Good luck and let me know how it goes!

Great question…You could use PVC for the base bar, however, there’s a lot of force on the T’s due to the bent PVC. So that base bar needs to be stiff enough to counter act the force of the PVC arch trying to straighten itself out. EMT is much more rigid, so it’s much better at maintaining the shape without bending. Until the curved PVC piece completely reshapes and relaxes in its curved state, a PVC base will likely also bend outwards as well due to the forces applied to it at the Tees. If you’re able to get the curved PVC piece to reshape and relax more readily to where it’s not trying to straighten out and bend the lower bar, then a PVC base could work.

The fusing size can be debated. I use 25A fuses between the power supply and the F16 board. However, I believe each power input to the board is rated for 20A. That rating should be verified but I’ve not ever had any issue with the setup. After running a bunch of tests with real world pixels, rarely will any single output draw anywhere near 5A. So, the possibility of driving all outputs at the max is highly unlikely. The 5A board fuses and 25A fuse from the power supply are really there to cut power should there be a short somewhere. I’ve had 5A fuses go but never the 25A power supply fuse. Good luck!

@dman3166, the 1 Raspberry Pi is connected to the two Falcon controllers via a standard Ethernet switch, as the data from the Pi to the falcons is standard IP Ethernet data. The falcon’s have their own static IPs which are also defined in xlights.

I don’t know the weight exactly, but they are relatively light. The majority of the weight is the weight of the PVC. So, I’d guess the single windows are a couple of pounds or so. The frames with the wooden support crossbar are a little heavier, maybe another pound or two more.

@stolionly, I did not create the original sequence. I mapped and tweaked the sequence to work with the Vine Lights display setup. The original was done by Christmas Runaway. Here's a link to the original sequence video. kzbin.info/www/bejne/l4rah3ivgdmjoM0

Congrats on making it so far with your custom window props! The good thing about the software programming in xlights is that it can be redone, if needed. So, no harm no foul. Thanks for the comment, and I’m glad you figured out that piece!

@rc240zxt, yes, you should connect the DC grounds of those power supplies. If you don’t, the ground is used as reference for the data signal and if the ground level jumps when power injecting, it could corrupt the data signal.

@@NiFamilyLights Thank you, I will connect the two power supply Dc Ground together.

@gixster92, thanks for the comment and happy to hear that the channel has been useful for you! For the pixel testing videos, I’m interacting with my computer directly with the pixel controller. In my case, I’ve got the Falcon F16v3 web page up. The Falcon controller is set to drive the number of pixels being tested. Within the interface, you can dynamically adjust the output brightness levels. Most other pixel controllers have this feature as well. When programming pixels for the show, I manually have set my controller to the desired pixel output brightness, which for me is 30%. Back when I started, that setting wasn’t programmable in xlights. Nowadays, you can set that value within the layout tab in xlights then have xlights send the configuration to your controller. Good luck and welcome to the hobby!

Thanks for the comment and for sharing that dual data seed pixels suffer data integrity issues over long runs compared to normal seed pixels. I wonder if the same goes with dual data regular pixels. If I get my hands on any, I’ll see if my experience is the same as yours.

Thanks for the comment and glad to hear that all the videos have been useful. Regarding your question, the pigtails used in the controller builds were purchased from the vendors where I also ordered my pixels. You should be able to source those female connectors with your specific connector end (Ray Wu, X-Connect, etc) from most any pixel vendor companies. They are typically 14” to 18” long and work great. Best of luck through your transition from tradition lights to pixels!

Thanks for the comment and so glad that this vid helped you!

Wow, what a story. Thanks for sharing! Happy to hear that this video saved you so much time and effort!

Love the puns, keep them coming!

Thanks for the comment and question. Yes, you could balance power with larger props and add power injection as well. This video addresses that very question. m.kzbin.info/www/bejne/eZqYXmOZZZx7jtU

Glad the tip helped! 8’ deep, wow.

I would recommend putting the F-Amp after power injecting. The improved power baseline will allow the the F-Amp to do its best to boost and cleanup the signal as much as possible. If you do it before the power injection point and the voltage has decreased too much, the F-Amp can only do so much to create a solid signal. That said, if the data coming in is already poor, the F-Amp will not be able to remove all the noise. When I chain props with lengths between runs, I recommend power injecting and boosting the signal before a length of run to the next prop. Best of luck.

Glad it was helpful!

Hi and thanks for writing in. From your description of events, I would think that the lights are completely fine. The connection from the ESPixel stick may not be making a great connection if as you say, the first pixel used to blink. I would re-check your connection from the ESPixel stick to the seed pixels.

The female plugs are the ones with the power, just like your home outlets. The male plugs are the beginning of your lights which are getting the power from the female end. Hopefully that helps you to keep them straight in your mind.

@gritz1701 Thanks for the question. My setup is pretty straightforward. I use a Pi 3B+ running FPP to run the show. It’s hard wire connected via a network switch on a dedicated show network to the F16v3 and the two P10 panel setups. The P10 panels are each running a Beagle Bone Black with an octoscroller cape, connected to the 36 P10 panels. I don’t have a video on it (yet) as it’s pretty standard, and there are many videos out there showing how to setup and use FPP. Please let me know if you have other questions.

Thanks for the comment Dale. The F-Amp used in this video is a Falcon product from PixelController. pixelcontroller.com/store/accessories/54-famp-xconnect.html

@NiFamilyLights thankyou for getting back to me. I really appreciate it. I have 5 of them on order. I will be checking out more of your videos to try and get a light show organized. Dale

From a physical setup, they are all identical. Within xlights, the channel numbering will follow how you have them laid out in the layout tab. If you created one mini tree then copied and pasted the rest, their channel numbers will be consecutive.

In my show, I do chain 6 of them off of a single controller output with power injection after every two mini trees. You can see how I do that in the “How-To - Chain Pixel Props Like a Champ” video.