E680 + WS2801 5v pixel Megatree. HOly cow that's one bright tree!

[lightman]

Hey Gary...watched video and it looks fantastic. Smooth even fades, great scrolling text. Thanks for posting.

Lightman

[Gary Martin]

Can i ask dumb dumb question of the day please.

i have 4 x 5m rolls of the 2801 strips and the E680,

my question is how do you sequance these indivdually using vixen ?? how do you connect these up??

i have been looking on the forum for guidance on prog the 2801 strips but cant seem to find anywhere,

any guidance will be greatly appreciated

dave

Dave, that's always the big question when it comes to a ton of RGB pixels. Vixen doesn't offer much in the way of advanced matrix tools. Light Show Pro offers more, but comes with it's own can of worms in it's quirky interface and sketchy performance.

I effectively cheated by using a professional software package called "Madrix" (Madrix.com) which is designed to run huge RGB matricees in clubs. It's not cheap, but it's *very* powerful software that can actually *do* something with thousands of pixel channels.

[mikentn]

Outstanding display, Gary. Thank you for sharing it!

[rca]

Gary,

Did you share the specifics on your megatree somewhere? If not, would you? It looks like from the pictures on FB you have the pixels, red, green and clear. I'd like to know how many of each and the height.

Thanks for sharing, the videos are inspiring.

Ron

[Gary Martin]

Gary,

Did you share the specifics on your megatree somewhere? If not, would you? It looks like from the pictures on FB you have the pixels, red, green and clear. I'd like to know how many of each and the height.

Thanks for sharing, the videos are inspiring.

Ron

Sure thing, here's what you're seeing there. It's a 24' tall tree. Here's some closeups of the assembly:

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?...2927014&type=3

96 CDI LED stringers in Red, Green and White, 70ct strings. This is what I used last year and I threw them up there because I wasn't sure the digital pixels would be enough. (HA!)
48 Ray Wu WS2801 based digital pixels. 5.5" spacing, 5vdc. IP68 (solid epoxy filled) 42 pixels per string. Next year will be digital pixels only.

There are 16 sections on the original tree setup, with the original stringers in a RGWRGW layout (six strings per section). The digital pixels were added in at 3 strings per section which layed nicely into the old strings.

48 total strings of pixels are attached to three E680s, each E680 completely full (16 strings each) using 504 DMX addresses per universe (42 pixels per string * 4 strings per universe * 3)

The E680s are attached via 100mbps Ethernet to the Madrix control box. The Madrix box is remote controlled from LOR S3 over a DMX chain.(Lynx dongle on the LOR end, Enttec DMX Pro on the Madrix in for the DMX In)

There's a 50 amp 5vdc power supply for each E680 located inside my basement, run over 30' of 14 guage low voltage landscaping wire, heavy insulation, great UV protection and fairly cheap.

I had to build the matrix inside Madrix a bit differently, since I'm not using the last two pixel's worth of addresses in each universe, full auto addressing wouldn't work right. Jim helped point me in the right direction and I finally came up with a decent way to do it. I had to add each of the twelve universes involved one at a time, specifying a 42 x 4 layout, starting point in the lower left, vertical orientation. I added the first one in the Patch manager at Universe 1, X value 1. Next was Universe 2, X value 5 and so on. Once I got that figured out, everything else was a piece of cake with Madrix. Very good software. Very expensive, but well worth it IMHO.

[fathead45]

thanks for the info. did you happen to have any dead pixels or ones that did not work the way they were supposed to?

[Gary Martin]

thanks for the info. did you happen to have any dead pixels or ones that did not work the way they were supposed to?

This was a custom order, since they were 5.5" spacing. My results from Ray were very good.

First, ALL strings had 42 pixels in them! No under or over, all were the right length. My order was for 50 strings (the tree needed 48, two were for spares).

Initially 42 strings worked perfect. Six more had to have a pixel spliced in somewhere. Two strings were kinda beyond hope. All of them except *one single pixel* were properly sealed with epoxy. There was one pixel without anything in it, an oversight during production. Kinda nice to have though as you can pull the silicone sleeve off and get at the entire daughterboard. ;)

So I had my working set before even emailing Ray about it. Ray promptly, and on his dime, sent out two more complete strings.

It's been up for three weeks now, loads of bad weather, lots of rain, some ice. There is only one pixel that's had an issue since they went up and it only lost the Green side of it's RGB. I just taped it over with electrician's tape so it wouldn't mess up the matrix.

For what it's worth, I do have them ziptied onto paracord every 2nd pixel. The paracord isn't stretching at all once it's got some tension on it. The old, CDI LED stringers stretch out enough they have to be re-tensioned and zip tied every week. The paracord doesn't, I love it!

[aussiephil]

Gary and others

Something that may be of use to others setting pixels up I found these waterproof DC-DC converters http://www.aliexpress.com/product-gs...olesalers.html
They allow you to use a higher voltage like 24-28V to get out to the pixels without having to worry about voltage drop at 5V. I ordered 4 to test out this year, one did fail but the other three at this time have run for 4 weeks straight permanently on, in rain and heat, so i'll write one off as a mystery failure.

Cheers

[fathead45]

pretty nice idea phil.

there is also this from ed
http://www.j1sys.com/ecg-ppx/

something similar and look really promising.

[vvolf27]

Gary,

First your show is amazing. This is my first year for doing a show and I would like to add a RGB 12 strip 2D tree and 4 RGB arches for next year. I have heard Madrix is really fantastic to help sequence RGB elements, but heard it came with a very expensive price tag. I used LSP this year and understand Madrix can work with it, I am just curious how you came about your copy and if you feel it is worth the price? I have also heard if you buy enough equipment from computerized lighting he includes a copy.

Merry Christmas,
Jason