Two rings to rule them all

Here are the 6 foot metal rings I had custom bent for the passenger area of the Mothership. Finally on the launch pad.

Only took 3 weeks to get done.

Controller #1 of 5 800 individual WS8211 RGB Pixels from Bob Dow on Vimeo.

Here are 800 of the lights on 16 strings of 50 on the first controller box. They are not lined up in a grid yet on purpose, this is a loose test just to see what they will look like spread out. The answer? fun! My neighbor was watching me his deck and just sort of slowly shook his head.

Transformation- How a car begins its transformation into a mutant vehicle

Glass removal.

 Door and trunk removal.

 Roof removal.

 One part becomes two.

Separation.

 Happy neighbors.

Test of the first 800 lights

Madrix and E682 controller sound reactive test from Bob Dow on Vimeo.

Pushing forward on the Lighting Controllers

My soldering skills are growing and my knowledge of the DMX lighting protocol is inching forward.

Pictured are the first part of the required components:

Router
CG 1500 Cable Box Enclosure
5V 60Amp Power Supply
SANDevices e682 Controller
WS2811 Pixel Strings  (2 are shown connected)
Laptop for configuration and to run Madrix (the lighting software)
My cat, Mithras... who has not been very helpful

There will be 5 of these boxes on the mothership, each one will control 16 strings of pixels.


What I have learned about the controllers and DMX

The pixel strings are 50 pixels each, Each controller can control 6 DMX Universes

We will be using 5 controllers and 80 strings of 50 lights... for a total of 4000 individually addressable pixels.

DMX address assignment for the controller is a 3 step process.

1. Configure Madrix by assigning pixels to specific channels an DMX Universes

2. Assign each socket on the controller (in our case, clusters of 4 strings) to matching DMX Universes in Madrix. (slightly tedious because it's done via command line, but I'm patient)

3. Map the channels within the sockets to the pixel strings.