lot more complex because of the multitude of strings I was running to affect colors. Don't get me wrong it came out great and the LE's were true work horses but compare that to Smart Strings and for me in that situation it is awesome because now 1 small smart string of say 20 lights can replace 4 regular strings of 20 lights.. With SS I get basically whatever color I can think up; with the 4 regular strings I get 4 colors. I have so many uses for smaller sets that can be any color rather than multiples of sets of 1 color each to get the same effect; SS looks like it will be amazing for what I am doing.

Now like previously posted larger megatrees are going to be expensive in SS; so it really  comes down to understanding your display. Your first year I think the LE's are a great hands on start and great learning experience. After the first year it will give you so many more ideas and you'll have a much better understanding of what works best and what equipment fits that need the best. So I would say either way you go you're in good shape. Start with LE and then move up to SS if what you are doing works well with such and is cost effective for your display.

-Mike

10 - Kit One
1 - Kit Two

Thanks,

-Mike

Hmm this sounds very much the same to what I am having an issue with on my Aether -> the firmware update went from steady blues to blink along reds... Do  the RED flashes only happen when the ethernet cable is plugged in? IE if you don't plug in an ethernet cable the Aether behaves with no lights on after start up? If so we may be troubleshooting problems... 

- Mike

Hmm... Yes I am using a Lynx Dongle and I have tried to program via the Express Utility to change to a start channel of 33... I have tried Vixen to send data to channels 1-40 to see if I can a response but don't seem to.. I haven't tried the new firmware that just got posted.. I'm gonna give it a try tomorrow with the new firmware... Also going to test the dongle just in case...