What Controller Now?

[ChiefWarrant]

Now a second Falcon F16v3 has failed inthe EXACT same way as the first did a couple of years back. (Thread here) Coincidently, it has failed at almost the exact same time of the season. I cannot have one of my main Pixel boards failing just as I am ready to turn the lights on for the season.


Personally, I am done with Falcon controllers. It is time to switch to a more reliable and more widely available board. Preferably from a a manufacturer who is willing to respond to inquiries.

I had considered Sans, but I have had a technical ticket open on the site for nearly three months without a response. So Sans is not high on my list.

I am seriously considering the controllers from ExperienceLights.com. Does anyone know if I can reuse my Falcon long range receivers with the Long Range Pixel Controller from ExperienceLights or do I need to use their receivers?

-Tony

[gingrbredman]

I am not 100% sure you can use the Falcon receivers with the Experience Controllers, but you can you the Experience Receivers with the Falcon boards, so I am guessing they can talk.

According to some of the posts I have seen on the Xlights Facebook page, the Experience receivers auto detect where they are in line, and if you add a Falcon in there with them, you still need to set the dials and dipswitches on the receiver.

I picked up a few Falcon boards throughout the year, and a few V4 receivers, but really like what I am seeing from the Experience Controller line, and am going to try and pick at least one up for next year. The availability, the price, and the features make it very intriguing to me.

[dirknerkle]

[SoapBox]

FWIW, one of the concerns I've always had about large, centralized controllers is that if something goes wrong, a large part or possible all of the show goes down. That's one reason why I decided that every prop (or perhaps two props) had their own controller -- if it went down, it's only a very small and almost imperceptible part of the show. And the likelihood that all controllers might go down is a very far-fetched possibility.

I know many folks prefer the security of wired communications, but I have 76 wireless controllers in my show this year, and each one is performing exactly as intended. Admittedly, some of those controllers manage only one, two or three channels, but some of them are pixel controllers that use gobs of channels. Certainly, wireless may not be the best solution for the hi-def matrices that are popular these days, but by dividing the rest of the show among individual controllers is a pretty sound way to prevent a disastrous situation from happening. I also appreciate that for some users, the congestion of their local wireless communication is a deterrent to the implementation of a completely wireless show. But certainly a combination of wired and wireless can certainly work, too.

I'm pretty anal about lighting effects that miss their synchronization with music, but I've found that wireless provides an acceptable level of performance. Do wireless controllers sometimes miss a beat? Yes, once in a while they do. Does it matter in the real world? No. Viewers can't see the whole show simultaneously as human attention and vison can't comprehend that scope.

Could wireless have solved the Chief's issue this year? Probably not completely, but I'm certain it could have mitigated much of the issue, resulting in perhaps a slightly abbreviated result, but a positive result nonetheless.

Just some thoughts from an old geezer... FWIW....

[/SoapBox]

[Cmndr Brain]

With all due respect to Falcon, I'm more of a manual control type of person. This is why I have the SanDevices controllers. They use the Parallax Propeller p8x32a chip. I get the kit version because I enjoy the soldering and building the board. Best thing is, if anything breaks/fails, it's all replaceable parts. The parallax chip, as all the parts, are easily obtainable through Mouser or Digi-key. Everything is through-hole solder chips and sockets. Do you get all the fancy advanced features? No. But you do get an extremely reliable board that you can fix yourself. If you want something a little more feature rich, you can always build an open source Scott Hanson PB16 addon. The PB16 addon is a DIY (you might be able to buy prebuilt) PocketBeagle pcb that replaces the Parallax Propeller chip. It then runs Falcon Player as the controller and gives you all the features that FPP has.

[MartinMueller2003]

Hi Dirk. ESPixelStick has taken a big step towards making large WiFi shows viable by using the FPP remote mechanisms and playing from a local SD card. So that should be one less issue to contend with and is in line with the "More smaller" controller models.

FYI: I use multiple F16s in my show and none of them use all of their ports. I reserve the extra ports to be able to run wires into another area of the yard if a controller goes down and no spare is available. I did lose my street side center controller once and my mega tree and central controllers filled in the gap nicely until I could replace the broken controller.

[1pet2_9]

Watch ebay or start planning for next year. Your a bit late to start. Get the parts and start playing with it mid year.

I have to agree, to a point. You can build a mini-tree this year, probably with strips 25-pixels high and a topper. Come up with a plan that's scalable to 2400 pixels for later, but this year targeting a mini-tree of 12 strips of 25 pixels is doable. You would learn a lot about how to build a real mega-tree in the process. I wish I had done that myself (I started big, then went smaller...now ready to go bigger again). Because it's only 4 foot tall, you can do the whole thing--topper and all--standing up. No ladders, pulleys, et. al.. The whole thing can run on 1 channel. So much simpler.

[EE351]

Another option, if your willing to wire the pins by hand, is the wt32-eth01 module using wled. This can drive up to 8 outputs with ethernet or wireless. I'm using six of these in my show this year connected by ethernet and they work great. They can be purchased in larger lots on aliexpress for about $9 each. Technically out of spec since there is no level conversion from 3.3v to 5v, but I've been doing this for years without any data issues.

On a side note, most of my show is using esp modules with espixelstick firmware and wifi (e1.31 with about 40 controllers). It works great, but I hit a wall with 24 universes of data. Going forward, new props will be connected via ethernet using the wt32-eth01 modules.

[ChiefWarrant]

Could wireless have solved the Chief's issue this year? Probably not completely, but I'm certain it could have mitigated much of the issue, resulting in perhaps a slightly abbreviated result, but a positive result nonetheless.

I agree Dave.

In fact I have already replaced three of the props with Renard Plus ESP WiFi Pixel Controllers and working on getting the others replaced. The only spot I have a high pixel density is a 370 node prop (singing face), which can be covered by a Renard Plus 4 Output Combo (if/when Phoenix can produce again).

I am not 100% sure you can use the Falcon receivers with the Experience Controllers, but you can you the Experience Receivers with the Falcon boards, so I am guessing they can talk.

I ask Experience Lights and they responded the same day, even though it was Thanksgiving they still responded, nice. (I have had a tech question open to Sans since 03OCT22 and still no response.)

According to Experience lights "Our Long Range outputs are compatible with most receivers in Dumb / Standard mode, but in Smart mode our controllers will only work with Falcon V4 compatible receivers." Given that, I also have some Standard Differential Receivers from Wizard of Wire which should also work.

At a cost 31% less than the Falcon F16v4 board, I can buy two Experience Lights controllers and have a spare on hand.

According to Experience Lights they are also shipping same/next business day, so I will have a chance to get them in the show this year, to cover the items I can't cover with Renard Plus ESP WiFi Pixel Controllers. Which is nice, because I will not have to rebuild my long range receiver boxes.

-Tony

[rayhjr]

I started this madness in 2015 with 1 E682 and 4 RenardPlus boards. I added a Falcon 16v2 (Red Board) the next year. I used the Falcon 1 year, then sold it and bought 2 more E682 kits and stayed with that for a few years.
I Really like building things and when Scott came out with his line of DIY boards I was all in. When I order boards from JLCPCB the minimum amount is 5. Build all 5 use 1 or 2 and have spares for in case. There is a wide variety of options to choose from. Pocket Beagle boards, Beagle Bone Black, differential, receiver, expansion and so on. The newer boards have SMD components and board can be ordered with those already installed. I like to do it myself with all through hole parts, but that's just me.
I like a centralized controller with backups in hand. I use the FPP Player remote setup and it works Great. I will run this year with a main controller with a differential output board and 3 receiver boards throughout my yard with cat5 and a power supply at each. Backup power supplies, controllers, PB's, BBB's, and receiver boards if needed. Last three years none of the backup were needed. I did try to swap out a PB in year 1 and fried it as i plugged it into board wrong, UGG. Live and learn. I think was the same year I fried a RPi by applying 12v to it. Got to have backups.
This would not do you any good this year as you need something now and maybe you prefer not to build it. If you would like to try one, I have a BBB board I could send you with BBB and FPP license. If you want to keep, we could talk price later. PM me if interested.
The ExperienceLights line does look good but to each there own. I just like building things.

[ChiefWarrant]

Just got the first Experience Light controller in the mail yesterday and here are my first impressions.
How first testing is set up:

Controller: Experience Lights Genius Long Range Pixel Controller
Power Supply: Meanwell LRS-350-5 5VDC
Receiver: Falcon F4 Differential Receiver v1.01 and Wizard of Wire Standard Differential Receiver
Protocol: Distributed Display Protocol (DDP)

Network Setup
When the system boots, it will DHCP an IP address. If DHCP is unavailable, it has a preset IP address of 192.168.1.50/24.

Input Setup
Input screen allows you to select DDP, E1.13 or Artnet. I am running DDP, just because I had not used it before and wanted to try it out. I can see where some who is used to functioning in the Universe/Channel environment may have difficulty.

Output Setup
The GUI is easy to use and understand but it is not without drawbacks. The "major" one I see is the "Reset All Outputs" button. Once selected, it resets all your string outputs to default, without a confirmation window appearing. You can easily erase all you setup without confirmation.

The "Outputs" screen maintains an absolute addressing format, despite if you are running DDP (Absolute addressing) or E1.31 (Universe addressing). In the Falcon series, this changes when you switch between the two, the string output reflects that change.

The Outputs GUI has the ability to auto-number channels to reflect the change in per string pixel count. And in my opinion, the Null pixel configuration is a bit easier to us than Falcon's. Since all my Falcon controllers are dead, cannot do a direct comparison.

You have the ability to set the brightness (or any setting) on all the strings at once with a single click.

Other Features
One of the key features I was the ability to utilize any remote receiver with the controller. I have ran Both Falcon and Wizard of Wire receivers without issues. Although I have not tested it yet the, 4 Output Long Range Pixel Genius Receiver indicates that it potentially does not work as well with 5 VDC pixels.

Serial output is limited to DMX only. I personally would like to see it also do Renard, DMX and LOR.

It appears to have a built in Wireless Hotspot (WAP). I was unable to join the WiFi hot spot. I can see the future advantage to this, if fully implemented.


When I downloaded the config-file.json and reviewed it, there are other options available that are not presently presented in the GUI, such as: NTP setup, the ability to manage by Universe and the ability to change the hostname. Furthermore, the config-file.json gives a hint that we can cut the cable and operate the Genius systems via wireless network access maybe available in the future.

I have a second genius board on the way, so I will start messing with these configuration settings on that one. Right now, I need to get the current board into the show to replace the dead Falcon.

Pro	Con
Standard IP address available if DHCP is not.	"Reset All Outputs" button
DDP, E1.31 or Artnet	Only serial output is for DMX
Ability to set the brightness on all the strings at once with a single click.	When switching between DDP to E1.31, outputs screen does indicate a change is made.
Can us multiple vendor long range receivers	The genius receivers work "best" on 12VDC
In stock	Having documentation would be better