Dec 27, 2011 How To Program Christmas Lights To Music. Getting your lights to dance to pre-determined music is pretty simple in concept, but will take some amount of learning for anyone new to it and a lot of time for just about anyone. That may sound discouraging, but the end result may well be worth all the trouble.
Are you going to decorate for Christmas? I moved into our house in June 2015 with my wife and baby twin girls. Key Decisions born from a PLC ProgrammerIn hindsight the following decisions proved key to pulling this off:.
Using 12v based lights yields lower currents (vs 5v lights). This made for far easier power distribution. 5v is the alternative which purists say provide a better quality of light to the eye. For me it was not worth the extra wiring, fusing, and planning. This allowed me to keep the current on all strings below 5 Amps, meaning I could use the native fusing/distribution on the controllers. No special design or wiring required. I bought all my lights with 18awg wire instead of 20 or 22awg which is common.
Larger gauge wire means lower resistance which means less voltage drop. Voltage drop can be annoying, it can causes flickering and/or color errors and can require a ton of time to troubleshoot because it can affect the power and/or serial buses concurrently. By August I was burning out with many problems and not enough time, I made two crucial pivots:. I switched to a higher quality controller which substantially reduced my configuration time and lessened voltage drop issues. Is a reliable and well-supported controller with native functionality to integrate with Falcon Player.
I was using a “E682” previously and found mine flaky. Planning for the wiring was getting impractically difficult. Intuition told me my approach must be wrong. I was spending a ton of time with Sketch3D trying to figure out how far each 50 light string would get on my house.
As a hail mary I did a 1 hour consulting call with. Breakthrough, I was playing the wrong game. Instead I cut the light strings as needed to make custom fit strings for each house segment. It's madness otherwise, imagine trying to design, and later install, an irrigation system without being able to cut the 8ft PVC pipes. I decided to use for splicing (vs.
Traditional soldering). While I wouldn't use them in a plant floor, they have been convenient and reliable here. From the start of design I maintained maps for the DMX addresses, controller port assignments, and current load per power supply. This is comparable to a master tag map and I/O list for an industrial system. Being organized saved a ton of time throughout the year. I used Evernote to maintain to do lists, at times there were 100s of tasks (to buy, to fix, to test, to learn, to install etc.).
I tested, then tested, followed by testing, then tested some more. I knew “year 1 startup” would have countless unplanned issues (it did) and there wouldn't be time to work out basic quality mistakes.Startup and FinaleI took off the entire week of Thanksgiving for good measure. I ran into flickering issues, accidentally taught one of my two year olds a profanity, but by Thanksgiving day IT WORKED! The visual is stunning – video of any quality does not capture the brightness and fidelity. By December I had witnessed families dancing in my drive way, which happens to this day.This video is my favorite sequence, which you may notice was the song in my proof of concept.
I spent 100 hours sequencing this song, down to timing the swell of each bass drum hit. No it doesn't have to take that long, but I was obsessive with experimenting and detail.TakeawaysPerforming project debriefs substantially accelerates the value of experience, for individuals and teams. I make them routine events where I work. I ended up with a three page debrief for my “year 1” light show, and have done one every year since (e.g. What went right, what went wrong, key lessons learned).My PLC programming and startup background was instrumental.
Many of the software and control architecture concepts new enthusiasts struggle with the most I was able to work through relatively quickly. Maintaining a “” (see image) got me through countless challenges and mistakes. By August I was ready to quit and had to lean on growth mindset self-talk to manage my motivation cycles and press on.The community and tools available for this hobby craft are unbelievable. The folks behind Vixen, xLights, Falcon do amazing work. It's hard to believe how modern, functional, stable, and reliable these (mostly) free tools are.The key to getting a good look is equidistant spacing of the lights.My style isn't for everyone. There are puzzled looks and rapid drive-bys, but I also see faces of wonder.
I even saw square dancing once. I still watch the shows all the time.
Like an industrial application, I remain fascinated seeing my work coordinate the behavior of individual components to manipulate the physical world as a system. I bet you can relate.CostI didn't track costs real well, and probably spent 50% more than needed IF I knew what I was doing the first time. I'm guessing $2,500 for what you see.
There are probably easier ways to do it, but if you're set on using a PLC you can probably tie an audio feed to a 0-10V analog input and read the beat of the music. To go a little further you can probably use a speaker crossover and separate the highs and lows, and feed that into two inputs so you could control one set of lights to the high frequency sounds, and others to the lows. You're going to want to keep the program as simple as possible to keep the scan time really low to make this work well.
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