Configuring LED strips

[pandas]

I'm trying to figure out the best way to deal with LED strips.

So far I've been adding my 150 pixel LED strips as 150 separate instances of "Generic RGB" units. I do not create custom fixtures to represent them (though it would be drop dead easy to create them of arbitrary size with scripts. The XML format makes this a breeze I really love it).

From what I can see searching the forum adding each LED pixel separately seems to be the standard way?, i.e.

viewtopic.php?f=3&t=13307

However, there's a big downside to this approach. Some parts of the UI do not handle it well.

Example:

1> Add X number of Generic RGB units to the project, let's say 150
2> Create a fixture group, dimensions 150 x 1
3> Create an RGB matrix from the group
4> Save the RGB matrix to a sequence
5> Click on the sequence in the functions tab

When I do step #5 on my mac it expands the main window to something like 6 normal screen sizes in width. Too big to use. What's worse is that clicking away from the sequence does not restore the window.

Am I doing this right? Or should I be creating fixtures instead, or perhaps following some other approach I may be missing.

Thanks in advance

[pandas]

To answer my own question, it looks like the best way to handle led strips is indeed to create a custom fixture. I was leaving out a step, namely mapping the RGB channels to heads (many to one). This is normally done in the fixture editor UI under the modes tab but I'm generating the XML via scripts.

All good, and I'm really liking QLC+. Next on to RGB panels.

[sandinak]

+1 on custom fixture... I have some for my Riser Steps that are 8x64 LED Matrixes .. I used python to generate the fixture definition as it was a bit slow otherwise PM me if you want that code. Some quick thoughts to consider:

• QLC+ does NOT handle individual fixtures that bridge universes .. eg >512 channels.
• QLC+ DOES handle creating matrixes that use multiple Universes quite well.
• QLC+ fixture groups are really useful in this instance
• RGB Matrix functions operate on Fixture Groups

This means in my instance .. it was FAR easier for my fixtures to create them:

• since each LED is 3 channels .. and there are 64 per row .. thats 192 Channels per row
• two rows is 384 DMX addresses
• I have 8 rows.. so I have 4 Universes for each step
• I have 12 steps .. so I have 48 Universes to cover all 12 steps
• my fixture definition is 2 rows
• I use fixture grouping to select the 4 fixtures representing 2 rows each ( select them in order to create a group target for a step
• since i can create multiple fixture groups, I can select the rows ( in order ) into other groupings for effect ( 1 step, top row, middle 4, etc. )