DiyLightAnimation
Hardware => Lynx EtherDongle => Lynx Conductor => Topic started by: Steve Gase on September 19, 2012,
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I'm creating multiple threads to launch discussions on how to create various kinds of triggers.
I'm looking for some discussion to help guide me in making a decision about the "best" way for my particular needs, and I really don't know what those requirements are at this time. So, I'm intending the discussion to be pretty open-ended, and something that might help others with similar questions.
"best" might be based on various factors:
- price and availability of the parts
- ease of assembly (to me)
- ease of use (to my visitors)
- flexibility in placement (how far can it be from my conductor and/or power source and/or wireless? and/or ???)
In this thread I am interested in a basic push button solution, typically something that could be placed at the sidewalk as a jukebox. The visitor would press a button to start a specific show. The technical part shouldn't be a big problem, but the elegance of your solution might be very interesting to others.
As is the case with all of the ideas, it must be able to interface with the conductor's trigger solution.
After discussing ideas, I'm hoping that final concepts could be written up as assembly manuals in the wiki, complete with answers to the "how" and "what", and "where" questions.
Any takers?
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Can we combine all of these topics into one where you tell people what it is you want and let them make suggestions. Bunchs of different threads seems like a mess. One would be much nicer for the users to work from . I just had to do the same thing in the beta cause it was hard to follow everything spread out.
RJ
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A thought about a unique trigger would be something that someone steps on that activates a switch for the trigger.
Another would be something that flips a mercury switch wired in as a trigger.
Even a simple door magnet and reed switch like the kind used in household alarms.
These are all simply wired to the trigger board - no external power supplies/circuits for proxs or hall effects or ultrasonics or such.
-Paul
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Damn, now ot looks like Steve is trying to challenge Chris in the post and thread start totals.
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Damn, now ot looks like Steve is trying to challenge Chris in the post and thread start totals.
LOL
I'd need to create a robot to keep up with chris. I'm not even gonna try. :o
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LOL
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he's actually caching up to me.... you guys talk about me posting a lot. I've been on here almost a year longer and look at HIS thread count catching up to me!
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just sayin....
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he's actually caching up to me.... you guys talk about me posting a lot. I've been on here almost a year longer and look at HIS thread count catching up to me!
just sayin....
It took you 2 posts to "say"?
:P
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gotta stay ahead of you somehow hehe
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If you are going to do a "jukebox" concept, you can combine it with a vending machine concept for food donations.
THe concept is simple, one puts a can in a slot, which powers the selection buttons. This allows one to to request a song to be played next.
Now I don't know if the trigger function is only for shows, or if it allows one to interrupt a show playing to plays a single show and then continue one. But that is how the show player I have works, and it would seem to be somewhat adaptable to the conductor. One may have to may a series of small shows for it to work.
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Once a show starts the inputs are disabled. Kids pushing the buttons while one playing will not stop the current one. Only when no show is playing does it accept input. If you hold a button while a show is playing when the show ends the one you are pushing will start if and only when you release the button.
Hope this helps everyone understand its function.
RJ
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So if I understand correctly the conductor must be in waiting mode for a trigger to work (no sequence playing). Is there any way to change this? I am thinking of implementing a push button startup for next year it would be nice if the house was not dark waiting for someone to hit the button. And you could light up the button until it is pushed then turn that light off so it doesn't distract from the show.
My thought would be to have the trigger only override a scheduled sequence. So you could set a scheduled sequence to run all night with some simple fades and hitting the trigger would break into that sequence and start the triggered sequence. This way people driving by might notice the house and stop to hit the button.
This would also work better for Halloween shows. You could have a scheduled sequence of Halloween music and have motion triggers that break in and play a scream or lightning strike and then the scheduled sequence picks back up from the point it stopped.
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So if I understand correctly the conductor must be in waiting mode for a trigger to work (no sequence playing). Is there any way to change this? I am thinking of implementing a push button startup for next year it would be nice if the house was not dark waiting for someone to hit the button. And you could light up the button until it is pushed then turn that light off so it doesn't distract from the show.
My thought would be to have the trigger only override a scheduled sequence. So you could set a scheduled sequence to run all night with some simple fades and hitting the trigger would break into that sequence and start the triggered sequence. This way people driving by might notice the house and stop to hit the button.
Only RJ can answer this.
This would also work better for Halloween shows. You could have a scheduled sequence of Halloween music and have motion triggers that break in and play a scream or lightning strike and then the scheduled sequence picks back up from the point it stopped.
you could have another eD with conductor/trigger, to provide the "effects" keeping the original to run the show as normal. (you would just have your lighting, and screams on a different set of pixelnet universes.
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I like the two conductor idea for Halloween. This way the music would actually never stop and the effects would just go over top of them. The only real drawback would be that you would have to separate the "normal" show lights from the "effects" show lights and could not mix the two.
For the other issue I guess I will have to wait and see if RJ decides that this feature is worth adding to the software/firmware or not. I think I could rig something up using two conductors and have the button trigger the show conductor one while it cycles the power of the conductor that was doing the slow fades (effectively placing it into waiting mode). Then I would have to figure out a way for the end of the show to trigger the conductor that was shutdown to run the slow fades again. This of course assumes I could find a way to have the two conductors output to the same pixelnet universe (just not at the same time). That doesn't seem impossible but a software based solution would certainly be more elegant.
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While possible, you are taking about a major undertaking.
As it is now, the trigger starts a show file. To do what you are talking about, you would have to be able to run two or more show files at the same time, combining both the light and sound data before outputting it. The lighting data might no be too bad, but right now I believe the audio decompression and playback is done in the audio module. I don't know what it's capabilities are, but decompressing and mixing the audio in the pic will add significantly to the code...
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The main thing I am trying to do is run show 1 on a loop, have a trigger stop show one and play show 2 and then at the end of show 2 start show 1 again on a loop (either from the beginning or where it left off). Seems straight foreward to implement in the software/firmware (although I could be missing something). A hardware based solution using two conductors might work but there are some problems to overcome.
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can be done with vixen playing to the eD (without conductor)
Vixen has trigger support
Vixen has background sequence support.
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Chris - Thanks. I was unaware of that capability. I was really hoping to use the conductor next year but I may have to go the vixen route. I will just have to wait and see what if any upgrades RJ has planned.
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well... i meant to add, there's a catch...
the "background sequence" to use in vixen needs to be scripted (not a fill in the dots)
and you might need to do a little research for the trigger board that's support with the main vixen plugins... (maybe someone here has done this?)