Hello Tron Dancers,
as we promised, we are bringing you the second part of this blog, where we share our skills and experiences about creating our first pixel suit. In this part, we will look at this topic from a software and hardware point of view.
Before you read the article, sit back and enjoy the result:
Hardware perspective
LED strips
When you want to pick the right LEDs you need to look at multiple things like:
- What color of LED strips will I use? (black or white)
- How many pixels do I need per meter?
- How many pixels do I want to control at once? (each or every two, three)
- What kind of IP do I need?
- How wide should be my strips?
- Does my LED strips have a backup? (in case they broke)
- Do I want RGB or RGBW strip? (W is for clean white, in RGB white is for a combination of all colors)
- How many V has my LED? (Important question regarding your batteries)
- How universal should be my costume?
In our case, we have always worked with 5 V digital strips but our batteries are 12 V. We really didn´t want to use a converter because it would be a much-complicated process with the powering, so we ordered few types of 12 V pixel strip for trying and picked, what fits us the best.
Controllers
For us to pick controller and software was very easy, because we are making them under our roof.
We are using our LEC 3 controller which is adjusted with extra wireless dmx for a more stable connection. This is one of the most important things to solve because it can be a pain in the ass during a real event. With our controller, you can program the show in LSS software and see in real-time, what you are programming. When programming is done you upload the show on the SD card that is in LEC 3 by using WIFI (no need for a manual unplugging and plugging the card) and when you come to the event you just trigger the show and the show will run “offline” from SD card but fully synchronized. This is the most important part of doing a live event. The success of the event depends on it. Why? Because when you come to the event, there is not stable connection on regular WIFI and imagine 10 000 people and everyone has their mobile WIFI on. Your signal can easily disconnect and the show would be ruined very quickly. On other hand, you really want to see your effects, when you are programming and even much more if you don´t know how the effects look like. For us, this was the longest discussion in the company, how we will control the show. The majority of our competitors use fully offline or fully online controllers but neither of them meets your real needs.
PCB Board
We have decided to use PCB boards for our suits, simply for a higher quality of the suits. You can´t have the same result when you install all strips manually. They would be broken much faster. Another reason is to have an option to do a quick reparation during the event. Imagine you have just a few minutes before the show starts and you realize the LEDs are not working properly and you can´t see the scenes on the whole suit. For this case, you need some spare parts, that you can change quickly and the problem would be solved. You will repair broken parts later in your hotel room or when you come back from the event. We try to make them as universal as possible because it´s not cheap to make dozens of parts. Also, it means to carry fewer additional spare parts for the event, and trust me, you will have plenty of them anyways 😊. Because of all these advantages, we have decided to use the boards instead of simple LED strips.
Software
For obvious reasons, we are using our Led Strip Studio software. You can map there your pixel suit and make an unlimited number of shows. Simply create effects that you like, and put them on your timeline. You can do everything in real-time, which means you can see the effect on the suits live what is really necessary to program the show. More information about the programming and software part is written in our previous blog.
I summed up all informantion, I consider important for creating a pixel suit. In case you have any other questions I am happy to give you an answer. Just contact us here.