New to Falcon> LOR/E682 and more

[RalphA]

I have been reading the forums for the last week or so and researched my questions. Now for my first post on this forum, I would like to ask the veterans, if what i have leaned is correct before I begin and find out half way I was wrong.


My goal is to switch from LOR to Xlights, add Falcon boards from here on. I will still use my current E682's. Run the whole thing with the Falcon PI player, but want to retain the ability to run LOR controllers in LOR mode to keep the shimmer and twinkle effects. (If I understand correctly, xlights only allows controll of 96 LOR channels in LOR mode)




Current software, LOR Advanced with Superstar.


Current hardware; 40 LOR CTB16PC (640 channels),
                              17 LOR CCR's
                              14 LOR CCB's
                              4   LOR CCP's
[size=78%]                                        6   San Device E682's[/size]
                              2   Holiday Coro AntiDongles (running all Dumb DMX lights)
                              several DMX controlled devices strobes, floggers, LED rotating heads.


My questions.  1 Can the LOR CCR's/CCB's run in DMX mode?


                        2, Is there a way to run all the above with the the Falcon PI player, and keep the LOR controllers in native state to retain                           the shimmer and twinkle effects?     
           
                        3, If what I read I understand correctly, I can not run any of the LOR controllers with XLights/Falcon PI unless they are                           in DMX mode. Thereby losing some of the effects.


                        4, If I do run the Falcon boards, it looks like I can do away with the Holiday Coro Dongles, correct?


Thank you for looking at the above and helping me with the learning curve. I like what I see in the Falcon boards as well as Xlights.  Just hard to let go of a few things that I have been doing for 10 years, since I started this addictive hobby!  Thanks for all your input!!


Ralph

[jem5136]

Ralph,


I cannot answer all of the questions but I can answer a few regarding LOR and xLights. Based on my experience with xLights you cannot run LOR with the LOR protocol (native state). Yes xLights does have the option to run LOR protocol, however there are some downfalls. This past year I wanted to use xLights to run the show. I was using the USB Booster adapter wanting to run 18 LOR controllers (works well with LOR suite). However, after doing a lot of testing with the controllers and xLights I found that I was only able to use 32 channels per LOR network in xLights, anything more than 32 channels and all the LOR controllers would lag BIG TIME. So I tried setting up multiple networks, using multiple USB adapters, all set for 32 channels per network, and it seemed to work ok, however it is a huge hassle having to do it this way. So in the end I only ran 2 LOR controllers with a single adapter and the rest were in DMX mode.


Now, when you're running LOR in DMX mode, you do loose the shimmer and twinkle effect, however that is where xLights makes up for you a little. xLights has twinkle and shimmer effects that you can use that look very similar to LOR.

[RalphA]

Thank you for that information Jem, very helpful!

[Emuney18]

Ralph,


I cannot answer all of the questions but I can answer a few regarding LOR and xLights. Based on my experience with xLights you cannot run LOR with the LOR protocol (native state). Yes xLights does have the option to run LOR protocol, however there are some downfalls. This past year I wanted to use xLights to run the show. I was using the USB Booster adapter wanting to run 18 LOR controllers (works well with LOR suite). However, after doing a lot of testing with the controllers and xLights I found that I was only able to use 32 channels per LOR network in xLights, anything more than 32 channels and all the LOR controllers would lag BIG TIME. So I tried setting up multiple networks, using multiple USB adapters, all set for 32 channels per network, and it seemed to work ok, however it is a huge hassle having to do it this way. So in the end I only ran 2 LOR controllers with a single adapter and the rest were in DMX mode.


Now, when you're running LOR in DMX mode, you do loose the shimmer and twinkle effect, however that is where xLights makes up for you a little. xLights has twinkle and shimmer effects that you can use that look very similar to LOR.

I ran 48 channels in LOR mode on 4 controllers daisy chained and it worked fine.  I used the USB super speed adaptor.  I had about 100 feet of cat5 between each box wrapping around my house.  I don't know what the max number of channels you could run would be. We learned that if you don't make a dummy sequence to start the night where it tells the LOR to turn on then off, then they sometimes don't work correctly.

Falcon controllers output DMX and the LOR protocol as well as others.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[RalphA]

Thank you, Emuney18.  I see in XLights you can control up to 96 LOR channels in native state. The Falcon has 4 DMX outputs.  I assume that each will handle one universe, but cant find that information as of yet.  I just not sure about my channel count with all my CCR's and CCB's in play.


Thanks for the help and advice!

[Emuney18]

Thank you, Emuney18.  I see in XLights you can control up to 96 LOR channels in native state. The Falcon has 4 DMX outputs.  I assume that each will handle one universe, but cant find that information as of yet.  I just not sure about my channel count with all my CCR's and CCB's in play.


Thanks for the help and advice!

Is that 96 per dongle or total?  I never looked that far into it since I had a max of 60.  I think your right about the 1 DMX universe per output. 


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[RalphA]

Good question, I am learning all this for as a newbie to Xlights and falcon.  When you open Xlights, select "add USB", open USB set up/select LOR in the top left select drop down box. Once you do that it reads, Max 96 channels at 11250 baud.  It also states LOR controllers to any LOR Dongle.  Not sure if you can run multiple LOR dongles, or if you really should.

[Emuney18]

Good question, I am learning all this for as a newbie to Xlights and falcon.  When you open Xlights, select "add USB", open USB set up/select LOR in the top left select drop down box. Once you do that it reads, Max 96 channels at 11250 baud.  It also states LOR controllers to any LOR Dongle.  Not sure if you can run multiple LOR dongles, or if you really should.

You can run 2 Pi's each with a LOR dongle because I did it during testing last year.  You should post the channel limit question on the Xlights forum or facebook page, you'll probably have better luck.


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[RalphA]

You can run 2 Pi's each with a LOR dongle because I did it during testing last year.  You should post the channel limit question on the Xlights forum or facebook page, you'll probably have better luck.




Thanks I will do so!

[jem5136]

Ralph,


I cannot answer all of the questions but I can answer a few regarding LOR and xLights. Based on my experience with xLights you cannot run LOR with the LOR protocol (native state). Yes xLights does have the option to run LOR protocol, however there are some downfalls. This past year I wanted to use xLights to run the show. I was using the USB Booster adapter wanting to run 18 LOR controllers (works well with LOR suite). However, after doing a lot of testing with the controllers and xLights I found that I was only able to use 32 channels per LOR network in xLights, anything more than 32 channels and all the LOR controllers would lag BIG TIME. So I tried setting up multiple networks, using multiple USB adapters, all set for 32 channels per network, and it seemed to work ok, however it is a huge hassle having to do it this way. So in the end I only ran 2 LOR controllers with a single adapter and the rest were in DMX mode.


Now, when you're running LOR in DMX mode, you do loose the shimmer and twinkle effect, however that is where xLights makes up for you a little. xLights has twinkle and shimmer effects that you can use that look very similar to LOR.

I ran 48 channels in LOR mode on 4 controllers daisy chained and it worked fine.  I used the USB super speed adaptor.  I had about 100 feet of cat5 between each box wrapping around my house.  I don't know what the max number of channels you could run would be. We learned that if you don't make a dummy sequence to start the night where it tells the LOR to turn on then off, then they sometimes don't work correctly.

Falcon controllers output DMX and the LOR protocol as well as others.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Hmm Interesting. I tested and tested and tested and the best I could do is get 32 channels at bit rate of 115200. I tested with the booster adapter as well as the regular USB adapter with no noticeable difference. If I set up the channels to be anything more than 32 (even at 33 channels) I would get lag.


Has anyone tired using the LOR protocol from the Falcon controller? I'm interested to see what kind of results it has tested. It may be a game changer for my display if I don't have to try to get all my LOR controllers to run in DMX mode this season (a pain in the butt last year, I ended up giving up in the end because I couldn't get all of them to run in DMX mode).