Vcs 2021 - Pixie Setup And Configuration

All right, hello, everyone and thank you for being a part of the 2021 virtual christmas summit, sponsored by boscoyo studio. All of the presentations in this room are specifically sponsored by light arama. Our next presentation is pixi setup and configuration by j.r dibble, who you've probably seen all over the lighterama forums. Answering questions during this presentation. Please do not unmute yourself or start your video you're welcome to use the chat to ask relevant questions about the presentation since other attendees or the hosts might be able to answer your question. But please save your questions directed at the presenter for the end of the session during the q. A at that point, you'll be allowed to unmute yourself and ask questions or you can just put them in chat. Thank you so much for attending and i will turn it over to jr. Thank you aubry hello, everybody. My name is jr uh from the forums drw all new by jr - probably there's more people here than what i thought um and what we're gon na do - and this is just gon na be powerpoint. Uh is just basically setting up your pixie from the box to when you get to the point where you can actually go to either the sequence editor or sequencer um. So we will get started here and the configuration so like. I was just saying you get a basic understanding of how to set up and configure the light aroma, pixy series controllers from box to lights. Now you can also use this for other pixel controllers um, some of the stuff. We can apply it to all pixie controllers and, like i was just saying, the basic understanding of how to configure almost every manufacturer of non-dmx e131 pixel controllers, and i am from alabama. I don't have a banjo on my knee, though my son's got, one uh been doing something uh for christmas lights for a long time, i retired from the army, and basically i started out with the old mr christmases box. Um got with the lighter rama could not figure out how to use it. Nutcracker uh had one singing face: couldn't figure out how to make him sing and came this way and finally found the lr forums and got steered in the right direction. Most of you know. I sequence almost all year long and i don't know how to get back to the alabama screen and i have been helping everyone who asked me or needs help. Uh configure their pixi series controller since uh lor offered me two beta tests for them in 2017 and i kind of ran with it. I was the kind of person that said no to pixels i'll, never have a pixel, and then they came up with this affordable. Pixie, 16 and uh. I thought when i got it for beta testing, it would be a controller in a box. I just connect lights. How wrong? I was. It was just a card and i had to build it out so far. I'Ve built well over 100 pixie controllers for myself and other people and, of course my username on the forums is dibble jr and after all this, this is going to be so brief, um kind of a dry subject. If you have other questions, you can hit me up on a private message me and uh. I do phone calls and face time and all this good stuff to help her okay. So here here's where we're gon na get to the nuts and bolts the important stuff you're going to need. Okay, the first thing you're going to need. If you want to get started with a light, arama pixie controller is the pro license: okay required, because you have to use it with the enhanced networking. Okay and that's right here, elar is enhanced. Light aroma, high speed network, okay. What i discovered during during beta testing and helping others was that i didn't need the reddit adapter, and i found this out just by accident uh. You know when people would buy the lightorama pixie controller, they didn't know about needing the red adapter, so they would get the black and when they would call for help uh. The first thing i would say: do you have a red adapter? No, we have a black adapter, so we tried the black and found that for basic testing. The black was all right when it came down to running the show. In most cases, you had to have the red adapter uh, pretty much required at in the beginning. Later. On we used to say it required now, they've changed in the manual. I believe it is recommend for, but i still say that for a show to be successful with the pixie controller involved, you need to definitely have the red adapter. Okay. So once you get your red adapter connected to your computer, to run the show or to just to set the the uh unit id each pix, pixie controller will come from light arama with the unit id set one. That'S all dip switches off, except for the first dip switch, will be on and that's unit id of one okay um. I do okay, so once you connect that you, when you first plug it in the the led indicator, should flash just a steady flash. It'S not showing any data: okay, uh! Once you do a refresh i'm on the slide, once you do a refresh on that uh if it does not find a controller okay and if you see unknown device uh, i just found out this two weeks ago and that's why this got here. I never had that problem before without having to do a firmware, update uh. We did a firmware update for a gentleman. I was helping out a couple weeks ago that did not work so after troubleshooting could not get that control over work as it was supposed to uh, he did a help desk um ticket and whoever helped him up help. This ticket said just put the latest software light: aroma s4 software on he updated his software as instructed, and everything on the controller worked fine after that. So that was the first time i had seen that usually it was just a firmware update. So i kind of just threw this on the slide. Okay, if, if you have to have version 4.4.0 or newer, to be able to use a pixie controller without that the hardware utility will not recognize a pixie of a pixie controller, it's just not built into the heart utility yet prior to 4.4.0. Okay! So this as you buy it, if you buy just the board itself, this is what you're going to get from lighterop. If you buy the uh pre-assembled, then of course it's going to be the same thing. It'S just going to be all put together for you, but other than that. This is what you get you get this is i always get this question. Do i have to buy the green terminal lux? No, they come in the box, so you'll get the screwdriver. You get extra fuses, you'll get a couple of jumpers, and then you get your number of terminals. I think they give you an extra there's five here, that's a four so looks like they give you one extra okay, and this is setting the unit id to one. This is how it come. This is how it comes from light. Arama jump, uh dip switch, eight is in the on position. Everything else is off and there's a long funny story to that. Uh that i've told a lot of the folks here about dip switches, but number eight is always on the first thing. I recommend - and this is really good advice, especially for anyone who doesn't want to constantly open up their controller. That may have their controllers like. I have a in my attic. I don't want to go up into my attic to set a unit id. So the first thing i recommend is turn this one off. That puts it where you control it all in the heart tilt, you will assign the unit id in the retailer. So this is where i cover that dip switches. Uh. If you have an older pixie controller version, one version two, i believe, do not have the dip switches. Okay. So if you don't, if you have a pixie 16, you don't have dip switches, you have no choice, made it real easy for me uh to learn this. I didn't have any choice. I said that our utility, just like a regular ac controller, give it the unit id and be done with it: okay, the black jumper, okay, the black jumper, you get you get a letter. I i've only seen it when i built them for somebody and they send them to me. But the letter tells you what to do and when to use that black jumper um you have to, and i at one point light a rama stopped putting in the beginning. They were including the black jumper already installed on the controller uh. I'M not sure why i can only ask. I can only guess that there was some people that were burning up their controllers by plugging them directly to the computer without the rs485 high speed or an adapter, and they were burning up their comp chip. That is just my opinion of why they no longer put that, but in order to use this board downstream uh in the middle of your controllers, you will have to put that that jumper um on jp 4. Okay, so you can get that to open up and you can send data on down the line, and this is the reset button. So a lot of people have a problem with doing a reset. They don't actually do a reset and, and it's it's it can be a little confusing and sometimes the freehand story a reset on these things, depending on where it is so the correct procedure to do the reset on this. If things go wrong and you can't get it to operate correctly, the first thing to do is try to reset you have to push it push and hold. The white button here continue continue to push and hold that button and unplug the power continuing to push the button. I usually wait about 15 seconds and i plug it back in okay and then once you plug it back in and it starts throwing a really fast blink flash, then you can release the white button and that should be a factory reset uh, for whatever reason, when You do this factory reset, it does not reset the unit id. So if you had set it up to unit idea five - and you do a factor reset, then it keeps that unit id of five there. Okay and it should, as soon as you plug it in it, should um flash okay. So here we get to the nuts and bolts configuration okay. So you you open up your hardware utility s4 s5. The our utility is the same uh clicking on the control panel. The red light bulb in your system, tray or, if you don't have it in your system, tray you go to your apps folder and you go under light around my folder and select it and now you're going to plug you've. Already, i'm assuming you already have your rs485 adapter plugged in to your computer. You will plug your pixie controller into your adapter. Okay and one of them important note, never connect it directly to your computer com port. If you do, you will release the mat, what they call the magic smoke. I'Ve never seen smoke, but i've smelled it and you will uh burn up more than likely. It will just burn up comp chip. Okay, so there we go again make sure you have that adapter plugged in and hopefully you've assigned that adapter to the correct power port uh. The other thing i always say i've had it happen to me. Never ever ever ever. You know if, if everything is going bad for you and it's going to be tempting, never ever ever hit the auto configure com port button. If you have a lot of com ports that are already assigned, i had a mistake with 13 of them and i had something fall on my computer and it just happened. The mash button i lost all of them. I think one of the members here i think jim helped me solve it. Dimmer phil helped me solve my mysteries after that, and did i say never and if you do you'll be like me, you'll be in panic mode. You chase your tail, trying to figure out how and why uh that your your controllers aren't coming with any com. Ports, com, ports have been reassigned and it took me. I said six hours here, that's a low number more like a whole day to figure out how to do it before i ask for help. Okay, next we're gon na go on to the harvard utility in assigning the unit id on the right side of the hardware utility and sure you are selecting the correct com port. Your pixie is connected to okay. That is actually the left all right. That'S actually the left-hand side, i'm sorry, folks that should say left uh. The com port is on the left side over here of the hour utility. It was either com 3 count 4 all the way down whatever. However many com ports - you have so i'm sorry about that pro - that little mistake there top left. So this is this is uh wrong here. This should be right. Uh ensure your max unit id is set to at least the number of ports. On your controller. 4. 8 or 16., so that would be on the right hand, side up here, very top corner. You select their your max unit id uh. You have to remember that a pixie will use the number of unit ids as it has in ports. So if you're just using a pixi 16, you have to have 16 at least 16 being your max number of unit ids. Do you have five there? It'S not going to find that fixed 16.. You have one there, it's not going to find it. If you have other controllers, you have to ensure that you add 16 at least 16 to them. Okay, uh - this is just a sidebar here, just confuses a lot of people. It'S such an easy controller to use. There'S a lot of a lot of members are intimidated when it comes to assigning the unit ids, but they use a hexadecimal system for numbering, so it won't go one through 16.. That happened to me when i first started with the pixi i made my ccr tree named it one through sixteen and the biz. I had nine uh ports showing lights and the viz. I had nothing and my good old friend jim mr wells k6. Ccc helped me out, and we figured that out uh how why that was happening, and he actually popped me this hexadecimal number scale. So any number after 9 will be followed with a alphanumeric number, so after nine, then it would be instead of ten, it's zero. A zero b, zero c zero b, zero e, zero, f and then it'll start back, so the next one will be ten all the way to 19 and we'll do that again. Okay, so, like i said, make your unit id high enough that it'll find it, and i i'll just bring this up. It happened to me last night, i'm repairing tom of pixie 16 that someone sent me had a bag tom chip in it i repaired it, and when we were on the telephone i had thought. I had asked him to set the dip switches to all off and when i got it, i just you know had him on the phone last night, i replaced the com chip and everything was going good and i go to our utility and i could not find The unit id it would not find it. I got to looking at it with the magnifying glass and it was set for 52. So once i discovered that, then everything so you know that happens. Okay, so once you have that all set everything is good. You'Ll go up in the middle, the upper center of the screen, and you will select the refresh button. Okay and, at that time, the status light if it was blinking should turn solid. Everything is working and you hit, and you have everything connected - got a big data. Cable, everything is working, then that light should stay solid and, depending on how many max unit id is the length of time it'll take okay and when it, if it finds, if you're successful in finding the uh pixie it'll, give you the unit id the device type. Will say, pixy24816 and it'll give you the firmware first up there if you get that um unknown device or if you get unit 5 unknown device with bunch of question marks or something that's. What my earlier comment was geared toward uh put the latest version on before you move on, so here it goes uh you just have to add the latest bird and that should solve it in in the case we had a couple weeks ago. It'S it cleared everything up. Okay, if you get no devices found, you need to check all of your cables. Make sure you got good cables, make sure you got good connections. Okay and uh, like i said, if you get the no devices down and you keep getting the no devices down uh you can, you can submit a help desk ticket and, depending on the time of year, love my love, my friends at lor uh. Depending on what time of year, it might take a minute to get a reply or you can reach out to me uh and we can figure it out. So i say that here uh not to take away from them, but they get swamped. You know and and i i help a lot of people - i don't know how many out here are watching this, but i help a lot of folks uh but each day matter of fact, so you know unit id bad. You know place plus install the latest software and here's a list of super interesting items. I don't know where that came from okay, so once the hardware utility discovers your unit id your device type firmware version, you are now ready to set new guide. Okay, oh even if you didn't take my advice either or setting the dip switches, all off. Okay, you will find from the factory found one unit unit zero, one uh pixie just say: 16 firmware 1.09. I think that's the latest firmware okay to change the unit id to something other than one. You have to go to the bottom left-hand corner of the screen and it'll be way down here: uh in the heart utility and you're gon na select the old unit id chain, okay and then right under that there's a place that says new unit id and select Enter and it takes like not even a blink okay, so the next after that, once you have all that set the next thing, you want to check your color order uh. There is one step that that i go in between there and it's on one. It'S on another slide, probably the next slide, but as soon as i reset the unit id, what i will do to make sure everything is good. I will exit out of the hard utility close it out, reopen the heart utility and do a quick refresh and ensure that i find the unit id i just assigned it's going to be coming up on the slide. I just thought: i'd throw that out there now and now we're going to go to setting the pixel type pixel order, number of pixels and some other additional settings. Okay. So if you're on the the main um our utility page, when you first open it up, it's going to be the test page, i believe, and in the center of that you'll see the configuration tab so at the bottom center. So you you'll hit the configuration tab and about the same place on the next box that pops up you'll see the cosmic color pixie configuration tab, and the next screen is where you will set the pixel type from the drop down menu. Color order number of pixels per report and if you have, and what set controller for the light aroma scene quartet is also done on the same screen. Okay, so with those parameters once you've finished setting them, you save them, you receive the message. Settings have been updated or similar uh. You are ready now at that time now you're ready to test your color order and your pixels. If you have hopefully have a pixel test - and i only use the personally - i only use pixel um the hardware utility pixel testing for color order, correction, nothing else uh! I will just uh go through the screen. There'S a number of ports. Uh select all ports select red hit test all on. If it's red i go to to uh green test. If it's green, i'm good and then i go to blue and if it's good at any time, if one of them colors is wrong. I'Ll go back to the uh, the ccr pixie setup screen and change the color order until you get it right uh. Sometimes you have to pay attention because i know a lot of people are buying the chinese, pixels and sometimes they'll, say rgb color order and you put you don't check them. I know been there. I got something that said: rgb color order. I didn't check them put them outside spiderweb. I think brian spiderweb put it outside. It was wrong colorwork uh, so they got ripped off and put some replacements on there right away. But for my final testing like it says here, i create a dummy sequence uh. I have a video tutorial on the lidorama forums and it shows you how to build a how i build my just tessie sequence test it in the real world. So the next step, of course, in order to do the color test, you have to have at least one strip of pixels uh set at one port, and if you only have one strip you can test one port and skip down and just unconnect the green connector And just keep flopping back and forth with that until you get all 16 ports tested. Okay, your hardware utility screen should have returned to the original op screen, which is the test tab and sure the unit id is still showing at the top uh in the top center there and then right under there there's a big section: it'll show the circuits and Ports tests or you can select all there's a drop down menu on the right hand, center of the screen, and you can select all or you can do individual ports and, like i said before, you can skip port. So if you go every other port or whatever you want to do, you can select whatever port you want to test. If you, if you only have port 16 selected and you have port 16 has lights, and that is the only port. And you select all don't panic when you don't have lights in the first two minutes, because it's going to go through its pattern and then it eventually gets port 16.. So if you just forget to select port 16, that's what's gon na happen and you won't have lights. I'Ve got that question a couple times: don't have any lights once you have selected the ports or all ports select the options in the boxes below to select your test pad do colors. You can do shimmers and twinkles and chases, and i touched spaces on this before the color order is not right. You have to go back to the pixie configuration uh and uh select another color until you have your rgb color set right. Lighterama and most of the popular sellers all have the order, but there are some that do not okay, once the color order is correct and you're satisfied with that, you can now exit the heart utility and we're going to go into setting it up in the network Preferences - and this is where i said before - i always close down the harvard utility reopen our utility just to make sure the unit id is correct. Uh if it's correct, then you're 100 done with our utility. If you skip this step, this happened. If you skip the step uh, i always if, if it's someone i've helped, i always get a phone call. Jri uh, you know my unit id is not working uh. So if you skip this step, then there's a risk that you'll be either doing a help desk ticket or contacting you or whoever else is helping you okay. So now our utility is now closed. Next thing, you're gon na do is click on the control panel. We'Re gon na go to network preferences and sorry there's there's really no way to do this. I could have done a lot of this without having a controller set up uh you just can't get into these screens, okay and once you're in network preferences. If you've never been in the network preferences before it can be confusing, because you're going to be expect expecting to see some options that aren't there on the right hand, side, you may see simple mode. You see the simple mode, just click on simple mode. It'Ll. Take you to advanced mode and then you'll see the three tabs. Okay, you will see the three tabs there um light arama, dmx and miscellaneous, and for this pixi uh controller we will just concentrate on the light aroma tab. So you'll select, relatoramma. Okay, the you want to select the correct network from which you were just on in your hardware, utility or the network that you will be using to run the pixie controller. So some of you that have a lot of controllers or you have some older controllers - um. You won't be able to run a pixi 16 or a pixie device with just say a generation or two ac controller. That means you. You have two options: uh upgrade to gen 3 controllers or run a second network, so you may have a light. Arama network being um, you may have a light aroma network with com3 and a regular network, and you may have uh uh com, four being an aux, a okay, two networks, one to run the pixie controller and the other network to run any of your older or Anything that you don't want to run with fixing controller okay, so um most of you you'll get it you'll you'll see a screen come up or a pop-up and it'll it'll tell you that a lot of people only have one network. Okay, so you'll select the com port, the port, that you'll be used to configure the controller in the hardware utility, but in some cases, it'd be different. Like this discuss, you'll select the network speed for a pixie controller uh. This must be 500k. Okay, there's a lot of talk about 1000k. I'Ve never used 1000k. I don't see. I know that the pixie link has 1000k. I do have a pixie link, but for just the average pixie controller when you try to set that up in the network preferences, it's going to tell you that 1000k is reserved for the pixcon16 does not say on their pixie 16 at all, even in s5, even With all the updates still says, pic pixcon 16. 0. So i i still go by the price of 500k, all minor 500k. I have no problem um, i don't know if they're misreading the box or what, but it still says, pixcon, 16 and i'll leave that one alone from there. The next thing you want to do is, on the right hand, side of the com port that you've selected. You should see an enhanced box. The pixie controllers need to be ran under the e-lord, which is the lor enhance network. Okay. So you have to select that box. If you don't select that box, you have no lights on a pixie, you click apply, you'll, receive the two warnings, um network, speed, uh and then you'll have the enhanced mode warning you just all you have to do. You know you're going to be there they're a common warning, uh just click through to okay and that will set the pixie okay. So now your network settings are complete and as long as everything remains the same, your controller will be ready for show time. Now, i'm not going to go into how to add it uh it doesn't fall under the scope of the class of how to add it to s4 um for sequencing and, of course, s5 is a completely different animal uh. That would be based on your prop okay. So now it's ready to finalize and use it to create the test, sequence and um. Hopefully, at this point that you know how to create uh the chat, your channel config, you have to add it to your channel configuration and the same in s5. You have to add it to your preview. I i never use a default preview. I define a prop for it uh, even if it's just a custom prop, i i did find when i first started with s5 that if i did a default preview for just one single controller, all i had was a dot. I had one little teen dot. I could barely see it, so someone told me just create a prop. It doesn't matter what it is um. I just want to see it light up. So i know this was a dry subject. It'S not for everybody, it may be for you. If you have a pixie or you want to learn more about it or if you're going to go into the pixels just getting started, you want something easy. Nothing can be as easy as the pixie controllers, they're just intimidating. I think a lot of it is the user gets intimidated by the um hexadecimal numbering system and how it uses ports instead of channels. So an ac controller will have one unit id and have 16 channels where a pixie controller will have the number of unit ids. As the pixie device has so, if it's a 2 4 2, 4, 8 or 16 it'll have up to 16 unit ids um versus just the one unit id and and what a lot a lot of times, what happens, someone will add a pixie. They might get it right and then their next um controller, they add they said well, my pixies unit 5 i'll. Add another controller we'll make that six and uh now they've just created problems with their configuration, and i think in s5 you'll get an error anyway. It won't let you do anything with it until you clean that up. I think the next should be q. A questions i think you've got lots of questions. So if you go back up in the the chat, i think you'll be able to work your way through those no problem. I don't even think how to get to the chat. Let'S see huh, if you're sharing go up to the top of your screen, you should see a menu drop down where right here, 44.. Sorry, everybody, okay, let's see 44., i see some. I see someone was kind enough to say that i would always talk and yes um anybody. All you have to do is ask i've never refused to help anybody not taking any anything away from my friends, lor, just helping them out um. I don't know where i'm at now, if yeah feel free. If you have a good question, ask me just speak up, because i can't keep up with all the messages, so you can just unmute yourself and ask. I may have missed it, but did you go into changing the number of pixels from like 50 to 170 or whatever on the pixie controllers? I i did not. That was on the screen that would have been after the rgb color order. I don't know how i missed that um. That may be what happened to one of my slides where i got used there. This i had a duplicate slide uh. I did mean the touch bases on that, because that was the net the preparation to get into that screen. That was on there. So somehow i didn't, but yes, uh. Thank you for that uh und right under there it'll ask you how many pixels now that also, depending on what version of software you have, if you're on an older version of s4, but it's new enough to use a pixie controller, you will only get 50 or 100 of the last i knew the updated versions i don't know which um the first update will. Will let you now we'll ask you now exact number of pixels per. I think it's portland so and i don't know i i use s4 and i use s5 um, but i haven't kept up to date on s4, just because i'm using s54 now um. So you know sorry, i didn't uh. I didn't mean to skip that. That is a pretty uh, really really great question on that. Thank you. Do you know if the uh, the high speed, um converter piece there? Actually, the red unit will work with the uh link, lighters or it have to be hardwired. It can't get enough through the bandwidth. What do you mean the link wire? I got those wireless, the earlier wireless controllers that i cuz my computer inside goes by wireless to the to the outside systems, where you know controllers well anywhere that you have a black adapter. The red adapter will fit. I don't use the the l's, but if, if you need an adapter, the red adapter is backwards compatible, so the black adapter can be replaced great. Thank you for that answer. Um. I don't use an l, so i don't know about them. Is there anything else you have to do to make the red adapter work, because i've had one and even plugging it? You know plug it getting into my computer and then going straight to one of the newer controllers only a year or two old. It cannot find a controller. It just refuses to acknowledges anything on the other end of it, but does it find in the com port? It finds the com port. It tells me i've got a com port, but when i scan for a network it never comes back with anything i finally gave up on. It went back to the black ones, because i didn't have anything that critical that needed it. I was just trying to get into the game you saying the black would work, but the red one didn't correct, adapter. Okay, that's what i was beginning to wonder. Thank you and i know there's a lot of questions there. I'M still trying to catch up here but feel free to just ask yeah. I'Ve answered some of them that have popped up in the uh in the session here. Thank you is that uh don yeah. Thank you, sir uh. What'S a metal detector have any problem, speed or pixel of that one only for the advanced placements. I run my pixie 16, with only the advanced license. How'S that working - i i i don't i don't know. I see someone saying they're running their pixie 16, with only the advanced license. Yeah is my speaker. Working is my microphone working. I can hear it uh-huh, okay, yeah i mean i just looked it up, opened it up and i'm 4.4.0 advanced and i have it hooked up with the red adapter and it plays. My sequence is fine but, like i said in my little text there that message that i'm self-taught, so i probably don't know everything that they you know they can do. That'S that's new on me. I don't know that one well. The pro license would handle the motion effects and i will think the enhanced network, i always forget, without looking it up, but right yeah, the speed yeah. So what is emotion running, but it's not doing everything that you could do with it now, is that the only is that the only device you have connected to that is the only device i have connected to that network. So that could be the reason why and like don said it may be working for you, but not if you had a real uh, complicated sequence. I said i think i got pretty complicated. Sequences is what i mean, but yeah animations and it's playing a movie. While it's uh well the music's playing, so that's what i think you guys are talking about. Motion effects. Well, motion effects are in s5, so that makes sequencing really easy for it. That'S what that's what he's um speaking about there, but i've? Never! I guess because i've always had pro um, i guess i've never tested in advance. This is the first i've heard of anyone in advance saying that their pixie 16 runs fine yeah, but i'm only running. I'Ve only run 12 on my 16 and i plan on adding four more this year. So 12 is an unlimited number, but yeah i don't you might not. You might be getting some response, but it could probably be better with the with the elar, because you can't select 500 uh k without the pro license yeah, so you may be using it in a way that doesn't require the higher speeds or the enhanced network or Intensity files, which i'm looking at is part of the advance or the pro so running, advanced license. You would be able to do the generic basic type programming, but you wouldn't have access to the motion effects or anything like that on the advanced, that's right and you're, when we were going through network preferences that little enhanced tab would have been blocked out for you. Without the pro license, i understand awesome, so i i but, but you got a plus there. What are the questions feel free to ask up? I'M scrolling, hey j.r uh-huh. Are you comfortable with the pixcon 16? No hey. I had one of my hiding since november. I had one at my house for two weeks and i had a really good source, but he switched um controllers, but there's a couple of guys that may be on here that that hear you um that can help you out. I had one at my house for two weeks before i reached that help friend i was trying to help somebody else and i sent that i actually sent them a pixie that they could test pixels with when i was playing with their pixcon16, so um and like I said one of my good friends on the site i reached out to him and he actually it took him like three minutes just to help me configure the pixel 16 uh i've been fighting with it since november. So if you don't mind shoot me a private message on the forum, if you're a forum member, should be a private message there, and i will i talk to guys that do that. I just have to look at my text messages and maybe one of them. I could steer you and they can help you out with that. I see you know when uh luke have said something in the message board and i'll reach out to them. Also, okay, thanks. Sorry no worries what else we got so someone had trouble with pixies randomly dropping out in the middle of sequences, all right if you're listening, you want to ex expound on that a little bit yeah. This is andy. Can you hear me? Yes, sir yeah? So i just had some random issues last season, with controllers just randomly dropping out in the middle of sequences, they'd go away, uh kill the lights for about three seconds and then come back on and i was pulling my hair out. You know swapping out cables and this that and the other thing upgraded the firmware and what it came down to is i just needed to reset the controller, so my statement was just to point out that, if you're having weird random issues, maybe try resetting them first, It could save you potentially a lot of headaches. How many d do you know how many controllers you had there um? I think i have about eight or ten pixie fours on one network on one yeah enhanced network, were they maxed out um pretty much. So that's four. This is before i had the red, the red connector, so i you know, i added that i i did a whole bunch of things and yeah. It just came down to resetting, so we had 40 channels at like 100 pixels per port yeah. That'S four: that's 4, 000 pixels per uh lighterama only recommends 2400, and i stay under with my recommendation, like 1800 per network right, okay, just to be better safe than sorry yeah, so that that might have been what you had going on. If you had a hundred. That'S four thousand. You know sixteen hundred over what lore okay, so i might need to look at additional networks. Then this year, right and they're easy to set up so yeah. Okay, i'll keep that in mind. But no it looked like. I say it worked fine after i did the reset so right, yeah that that would just be. You know, i think, just too many pixels yeah and i never had to do that before. So it was the first time that i'd had anything like that. Come up. So what else? Who else any here? Thanks for the comments guys, i see the good comments along with the questions, real quick one thing i'll say is the pixies are really stealth um. I still have the the first one that lr sent me. The beta test is still on my tree: uh going good and strong, never a problem, i'm happy to replace two of them that i've only had for a couple of years, because the pixel's not working the pixels stopped working yeah. You know one pixel. We had a dark spot in my this blue, but the pixie was good. The controller oh yeah, the controller was yeah, was fine, yeah, so yeah. Well, no. The pixie controllers are real stealth. They'Re they're yeah, the controllers yeah yeah easy to use. I i've never had a problem. I'Ve been on a telephone call with some guys helping them out. Uh. Follow me step by step, please, and you can hear them clicking and all of a sudden know what's going on and they plugged it into their com port without the adapter. So then they end up sending it to me: that's right fix it. Real, quick, yeah eels. Also for years that i've had challenges with that, i hardly ever use them, but i i'd like to because my son lives next door and i'd like to get his house and my house linked together. Now did i hear somebody say that you cannot use an eel at the end of a pixie. I know, according to the lo the lydorama website, the ef ells don't work with pixels, so, okay, okay, okay, so i can't put the ell at the end of my second neck network uh, which is at the end of my seat but ctbs, 16s, okay, and then That should communicate with the next one that i would put next door. Okay, do you know that you can't put you can't put uh enhance in an enhanced network with and with ells? You always have to be on non-enhanced networks, which you can't really put pixels and ells on the same network right right, the only yeah. The only thing i have on one network is my pixie, then uh, my other network. I have just uh regular controllers right um. I see a question here. That'S a good question. Someone says it's: is it stephanie rogers asking about her mini director um? She uses sd card. She bought a plug and play pixie tree hello. Our units upstairs downstairs what would be the best? What would be the setup? I don't run anything from the computer with the red. If you have a director running your show, if you're listening you, you don't use a red adapter for that. So in that case, the only reason you need a red adapter is to set your unit id and do your testing and all that good stuff from a computer, but to run your show through the mini directory. Just you just plug your uh pixie controller into either the first data port um from your director or into another lightroom controller that feeds off it. Hopefully that answers that question uh. I see a lot of questions here about builds and how to mount the boards. I do have tutorials on that, so, if you reach out to me on the forums, i i don't have a problem on sharing that stuff on how how i do my builds a little bit different than the lightorama pre-assembled ones that they actually cost more money. The way i built so most people will uh lean back to where i try to gear most people back to getting a new one right from lor um, all right, jr, i'm gon na say thank you so much and we're gon na transition over to our next Presentation here, but thank you, thank you so much for doing that very long q, a it sounds like a lot of people had questions and it was well needed. So, thank you so much to everyone for joining us and thank you to jr and to boscoyo and lightorama for their sponsorship. We'Re going to take a brief couple minute break here, to switch out presenters and get the new streams going and you're welcome to stay here or go to another zoom room. And just please don't unmute yourself and talk during these few minutes so that the host can get everything coordinated. So thank you so much and we'll be back here in a few minutes.