xLights status

[dowdybrown]

Well, work has been interfering with xLights development lately. But in the last week, I have made some progress. I am getting close to having the Mac version working. The new Mac release will be OSX 10.5+, 32-bit, Intel only. Windows and Linux will be supported too, of course. Behind the scenes, I have upgraded wxWidgets to version 2.9.3, mostly for Mac compatibility reasons. Hope to have something to share in about 2 weeks.

Matt

PS. I am still waiting on my Raspberry Pi. At this point, I'd say the chances are about 50/50 that I will have one running xLights by the time the Academy rolls around.

[Timon]

Not totally a xlights question but I have a LOR USB 4858. Is there a OSX driver, Lion, that will work with it?

[dowdybrown]

Yes, it will work with just about any Mac or Linux box.

Matt

[tconley]

How resource intensive is xlights?

I was thinking of trying to run parts of my show on a raspberry PI You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login.  It is a fairly powerfull linux platform.

[dowdybrown]

Regarding the RasPi, see the first post in this thread.

Also, got this wonderful news in my email today:

Dear customer,
Having successfully passed its CE compliance testing, we can now confirm that your Raspberry Pi will be delivered in the week commencing 28/05/2012

[tmcteer]

Were you an early purchaser? I think I'm on the second wave ordered Mar6 and is still showing Aug 16 ship date..

Tom

[dowdybrown]

Were you an early purchaser? I think I'm on the second wave ordered Mar6 and is still showing Aug 16 ship date..

Tom

Yes, I had several computers going the night of Feb 29, frantically trying to get my order in.

[dowdybrown]

I successfully booted my Raspberry Pi last night. So those attending one of the Academy's xLights classes may get a little extra show and tell.

[dowdybrown]

Well, I've been working on my Raspberry Pi a lot lately -- trying to get xLights to run. The good news is I finally got it to compile and to play back MP3 files. The bad news is that the PI decodes MP3 files in software, without any hardware assistance; and the processor is so slow that no cycles are left to play back a sequence. So the PI is out as an xLights supported platform. Sorry about that, I had high hopes.

Matt

[caretaker]

Matt,  would it be any different if you were using uncompressed .wav files?  I know one of my early light animation software programs I used required uncompressed .wav files because decompressing mp3's caused the timing problems.

[dowdybrown]

Thanks for the suggestion. But after testing the Pi, I think the Lynx Conductor will be a much better playback device. If you need the extra flexability of xLights then you will need a netbook class of PC at a minimum.

Matt

[therealbigjim]

I used a netbook to get my friend started. It had no problem running the small display. We used a usb dondle and a lynx express to get him started....it would bot blink until we used x-lights. I may use  X-Lights  this year for my display when I start mixing controllers.

[Timon]

Hi Matt,

Question, Since I don't have any E1.31 hardware yet just how many universes using E1.31 do you think that xlights could drive on an iMac G5 based on the older Mac, I forget which one, you have? I'd likely be using the J1Sys hardware. It sure would be nice to put my old iMac G5 to work.

[dowdybrown]

Hi Matt,

Question, Since I don't have any E1.31 hardware yet just how many universes using E1.31 do you think that xlights could drive on an iMac G5 based on the older Mac, I forget which one, you have? I'd likely be using the J1Sys hardware. It sure would be nice to put my old iMac G5 to work.

I really don't know. You will have to try it and see. Anyone else running xlights on a G5 Mac??

Matt

[dmaccole]

I have G4s and Core 2 Duos ... no G5s.

Sorry.

\dmc