RGB Christmas light setup with Xlights and Falcon Player

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This is a quick tour of how to set up a simple RGB Christmas light display. We used C9 pixel bulbs, Pixlite 4 controller, 240 watt 12v power supply, a raspberry pi and Falcon Player and Xlights software. Here are some links to the products used in this video:
C9 ws2811 RGB pixel bulbs: www.holiday-lig...
Pixlite 4 controller: www.holiday-lig...
Power Supply: www.holiday-lig...
Raspberry Pi: There are several kits available from Amazon and other sources. You''ll need the Pi, a case, a 8gb thumb drive, 8gb SD card and a 2amp power supply.
Xlights software is free and can be downloaded here: nutcracker123.c...
Falcon Player can be downloaded here: falconchristmas...
See a video of the lights in action here: • C9 pixel bulbs demo
Please let us know if you have any questions!

Опубликовано:

30 сен 2024

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Комментарии : 124

@dylanzeravica6354 6 лет назад

I could never find a actuall video that showed everything this video made everything 10 times easier thx u for the great explanation

@ownerjoe7969 7 лет назад

What a great video! Just perfectly made step by step.

@leechburglights 8 лет назад

Nice explanation! I had good luck using AlphaPix4 to run my peak star this year. Way to go and congrats!

@aseebpv7761 2 года назад

Bro, please suggest me this type of layout maker for importing to led edit

@Kikiof8 Год назад

Excellent tutorial, thank you so much!!

@christophergheen2927 4 года назад

How did you power inject, if at all at from the controller to the led's farthest from the controller? I'm reading online and I get the point of power injecting, but do you really need to have an additional wire going the length of the distance from the power source to power inject? Also what did you use to power inject? Does a setup like this require null pixels?

@TheLedwarehouse 4 года назад

I didn't have to power inject for this set up, as the distance from the controller to the first pixel was under 25 feet on all channels. But, a better way to power inject, is to have a different power supply closer to were you want to inject the power. You just have to make sure all your grounds are tied together for all power supplies. You also need to break the 12v line, when you inject, or else you feed power to the whole system and will blow fuses.

@chriswren596 2 года назад

Hi my question is this , once you set a sequence to xlights how do you get it to run continuously ? or start and stop after you have made the sequence , i have no issues setting a sequence for my tree but getting it to play or loop is something not sure about , any help welcome but in easy terms thanks i am no expert on all this at all , all i want is what ever i set just to keep playing

@TheLedwarehouse 2 года назад

I run this system off a raspberry pi micro computer that runs falcon pi player. Fpp lets you schedule sequences. On the newer falcon boards this is build it, although not as great as fpp but still works ok.

@mdk4218 Год назад

Good tutorial but you didn't show the light show. I want to see how it turned out.

@TheLedwarehouse Год назад

Check our other videos

@JJ_ExMachina 6 лет назад

Yeah I have seen the DMX512 to SPL controllers, they are just at about 20 dollars. You can run power and a ethernet cable to them from the main controller (assuming you go with the Pixlite 16 that has DMX outputs (aka a E 1.31 Bridge) built in. Then you can run about 300 ft away if you were using CAT6 quality Ethernet cables. Which is exactly the case I am running in to. My house is two stories, so I am going to have to run a separate power supply to "inject" power to the farther runs. However this is going to be much similar then I originally had though. What was told to me that I was looking at having to run 4 separate large controllers, and 8 smaller power supplies to deal with the lengths. Since all of the other controllers I have found DO NOT have DMX E 1.31 bridges built in, and normally can only control about half the number of universes and the Pixlite 16. This is going to save me roughly $1100 in controllers and power supplies alone. SO a huge thanks for providing this very informative video and offering such wonderful products.

@edkaempf906 6 лет назад

Excellent video explaining use of Pi, light controller, and power supply. "Port", not "channel" is the name of the locations on the controller that each pixel string uses.

@btcjas7021 5 лет назад

This video was super helpful as a beginner. Will def watch again when I get my controller

@jasonjerrel1356 3 года назад

Great video. Definitely helped me get started.

@jbo561 4 года назад

very helpful! I wanted to set something up this year but had to go out of town for work. just more time to plan for next :)

@b0nafided65 7 лет назад

Thanks for taking the time to make this video! Excellent job explaining everything. It really helps me understand the concept everyone keeps talking about in the forums.

@commercialand 6 лет назад

Hi, we are in our 3 years here at the Roswell Christmas Railway and I used LOR last year for a fairly large light show to music. This year we have a stage performance with a "light" background that I will be sequencing to dancers and music. For example a Dragon that will be blowing fire and using the lights to show fire colors and so forth..... It's not your typical Christmas house light thing, and I am trying to learn now Xlights due to using RGB now. We are using 96 RGB strips with 16 channels, and I believe 8 modules, or boxes. We have another guy who I am working with who is setting up all the hardware, I am assisting but just learning all of that. I will mainly be doing the creative sequencing. Any help on this would be great!

@TheLedwarehouse 6 лет назад

Jeff Lennan sure. Let us know how we can help

@letsrollusafa111 4 года назад

This might be a silly question, but on the red channel (garage) I understand it's one port powering the red...how did you make it look like two separately? Same goes for the white on the porch and window. Do you have to cut pig tails and put gauged wire to have sections without lights? If so, is it pretty intuitive on splicing in conductor wire?

@TheLedwarehouse 4 года назад

letsrollusafa111 correct. You just make your own or buy your spacer wires for when you have gaps. We sell premade spacers: the-led-warehouse.com/collections/rgb-connectors-and-wire

@robertdinterman4223 8 лет назад

How far are the lights from the controller , I want to do a similar setup but I am concerned about voltage drops? Rasberry pi3/sandevices e682, 12v rgb leds-2811 .

@TheLedwarehouse 8 лет назад

The garage lights are about 5 feet from the controller, the roof lights are about 8. The front porch is about 15-18 feet. I'd recommend sticking with 15 feet or less using 18awg wire. Probably to 25 feet if you went with 16awg wire. If you need to go really long distances there are long range controller options that let you run either net cables... but that's a little more involved design.

@mrteausaable 6 лет назад

From how you design the animation does it matter how many channels controller you get. From your setup can I get away with just use 2 channels output. What is the benefit of having 4 channels since you do not exceed the maximum allow LED per channel? What can you do on 4 chls vs 16 chls board? I am not sure what how many channels to get yet.

@TheLedwarehouse 6 лет назад

It's all about power injection. I didn't want to inject power on my lines, so I used all 4 channels instead. It was just easier and faster to set up. But technically, yes, you could run this off a single channel if you wanted, as technically, you can do 340 pixels per output. If you go to the newer videos we have posted, you can see we now run the outline on 3 channels and a star on the fourth. Shortly, I'll have a video where I added a 5th channel to control some new items. 4ch vs 16ch is just that. You get 12 more outputs to use. It really depends on what you are building on what board you should go with. Also depends how much you want to fiddle with injecting power and such as well.

@seanbaber9891 7 лет назад

I've bought everything in this video and I can't seem to get my raspberry pi to send sequences to my pixlite 4 over ethernet. I'm not really good at networking stuff so i'm sure my problem is in my setup. Can I get a little help?

@TheLedwarehouse 7 лет назад

sure. send me an email admin@the-led-warehouse,com

@crazylights8700 7 лет назад

Hello, I see that you are out super good with xlights. I am from Belgium. I dream of reproducing what you do in the united states ... Then I ask you to help me if I give you my email address? I thank you already for your tutorial, it has already helped me a lot.

@TheLedwarehouse 7 лет назад

Damien Neusinger you can contact us through our website. You may also want to join the xlights forum as there is a lot of info there too

@mdace4659 8 лет назад

really like this,, Im wondering how well the pixel bulbs hold up to rain, we get lots of rain and wind in December I have had lots of trouble with c9 led lights burning out. is anything else required for this system besides wire.

@TheLedwarehouse 8 лет назад

They do pretty good. The lights we sell are expoxy sealed IP68 rated. So if you still with a quality light like what we sell, you should be OK.

@robertdinterman4223 8 лет назад

curious if you are familiar with the new pi3 ? I watched a video and it showed that you have to first load FPP onto an older say pi2 first then onto the pi3 is there another way if you don't have another older pi ? Am I correct that FPP and xlights are one in the same , so that when I download FPP onto the pi3 I will have xlights ?

@TheLedwarehouse 8 лет назад

I'm pretty sure the latest version of FPP fixed that issue. I think you can load it straight on a pi3. No, Fpp and xlights are not the same. FPP is a player that you load sequence files to and schedule them. Xlights is the software you use to actually create the light sequences. You can have one without the other.

@Penfold8 6 лет назад

Looks like you had a faulty pixel on each of your garage strands. (The odd white light).

@TheLedwarehouse 6 лет назад

Penfold8 nope. All working fine. In fact, these same lights just finished their third year out in Michigan winters without any failures!

@diyhometheaterguy 5 лет назад

Thank you for such a great video!

@imlon2 7 лет назад

Instead of running on the pi can you run it on a home network? We plan on building in the near future and just thought I would run a ethernet net line to the garage so i can adjust everything from the den and not have to flip flop things when I want to do a change.

@TheLedwarehouse 7 лет назад

imlon2 the pi runs on wifi, so could run it from your living room and make changes. Problem with running systems on your home network is you can flood the network slowing everything down. Bigger your display gets, the more data it uses. What may be handy, is building network drops in your eves and such, that all lead back to a big switch. This would let you create a separate network with easy connections to all your controllers

@fseeletronicos 6 лет назад

Xlights only works with raspberry ? Can I run it in another microcontroller ?

@TheLedwarehouse 6 лет назад

xlights doesn't actually run on the raspberry pi. I used FPP on the raspberry pi. Xlights is just a program to make sequences. you can run straight from a PC that has xlights. But FPP is only for the raspberry pi

@JustinMitch702 6 лет назад

Is there a way to use the program & light sequencer before I even purchase anything? I’m wanting to actually create my light show & see how it would look before I actually install anything. Once I have the show & music all organized & tweaked to my liking ( over the course of next couple months ), then I’m ahead of the curve to install when it’s closer to holiday season. Is this possible or do I need to purchase xlight program to do this

@TheLedwarehouse 6 лет назад

Yes!. You can use the xlights program without any other hardware or lights. It's free to download. Just install it on your computer and you can start designing and sequencing.

@JustinMitch702 6 лет назад

TheLedwarehouse Thank is sir 👍

@TheSLOdriver 7 лет назад

I've been able to set up the Falcon Player on the Pi and interface with it over WiFi. Sequence and music has been uploaded. I've connected the lights directly into the Pixlite to test and double checked that they are wired correctly (+ __ Data - ). But when I play my sequence in FPP the lights do not light up. Do I need to do anything with the OUTPUT end of the light cables?

@TheLedwarehouse 7 лет назад

Eric Flores might be a set up error. Might want to check the pixlite settings through advatek assistant, make sure those match xlights and fpp. You can email us if you need more details.

@TheSLOdriver 7 лет назад

I've figured it out!* *once I re-read the manual... I had the LED type set to the wrong one in the Advatek Assistant software. Thanks for pointing me in the right direction. Remember everyone, if all else fails follow the directions :)

@chhoragajabhai 5 лет назад

Can you teach me how make this project & program

@TheLedwarehouse 5 лет назад

HARRY RAJA follow the video as it walks you through it. If you have specific questions you can ask them here or send us an email.

@ericbrusset7211 8 лет назад

Looks great, I just ordered parts to build a very similar setup I plan to install before the snow falls. I plan on running it all on a timer by cutting power to the system. Do you know if the Pi would be ok with this, or if there is a safe way to cut power to it? Also, would FPP just resume upon power supply?

@TheLedwarehouse 8 лет назад

I don't think the pi will like having the power cut on it, although I have never tried it. I would think it would re-boot OK, then resume FPP. The nice thing about the pi is that you can have it work as your timer for the lights. Keep it running, and let it decide when the lights turn off and on. There's no real reason to use a traditional timer this way.

@ericbrusset7211 8 лет назад

Thanks! I will set a timer on the pi

@ducebigalow8834 5 лет назад

what type of wire and where did you get it for the lights?

@TheLedwarehouse 5 лет назад

18 awg wire. the-led-warehouse.com/collections/rgb-connectors-and-wire/products/3-conductor-18awg-1007-wire-250ft

@mynameisneb 5 лет назад

I saw where you bought the 12inch spacing C9s, but how much space did you leave between each pixel? I'm about 50ft & 65ft from my road

@TheLedwarehouse 5 лет назад

Ben Howard they are about 12” spaced. We didnt leave much slack between the bulbs here.

@mynameisneb 5 лет назад

@@TheLedwarehouse Thank you. I don't see the 12inch spaced C9s anymore on the site, I do see 8inch. Also should I invest in a ready to run controller as a beginner or just do all my own?

@TheLedwarehouse 5 лет назад

Ben Howard looks like we sold out of 12” already, so all we have is the 8” left. As far as controller its up to you. You’ll save money building yourself, but its faster buying prebuilt. Depends how comfortable you are wiring up controllers and power supplies.

@openflame06 8 лет назад

Thanks, this makes me feel way more confident in setting this up. Have you done any with music.?

@TheLedwarehouse 8 лет назад

I haven't. But all you do is add the track to your sequence. So when you create a new sequence, tell it that you have music with it, and then you can add in your track.

@openflame06 8 лет назад

Just trying it out now, thanks heaps! Timing marks help a lot

@ampdeck 6 лет назад

great tutorial! thank you!

@BrianHensleyRULES 7 лет назад

Looks great! same thing i'm shooting for. But question, how did you go about mounting your C9 lights?

@TheLedwarehouse 7 лет назад

Brian Hensley hot glued around the doors and windows. Used our flip clips to attach to the roofline. www.holiday-light-express.com/clips.php

@tcmedia8253 6 лет назад

I have a similar garage set up - can you explain exactly how you hot glued the lights do the garage area surface? Are you just gluing the bare wire to the surface or is there something between the lights and the surface?

@TheLedwarehouse 6 лет назад

TCMedia the bulbs are flat on the bottom. Just put a little glue on the bottom and stick it to the house

@ammojeffify 7 лет назад

I'm just getting started with this project for 2018. Can I use old strings of Phillips Illuminate LED (RGB) C9 (25 CT) to practice with using the same power supply and controller you use. I appreciate your info so far!!!

@TheLedwarehouse 7 лет назад

Jeff H im not sure. Does the chip on them say what type of pixel they are?

@ammojeffify 7 лет назад

I'll see if I can figure that out.

@TheLedwarehouse 7 лет назад

They seem to run on a UCS1909 protocol. I don't think the pixlite's will run on that.

@ammojeffify 7 лет назад

If that's true then Art-Net protocol can be used. Where that leads me is to a Artnet-SPI converter .... This is fun stuff. Thanks!

@marito158 5 лет назад

Hi, how many lights bulbs per section do you have as max?

@TheLedwarehouse 5 лет назад

Mario Alvarez you could run 100 lights per output. Id set your brightness to 50% to do it

@marito158 5 лет назад

@@TheLedwarehouse could you please share the controller setting, because it works with 50, but one section of my roof need around 85, and put together 2 sets of 50 but only lights up to the 50th light.

@TheLedwarehouse 5 лет назад

Mario Alvarez that means your controller is set up for 50 lights per output. You need to connect to your controller and change each output to match the amount of lights attached.

@jmw16969 7 лет назад

Yeah, so how much does that hunk of electronics cost to control that

@TheLedwarehouse 7 лет назад

jmw16969 pixlite 4 is only $114 www.holiday-light-express.com/RGBcontrollers.php Power supply is $35. www.holiday-light-express.com/RGBpowersupplies.php

@jmw16969 7 лет назад

TheLedwarehouse thats 75 percent cheaper than the stuff ive been lookin at, i will check that out thanks

@JJ_ExMachina 6 лет назад

Yes this looks very promising, since I have a two sotrry house, going to run with the Pixlite 16 Ver 2. It can control 96 Universes and up to 4 simultaneous DMX signals out all at the same time. That is an amazing number of lights all running at the same time. Just did a quick run down of the numbers... even without the DMX feeds, that is well over 16k pixels or 40k channels... YEAH for 220 bucks... I am sold.

@joroco80 5 лет назад

You said in the video that each channel could do around 300ish pixels. I want to run led strip lights, would that still be the same or could I get away with more on a run?

@TheLedwarehouse 5 лет назад

It's actually harder with strips. They use way more power so you hit the 5amp fuse limit quicker. Typically 150LED strips are 3-LEDs per pixel. So three times the power draw per RGB channel. But technically, the new boards we sell today can do it a lot more channels per output, but you have to manage the power to make it happen. So possible if you have a good plan in place.

@joroco80 5 лет назад

@@TheLedwarehouse with what I want to do, only 50 of the 150 will be on. Does that make a difference?

@TheLedwarehouse 5 лет назад

@@joroco80 So you have a strip of 150 LED and only use 50 of them? Do you cut off the extra to make s true strand of 50?

@joroco80 5 лет назад

No. I'm trying to keep my light us all year round. I don't like hights. I want them to look a certain way, 1 blue, 2 and 3 off, 4 white, then 5 and 6 off. Then repeat that pattern.

@TheLedwarehouse 5 лет назад

@@joroco80 I see. You would still need all the channels for the strip. So a 150light strip would be 50 pixels or 150 RGB channels. You could probably run two of those end to end before you had to inject power, so about 32ft of lights.

@andrewbarnes6633 5 лет назад

Hi I'm new to rgb lighting. What all do I need to get started?

@TheLedwarehouse 5 лет назад

Andrew Barnes basically you need lights and a controller. Which lights and controller depends on what you are trying to do. In this video we used a 4channel controller and a few strands of our c9 rgb lights.

@andrewbarnes6633 5 лет назад

I'm thinking to start I will get the co rgb like you used to outline. That's what I'm going to do then eventually a rgb mega tree and possibly a pixel board

@andrewbarnes6633 5 лет назад

But to start I will be just outlining roof line and windows and garage door and roof line. Just dont know much about controllers and the other hardware?

@TheLedwarehouse 5 лет назад

Andrew Barnes buying a prebuilt controller might be a good idea then. Then all you have to do is get lights hooked to it and do a little sequencing. www.holiday-light-express.com/RGBcontrollers.php

@mrteausaable 6 лет назад

Do you have any flicking issue do to the data signal line too long from the controller? What is the max length allow? What about GAP between LED pixel, how long can it be before the signal got degraded?

@TheLedwarehouse 6 лет назад

Mr. T no flicker. Ive got some 30ft runs that work just fine, but the pixels we sell are good quality which helps with longer runs. The gap would depend on how far down your run you are before the gap. Its all about voltage drop, so sometimes you just have to do a little trial and error.

@mrteausaable 6 лет назад

Where can I buy your type of Pixels lights?

@TheLedwarehouse 6 лет назад

Mr. T we are pretty sold out since its the end of the season. But our pre order sale will start tomorrow where you can order what ever you need: www.holiday-light-express.com/RGB.php

@mrteausaable 6 лет назад

I am also looking for uAmp to extend the distance of the pixels by Amplifier the signal wire...

@TheLedwarehouse 6 лет назад

we don't sell those.

@ericbrusset7211 8 лет назад

Hey, I received all of my gear and was able to set up FPP on my pi, hook everything up and set up a sequence in xlights following this tutorial. Thanks for video! I have one last issue I can't get over. I have my sequence playing on fpp and it looks like it it communicating with the Alphapix properly over Cat5, but I have no lights (I have tested them using the alphapix alone already). I can't ping the Alphapix in this setup. Any ideas?

@TheLedwarehouse 8 лет назад

First thing to try would be to hook your computer up to the aplapix directly with a network cable. I use crossover cables as I think they can have a higher data rate through them. If xlight can control the lights without the pi player, then you have a settings issue in FPP. Make sure FPP matches what your alphapix software settings are. If it doesn't work, the you have a settings issue in xlights. Let me know if this helps!

@ericbrusset7211 8 лет назад

Thanks for the tip. I connected to my pc and was able to test the leds using xlights test mode and confirm that the controller is functioning. I tried running my sequence in xlights 4, and was unable get any response. It looks like my sequencing has an issue somewhere. I see you have the setup as multicast. I was only able to test the leds by setting to unicast and entering the controller ip. Is there something else I need to change to support multicast? Thanks for all the help so far.

@ericbrusset7211 8 лет назад

Just made some progress. I have xlights playing properly when connected directly to the controller. I just need to solve the FPP to alphapix issue.

@TheLedwarehouse 8 лет назад

Make sure the settings in FPP match what you have in xlights... Also, make sure you have ethernet selected as well. Good luck! Once you get it set, you shouldn't have to mess with it again!

@ericbrusset7211 8 лет назад

I finally got it working. It was my eth0 settings that were holding me back. Thanks a ton for this video, without it I might not have had the confidence to go ahead with buying all the gear!

@philkingmke 7 лет назад

does the length away from the controller matter at all?

@TheLedwarehouse 7 лет назад

yes. Typically, you want your first pixel to be 20ft or less from your controller. You get voltage and signal drop which will affect your lights.

@philkingmke 7 лет назад

TheLedwarehouse I'm a novice. With that said, is there a reason you didn't just do the entire roof line on one channel if you had more than enough room for more pixels?

@TheLedwarehouse 7 лет назад

it was easier to set it up the way I did it. But technically, yes, I could have ran the whole roof line off one channel. You do have to run the lights linear, you can't just splice in the middle of a run. I could have ran the whole house off one channel, but that takes some more complex wiring to accomplish.

@philkingmke 7 лет назад

TheLedwarehouse is there any length maximum for the jumper? Is it the same

@TheLedwarehouse 7 лет назад

probably less as voltage drop is an issue. Sometimes you just have to try it, and if it works, go with it! I've had some 30ft runs work fine, I've had some 25ft runs give me fits.

@UWLPancakes 4 года назад

Hey! I've got a couple of questions... the first one being, Can I run this completely mobile? I want to create a fully controllable LED underglow on a car that I can create musical displays to accompany. Obviously powering the system would be no issue in a car however obviously you run this through wifi. I wont have wifi in the car, but if I pre programmed a display, is it possible to run it directly through the pi without any networking?

@TheLedwarehouse 4 года назад

Desperadaux yes, you can run it off the pi without the network. You set up everything the same, then set your timer up to turn on once the pi powers up. Or, if you used a falcon board you can run off a sd card on the board, just cant have sound that way.

@UWLPancakes 4 года назад

@@TheLedwarehouse awesome! Thanks for such a quick reply. So, as I've never done this before, would you mind helping answer a few more questions? Would I need both a PI and the Falcon E131? My display will only be 4 LED strips, am I best to split each one into a separate channel or can I run them in series and use XLights to control what is lit? If I dont need to split them separately, what's the cheapest unit that'll do the job? If you've got links then that would be perfect :) Sorry for bugging you, I'm just trying to learn haha

@TheLedwarehouse 4 года назад

@@UWLPancakes I'd use a pi and a falcon picap if you only have 4 strips to run. That would be an easy and cheap way to set it up. A picap is just two channels, which is probably enough to run your strips.