DiyLightAnimation

Forum Info => Getting started with Light Animation => Topic started by: haymaker2k on December 28, 2015,

Title: meteor lights
Post by: haymaker2k on December 28, 2015,
Hi all,

With the sales now on, I have been thinking of upgrading my lights to smart RGB.  One thing I was thinking of was the meteor light tubes, half price in my local garden centre at the moment (£12 for 5 50cm white light tubes) but would like to be able to have some control over them.  I have been looking around on the web for RGB tubes as I could then use them at Halloween too for dripping blood effect but cant find them controllable.  Would like to send a signal to the tube telling it to fire (with a selected colour if I find RGB tubes), is this possible?

Thanks in advance,

Adrian
Title: Re: meteor lights
Post by: tbone321 on December 28, 2015,
You can always make your own.
Title: Re: meteor lights
Post by: haymaker2k on December 28, 2015,
I did think about making some up but, would there be a way of have them just produce the effect by only sending a command to the first LED and having some sort of internal chip to cascade down the line?
Title: Re: meteor lights
Post by: tbone321 on December 28, 2015,
Since the strings and strips don't have that ability on there own, you would need to integrate a controller into each meteor tube, just like the commercial ones have.  You can get around designing your own by using a SSC from here or perhaps a Falcon Usc.  Either way, to do what you want you would need to write or rewrite the controllers firmware.  To me, that seems like a lot of work to actually limit what the tube can do.  I would build my own using a controller mentioned above with its firmware in tact and simply send the data required to make the tube do what you want.  XLights sequencing software actually makes this somewhat easy to do.
Title: Re: meteor lights
Post by: caretaker on December 28, 2015,
Maybe something like this? http://www.doityourselfchristmas.com/wiki/index.php?title=Color_Stick