Golf cart display

[thyndman]

We recently moved to Margaritaville in Daytona Beach. Unable to to large display like I had before on the house. How about doing lights with sequence and music on a golf cart...
How would I make this display being totally mobile. Putting lights all over my golf cart. What is recommended on how to do this. Using 12v pixels and alphapix controller. How would I get the data, sequence, to the controller? How about music playing? Speaker type? I've always used xlights for sequences for my house.
Thanks for any help.
Tom



Sent from my SM-G991U using Tapatalk

[sctwohig]

One year the lake my father in law lives on had a Christmas in July. I ended up using a raspberry pi with a pi hat, as it was able to run standalone sequences and I had a spare one, so it worked out perfectly. I added a fuse and buck converter to the battery to power the pi hat and I used 5v pixels as thats what I use. I had added a usb sound card to the pi and just hooked a computer speaker to it. We also set up a few pixel props in the yard and ran a show. If I was in at home I would put the fpp on the golf cart in remote mode so it synced to the rest of my show. When I was driving around away from home I would connect to the pi on the golf cart and change fpp to be a player and start a playlist.

--
Shawn

[thyndman]

Thank you. Never used a pi or pie hat. Do you use both? Do you run xlights on the pi? Time to read up on them. Thanks!

Sent from my SM-G991U using Tapatalk

[sctwohig]

You run fpp on the pi and the pi hat just has connections to allow you to connect the pi to the pixel strings. You then can upload your fseq files to to pi/fpp. I believe you could probably do the same thing with the Kulp controller they just use fpp on a beaglebone instead of a pi.


Thanks,
Shawn

[thyndman]

Thanks again. I have more stupid question, do you still need the controller with the pi hat? I was thinking the pixel controller would connect to the pi with a cat5 cable.


Sent from my SM-G991U using Tapatalk

[MikeKrebs]

A pi hat/cap like this one https://pixelcontroller.com/store/pi...con-picap.html can run two ports of at least 800 pixels. So, no you don't need a separate conroller. There are other hats/caps/capes for the rpi but the linked one is a popular one.

[thyndman]

Thank you, that makes everything a bit easier. Is some type of power source needed for the pixels? I'm using 12v pixels. Just another dumb question.
Thanks. Tom

Sent from my SM-G991U using Tapatalk

[MikeKrebs]

Is some type of power source needed for the pixels? I'm using 12v pixels.

On a golf cart, I assume you'd add a 12v battery of some kind and just run direct off the battery. Add a switch and fuses and connect it up to your rPi with pixel cap and run your pixels with power injection if they number more than about 200 in one string. Based on the setup, you'd have to find which battery will suffice. You might need a hefty battery to power lots of lights, bright and a long time. Or maybe at 30% with a 100 pixels, you could get away with a smaller one.

Of course, you'd need to charge the battery between uses so make that easy to do as well with some quick connects.

[thyndman]

Question about set up for the pi and pi cap. Got the 4b pi and falcon pi cap. So, do I need to install the pi OS image and the FPP files to the SD card, or just the FPP file. I installed the pi OS and the pi operates, not sure what's next. I know I need to download the FPP to the SD card. Do I need both?
Thanks
Tom

Sent from my SM-G991U using Tapatalk

[algerdes]

The OS for the FPP is built into FPP.