Design and test rig - intermediate between Vixen and full setup

[ghethco]

Just wondering if anyone uses an intermediate test rig.  What I mean is something between Vixen and the final setup outdoors.  Does anyone do this?  It seems like it will be hard to visualize and test an entire display, controllers and sequences using Vixen alone.  Also, not really practical to set up an outdoor display until shortly before you plan to start shows.

I'm just getting started.  I have done some basic sequencing in Vixen.   I have a LE and USB dongle, it all seems to work.  Just wondering if it's worth the time to set up, say, a big board with actual lights on it to test the whole rig.

I realize that light normalization may need to be done with the final setup.  I just don't think I want to wait until November to do a full "all-singing all-dancing" test of the entire system.

Gary

[kgustafson]

Short answer for me is :  No.  You can use the Visualizers in Vixen to get a pretty good idea of what your lights look like overall.  The only thing I bench test is individual elements that I am working on (aka my mega tree, my arches, etc. )  But never do I test all my elements connected to my workbench as a whole.  Of course, this is just one way to do testing.

Kurt

[Gary]

I did all my channel normalization one controller at a time pre-season in the basement with the type of strings I was going to use (thankfully I don't have that many different types--and they all happened to look best with the same normalization option).

Vixen's visualizer isn't the greatest, but it works for me with about a hundred channels of strings, and 6 Aethers. Vixen's weak when it comes to representing RGB, so I keep all my Aethers hooked up in the off-season in a row pointing at a wall to make sure that my color mixing looks right when doing sequencing. We'll see how the next version of Vixen improves on the RGB side of things.

[jnealand]

Look in the vixen area for my thread on must have tools if using vixen.  There is an advanced visualizer available that makes it very easy to setup your visualizer display.

[dmaccole]

Starting with 2009 sequencing, I developed a sophisticated test rig system -- I hung 25-count incandescents of red, green, blue and white (my four major colors) up on the wall and connected them to a SSR4-DMX.

In 2010 and 2011 I added some LEDs that are much like the window frames I built (way too much info: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login) to the wall installation.

These don't represent all my channels but give me places to try out what the light looks like during the sequencing and I cut-and-paste the finished pieces onto the correct channels.

I also use the preview function of Vixen 2.5.x.

The night of the whole show I sit in a folding chair across the street and take copious notes and then make fixes the next day; I review the show again on the second night. Usually at this point there are only a few notes and by the third night everything is working (or working as well as it's ever going to).

HTH.

\dmc

[dowdybrown]

I didn't used to keep a test rig. But now that I have an rgb megatree, I keep those rgb nodes in a matrix next to my computer all year long (they are hung on the wall). This not only helps my sequencing, but also helps as I code xLights.

Matt

[ghethco]

Very helpful information guys.  The EditableAdjustablePreview tool is a big improvement.  In the Vixen tutorial videos I saw, it shows a tiny low-res image (Snoopy), that's where I got the idea that visualizing a large display would be difficult.  I guess those videos are pretty old now.

Has anyone seen performance problems (with a newer fast computer) when using a larger high-res bitmap in the Adjustable Preview?

Gary