HOME OF THE 100,000 BULB LIGHT SHOW!

MAKING THE WORLD BRIGHTER, ONE BULB AT A TIME

SEQUENCING 101 - Page 3


SETTING UP YOUR DISPLAY & CHANNEL CONFIGURATION

I bet you thought the next topic would be about actual sequencing, right? WRONG!!

Let's talk about the MOST IMPORTANT AND CRITICAL STEP, to sequencing and what will significantly increase your speed and level of skill each year. Where are you going to put everything?

You may already have an idea of where you want to put all the decorations in your yard or on your house. The possibilities are endless here so I won't elaborate. When I first started I already had all kinds of wire frames and other items I incorporated into the show, but I also added a mega tree and other items.

The key step here is putting those into a channel configuration. The critical thing here is making sure how you configure your channels is WHAT YOU REALLY WANT!! Changing it later can be a complete nightmare. You are free of course to set up your display or channels any way you want, but it will save you hours or even weeks of programming if you leave it the same every year.

The best way to do this is to open the LOR sequence editor and pick any song. The first time, you will have to select the number of channels that you are going to use. Don't worry about timing grids or anything right now, we will get into that later.

You will see your channels on the left. Now you will need to pick what channels will control which items. This is where you need to be a little careful to avoid spending more time scrolling up and down.

Since everyone's display is different, there is no way I can tell you precisely what items to put on specific channels, so I will use my display as an example. I will explain what channels I assigned to which items and why and this should help you to properly configure your channels.

Keep in mind that if you never plan to have more than say, 1-4 controllers then you are pretty free to set it up anyway you want or change your display around. This section of the tutorial applies mainly to those with many controllers or those who plan to expand every year. If you are as crazy as I am about lights, I estimate that I will eventually max out around 350-400 channels or about 250K to 350K lights.

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