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Messages - bakerlights

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1
The Porch / The 8th Annual Virginia Mini
« on: March 31, 2015, 10:04:50 am »
The 8th Annual Virginia Mini will be held on Saturday, May 16, 2015.  Andy Anderson is organizing and Matthew Satterwhite has graciously offered to host the mini again this year.  The location will be Hanover Academy located at 115 Frances Road in Ashland, VA 23005.   Hanover Academy is just off I95 in Ashland which is on the north side of Richmond.
 
The minis are an excellent opportunity to meet with other Christmas lighting enthusiasts to share ideas, design plans, implementation, sequencing or just to meet other with the same goals in Christmas lighting displays.

We want to allow time for everyone attending to introduce themselves and tell us about their favorite display element. We want to give you a heads up so you can prepare to either bring the element or take pictures or videos of it and describe the details of how you built it and how it works.  This could take some time, but we'll all learn so much more!  Anything from your display that you would like to share with the group.  Talk about why it is special to you, or why you made it, how you made it or anything you want to share about it.  There is always a story to tell.

We will provide drinks.  Like last year we are asking everyone to bring some food to share with the group for lunch.  Cost will be $5 per person to pay for use of the building.
Further details will be announced later.  We will probably start with a meet and greet about 11:00 AM, with lunch at noon.  Then start the mini at 1:00 PM and be over by 4:00 PM

Matthew & Andy Anderson look forward to seeing everyone.

I am posting this to reach out to other people that may not be on Planet Christmas where this was originally posted.  We want this to include anyone who is interested in attending

2
Lynx Smart String / Re: Plugged pixelnet cable to active hub
« on: September 14, 2014, 04:30:48 pm »
Are you putting the jumper on the two pin program header when trying to program the start channel? If not, that is probably your not getting any flashing lights when trying to set the start channel.

3
Lynx Smart String / Re: Plugged pixelnet cable to active hub
« on: September 11, 2014, 08:57:44 am »
Looking at your last Active Hub picture it is missing the PIC24FJ32GA002 chip from the socket, that chip will need to be installed and the firmware loaded before the active hub will work, I believe.

Steve

4
Finished COOPS / Re: Lynx Express Coop
« on: February 18, 2014, 08:49:01 am »
Two (2) for me please

Thank you,
Steve

5
Finished COOPS / Re: COOP #1 of 2014: 16 Port Active Hub, 4 Port Passive Hub,16 Port Passive Hub!!!
« on: February 07, 2014, 10:46:29 am »
1 ea Kit #1 Active 16 Port Hub

2 ea Kit #2  4 Port Passive Hub

1 ea Kit #4 12 volt Option for 16 Port Hubs

Thank you for running the Coop.

6
The Porch / Re: RJ45 jacks?
« on: January 21, 2014, 09:37:37 am »
Being a first timer here, I would echo many that say leave the RJ45's on the boards themselves as they are in a protective case.  I believe the issues are out in the yard where the connection is exposed to the weather.   I had 30 SSC out this year, all but one had connection failures from corrosion, the one that did not fail was a very tight fitting connection.   I will take the blame for that as I did not use any dielectric grease and not all my connection were able to be put straight up and down.  I did try other methods to protect the connections but those failed also.   My plan is to follow some of the other suggestions to switch to a waterproof connector at the SSC end of the cable.   Being new, if I had found or beeb given more information on the fact that the connection at the SSC should be covered in dielectric grease or something similar, I would have followed those instructions and probably would not have encounter these issues.    In the end, all of this comes down to my knowledge at the time that I was setting up the display.  I thought I was prepared, but I missed somethings that I probably should have done more research on.   I have learned and will correct it for this year.    I will have to say though the design of the equipment and ease of putting it together far outweighs some of the issue that I encountered during the use of said equipment.

Steve.

7
Lynx Smart String / Re: Pixel Mega Tree
« on: January 15, 2014, 08:40:10 am »
You may want to look at this topic to see what others are doing to setup their trees: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login
If you have more questions after reading that, I am sure there will be plenty of people willing to answer them.

Steve

8
The Porch / First year, First video
« on: December 23, 2013, 04:56:57 pm »
This is my first year at animated lights and my first video of the lights, I am still trying to get the setting correct for my camera.

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Collaborative effort between my wife and me for the sequencing, using xlight/nutcracker for everything Pixels and DMX elements.  I started about this time 2012 on planning hardware, Lynx Express and Smart Strings,  I think the tree turned out great.

Also, want to say Thank you to RJ, xlight/nutcracker team (Sean, Matt, Dan, Frankr and Djulien) and all that are willing to share their experience for making this enjoyable to do.  Thank you all.

More videos to come.

Merry Christmas everyone,
Steve.

9
Lynx Smart String / Re: DMX off of Active Smart Hub got confused
« on: December 23, 2013, 03:28:11 pm »
Thank you Chris and tbone321 for the suggestions, I will be looking at that after the season ends.

Steve.

10
Lynx Smart String / Re: Pixel Megatree Specs
« on: December 23, 2013, 03:15:29 pm »
Height of tree: 15 1/2 ft.
Base diameter/radius: 10 ft.
View in degrees (i.e. 180,220,360,etc) : 180
Type of pixels (i.e  SSNodes, 50/50 square, 50/50 rectangle, rigid strips, flex strips): flex strip from wiki
Number of support strands: 16
Material for support (i.e. pvc, galvanized wire, packing strap, poly rope, etc): Galvanized Rigid conduit for center pole, 1/2" EMT supports
Number of pixels / strand: 120
Number of pixels / ss controller 120
Controller type (i.e. Zeus 16, Zues 8, SSC off of Active Hub): SSC off of Active and Passive hubs
Etherdongle or Pixelnet Dongle: Etherdongle
Software used (xLights. Vixen2/3, HLS): xLights/Nutcracker

The base of my center pole is based off of Walter Monkhouse's design for the Portable Hole II, the topper and pixels supports are based off of Sean Meighan's tree setup.  Used cut sections of T-post secure the center pole and to create anchors for the 1/2" EMT with bungee cord.


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For wet area's like I am in, I will be switching to waterproof connectors on everything, the CAT5 pigtails did not survive.  Most of them all got wet and corroded.

Steve
 




11
Lynx Smart String / Re: DMX off of Active Smart Hub got confused
« on: December 23, 2013, 08:34:10 am »
Not sure if this is similar, but DMX on one of my Active hubs quit working also and will not come back now even with a power cycle of the hub.   I had chalked it up to heavy rains and some DMX floods that got wet and shorted out the cat5 connections, I am thinking that 12v sorted to the data line.  I figure I blew a 485 chip, so I swapped the hub with one I did not need DMX from all is working now.   I will be diagnosing the hub with DMX issues after the holiday season, unless I have more issues with the new hub.

12
Lynx EtherDongle / Re: Etherdongle Issues please help
« on: December 10, 2013, 08:26:53 am »
It might be time to look at the DLA PIC programmers list and see if there are any in your area that might be able to help get the Etherdongle programmed for you.

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Steve.

13
Nutcracker: RGB Effects Builder / Re: Adding a DMX channel
« on: December 09, 2013, 10:32:19 am »
I used xlight/nutcracker to sequence all of my song and model both RGB and DMX lights for my shows.  For the DMX elements I created a model with the start channel for whichever DMX channel on the Lynx Express that I have, in the model I used type of string as any of the Single Color (Red,Blue,Green or White) I used each to differentiate elements in the preview tab, then at the timing marks I would use a ColorWash effect to turn the element on (White) or off (Black).

Here is a xml file for what I used to just turn on my static DMX items in between shows, just remove the .doc extension from the file to import into xlights.  This only show them turning them on, for me changing the color on the color wash to black turns them off.   I also create preset effects for On/Off in the Effect Preset so I can recall these when needed.

Hope this helps.
Steve


14
Finished COOPS / Re: Etherdongle COOP **CLOSED FOR ORDERS**
« on: August 12, 2013, 08:57:37 am »
Payment Sent, Thank you for running the COOP.

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Finished COOPS / Re: Lynx SSR4, the SSR4 with DMX option***CLOSED FOR ORDERS***
« on: July 03, 2013, 04:36:14 pm »
Payment Sent, Thank you for running the Coop.

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