What is the second best way to get rid of pixel gap errors?

[JonD]

My display is full of pixel gaps that I want to keep.  For example, I have several mini trees that take 98 pixels.  I used a standard 100ct light string, and instead if cutting the two extra pixels off, I left them there.  I have stars that go on top of the minitrees.  Xlights and the Falcon controllers moan about the 2 extra pixels every time I do a sequence check.  I also have 48ct snowflakes that I used a 50ct string, and 99ct candy canes, that use a 100ct string.  I know I should just cut the extra few off, but it seems like a lot of work for two pixels.

Is there a way to leave the extra pixels, and not have xlights and falcon have a stroke warning me about the gaps?  Maybe add null pixels?  I guess I like the warning in general, but would like to whitelist the ones I deem acceptable.

[dkulp]

Falcon v4 and FPP based controllers support "nulls at end".  Thus, you could set the string to 98 pixels with 2 end null pixels and not have any extra channels being used.    Not all controllers support that though.     In general, if I know there will be extra pixels, I wire in reverse so that the extra pixels are at the beginning and can then be considered normal null pixels.

[JonD]

Thanks Daniel!  I have a few Falcon v4s, but the majority are Falcon v3s.

It sounds like the null pixels should be in front.  That is not going to be ideal for the minitrees at this point, but could I adjust the stars instead?  Instead of starting the 20 pixel minitree star at channel 301, start a 22 pixel minitree star, at channel 295, and add 2 null pixels?  Would making the below before/after changes get rid of the minitree warnings?

You cannot view this attachment.You cannot view this attachment.

[k6ccc]

I have a similar situation.  I have 17 roses in front of a 60 foot long wall.  There is a total of four 5M strips of smart strip in front of the roses that light up the roses and the wall behind the roses.  Each rose is treated as a single "pixel" although it's really several feet of strip for each pixel.  Between roses 9 and 10 is a smart differential receiver that drives these strips, so one string of two 5M strips runs left for roses 1 to 9, and a second string of two 5M strips runs right to drive roses 10 - 17.  I have each rose set as a Virtual String. and can therefore easily set the number of null pixels required to get the lit portion of the strip centered in front of each rose.  Does this help?  Photo taken on Valentines day when I lit the yard red, white, and pink.
This is being driven by a F4v3 with the two port expansion board that is driving the smart diff. receiver.

[JonD]

Does this help?

Any feedback is helpful, but this is happening in xlights before it even heads toward the controller.  I have 40 or more of these props with extra pixels, and have to go through a couple pages of errors.  At the time I set them up I only had minitrees without stars, but once the wife gets involved, the next year we have stars all of sudden.  The errors are not a huge deal, but also looking to convert away from E1.31 next season, and figured I may need to clean these up before migrating to another protocol.  I am sure there are several ways to do this, but was hoping someone in the know would bump me in the correct direction.

[k6ccc]

As you know, I don't use xLights, so no help there.  The way I'm doing it, the Show Player does not even know about the gaps.  The 17 roses are simply 51 channels that are sent off to the controller.

[JonD]

That is more or less how it is working now, but the check sequence utility aggressively looks for empty spaces and complains when there are 6 missing channels between this light and that one. (times 40+ props)  There are several ways to cheat the system, but eventually xlights will detect something is not right and warn you about it.

[jnealand]

At this point you have probably spent more time looking at gap messages and posting online than it woud have taken you to just expand your stash of repair pixels.  Been there done that and finally just cut them off.

[JonD]

The above print screens resolved the issue, except I did not need to change the star pixel count.  Instead of bumping up the star count to 22, it was left at 20.  The null pixels themselves added to the string count.

Xlights seems to be happy now and no more errors!

Thanks everyone!!!!