Is lsp worth the money

[thestig]

I will be purchasing it tonight, sounds like I need to get started. I have no worries about my computer (im a gamer) and it will likely be overkill. Now I just need to order some more flex strips from ray. This has been a very informative thread. thank you all.

Grant

[rdebolt]

I have no worries about my computer (im a gamer) and it will likely be overkill.

Grant

Don't bet on it Grant!  I am running and i7 3930 with 64g ram. The better the PC the better your life will be! 

[MazdaFan]

It imports your LOR sequences so that you can move them to your current setup.  That means you can still use LOR S2 to do your static lights and then import them into LSP. (you'll see why in a sec)

True with LOR S2 but as yet cannot import LOR S3

Actually, I've been importing my LOR S3 sequences from last year.  I saved my "NEW" controller configuration to my library, imported my old sequences, then added my new controllers back in and did a direct cut and paste to the new channels (icecicles to icecicles, etc).

And Roger, you aren't gonna ruffle my feathers THAT easy.   You merely expanded upon what I had written and were very respectful in doing so.  Many thanks.

Jamie

[thestig]

I have no worries about my computer (im a gamer) and it will likely be overkill.

Grant

Don't bet on it Grant!  I am running and i7 3930 with 64g ram. The better the PC the better your life will be! 

64 gigs of ram? That is ridiculous. I have 16 gigs and have never used over 30 percent of it lol. Most of my money is into my dual video cards. Ssd'd are also nice

[peteandvanessa]

I do know that there will be a new LSP Scheduler coming out in the coming weeks as a Beta.

I ran all my shows from the scheduler and I did have issues with the lights lagging the music. I had to develop a number of work arounds for Halloween last year (like reducing the number of Macros used, clean un-used timing marks and so on) to get the lights to run without lag. So I'll be testing the new scheduler very, very hard to make sure the problems I encountered last year don't result in the same light lagging in the new scheduler.

I also have the etherdongle with the conductor, so that's my back up plan (I will probably use the Etherdongle and conductor anyway).

I successfully exported the sequences into the Conductor format and they play just great (no problems with light lag), but I haven't loaded the newer Etherdongle/Conductor firmware yet, but I have converted the audio files over to the OGG format.

I'm running just short of 5000 channels of RGB LED light strips and two Lynx Expresses, and dispite the problems I encountered last year with LSP I'm pretty happy with it. It runs pretty well on my i7 Quad core, Win 7 16G Ram, dedicated graphics card and SSD drive.

Here's a quick clip of the LSP scheduler running on Halloween night last year, give you an idea of what LSP is capable of doing. It's also controlling the DMX Laser on the right side of the house.

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[DonFL]

Don't bet on it Grant!  I am running and i7 3930 with 64g ram. The better the PC the better your life will be! 

which version of windows?

[rdebolt]

I have 3 ssds and a tb spinner. One problem with LSP is it will not leverage all cores yet. 64 bit helped with that, but some are having  some issues with it. That is what I am running. I am not a gamer but have started to get into working with a lot of video so I wanted as much ram that I could get. Only running 1 video card.

[rdebolt]

which version of windows?

Win 7 I don't like Win 8 although I know it is the future. 

[DonFL]

Totally agree...not seeing anything in Win 8 that makes me want to change from 7.

Reason I ask is, I assume you are using professional or ultimate, as the Home versions don't support anything past 16 gb...i think some people who decide to upgrade to mega amounts of ram forget they need to look at an OS upgrade to take advantage of their investment.

I just bumped both computers I use for Christmas and other geek/techie endeavors to Win 7 with 16 gb of RAM..and have yet to see it use anything past 3 gb at any one instant, (if you assume windows is telling you the truth..). 

 

[arw01]

I've been following this thread with great interest as I need to plunk down on a software to learn and use to start out with our first sequence this year.

I have a couple LE to assemble, a few DSC, a lot more SSC, an etherdongle, and an Aether clock yet. 

A couple of items I hope you fellows could clear up.

I see quite a few leave 512 open for dmx at the beginning.  With 32 channels LE, 5 DSC, and a plan to be pretty much RGB on anything in the future, I'm thinking the 512 is overkill.  Is that the minimum you can set aside since a DMX universe is 512?

I've made the jump to 8 and completely love it.  Waiting anxioulsy for the 8.1 updates for better tiles support and a few other options.  It has been super rock stable, and with an SSD hybrid goes from off to internet in under 15 seconds.  However, on 16 gigs, an i5, and 64 bit windows 8 professional, am I going to have some trouble running this software and possibly my show if I don't buy a conductor to go with the etherdongle?

[rdebolt]

Totally agree...not seeing anything in Win 8 that makes me want to change from 7.

Reason I ask is, I assume you are using professional or ultimate, as the Home versions don't support anything past 16 gb...i think some people who decide to upgrade to mega amounts of ram forget they need to look at an OS upgrade to take advantage of their investment.

I just bumped both computers I use for Christmas and other geek/techie endeavors to Win 7 with 16 gb of RAM..and have yet to see it use anything past 3 gb at any one instant, (if you assume windows is telling you the truth..). 

 

 Using Pro and you are correct about the usage. Looking at the "Windows Experience" rating (for what it is worth) everything on my PC is a 7.9 (Max rating) except my video card that brings it down to a 7.7 (if I remember that correctly). I have not watched usage while running anything but LSP, but I can say that it is a screamer compared to my old AMD quad @ 16g. Lost the motherboard on that one so I decided to go all out! The ssds are awesome for boot time. From off to fully loaded desktop is 15 to 17 sec. AND ya I know Win 8 is faster! 

My Laptop is a i7 2 something with 16g ram, no ssd and there is no comparison between the 2. I know not comparing apples to apples, but I really get spoiled on my desktop and think they all should run that way! 

[rdebolt]

I've been following this thread with great interest as I need to plunk down on a software to learn and use to start out with our first sequence this year.

I have a couple LE to assemble, a few DSC, a lot more SSC, an etherdongle, and an Aether clock yet. 

A couple of items I hope you fellows could clear up.

I see quite a few leave 512 open for dmx at the beginning.  With 32 channels LE, 5 DSC, and a plan to be pretty much RGB on anything in the future, I'm thinking the 512 is overkill.  Is that the minimum you can set aside since a DMX universe is 512?

I've made the jump to 8 and completely love it.  Waiting anxioulsy for the 8.1 updates for better tiles support and a few other options.  It has been super rock stable, and with an SSD hybrid goes from off to internet in under 15 seconds.  However, on 16 gigs, an i5, and 64 bit windows 8 professional, am I going to have some trouble running this software and possibly my show if I don't buy a conductor to go with the etherdongle?

You can use what ever you want. I am assuming that you will be running Pixelnet, correct? Most people leave it open because it is a simple calculation to know what is left, but you can use what ever number that you like. For example an etherdongle flashed for pixelnet outputs 16384 channels. so each one of your expresses will use 16 of those channels. So if you have 2 LEs you can start your RGB @ Channel 33 if you want, but then there is no room for expansion for DMX in an ordinate way. Make sense? So let's say you want to add an Aether here and there you are going to have another dmx channel in the middle of your pixelnet and that starts to get confusing and harder to track.

We are getting off topic from LSP here. Sorry. Might want to start a thread in the Smart String area.

[keitha43]

With the smarthub jumper set to 1, the first 512 pixelnet channels are also output through the dmx port (mirrored). So in reality the first 512 channels could be pixelnet or dmx or if you had dmx devices and pixelnet devices with the same start channel they would mirror each others effects. I start my pixelnet channels around 137 as I only have about 8 LOR controllers in dmx mode and a few Aether II's. I have a few channels between where those end and my pixelnet starts in case I need them later I won't have to reprogram pixelnet controller start channels or modify my sequences. Now with the jumper set to another jumper the dmx mirrored channels would be changed to whatever universe the jumper corresponds to.

[rdebolt]

Another plus with LSP All of the protocols that it will run. You can run almost any dongle and make your lights go blinky blinky.

[Mickpat]

I have been using LSP for 3 years now and it has come a long way.  I found that I really had to change my thinking how to sequence a show.  Last year a created a show using almost 100% layers and transitions.  Once I moved away from relying on a grid, it really simplified sequencing.  The following is a quick video on the technique I use. 

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And here is the output of the visualizer for my show.  The only place where I relied on the grid was for the snowflakes above the garage.

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If you use transitions, adding elements to a show can be trivial.  For example, if I were to add RGB lights to my bushes, all I would need to do is open the sequences, add a new controller for the RGB lights on the bushes, map the controller to an existing layer and then regenerate the transitions. 

Transitions also make sharing sequences more feasible.  If you were to take my sugar plum sequence, you could easily map to your shows layout in minutes by performing the following steps. 

1.  Delete all of my controllers.
2.  Add controllers (Add one controller per element in your show i.e., house lights, tree, wreath, etc.)
3.  Draw all of your elements in the visualizer
4.  Map controllers (elements) to layers
5.  Regenerate all transitions
6.  Done 

No mapping channels, copy/paste, adding/deleting channels, etc.  You can also easily adjust between shows from 64 channels to several thousand by just mapping controllers to layers.

Since I am using PixelNet/DMX, I also add a controller to LSP per element in my show.  An element would be a mega tree, wreath, bush, house lights etc.  This allows you to map a controller (element) directly to a layer.  I Avoid thinking about a controller as the physical box since you never actually need to address a controller directly and instead just use channel numbers which can span multiple controllers. 

When I find sometime , I will put together a tutorial on this. 

As for performance, I upgraded to using a SSD last year and that made a huge difference.  My only regret is I didn't upgrade to SSD sooner.  LSP outputs very large files so having an SSD improves time to load, save and playback sequences.  Also, Windows 8 boots in seconds with the SSD.  I performed all of my sequencing using Win8 without any issues.  I have 8.1 installed now, but haven't played with LSP yet.