fpp VS Framework-Laptop-13

Strong recommendation for Xlights, I used to program patterns for my dreamcoat.

I started with a 3D scan of me wearing the costume using my wife's iPhone when the first version with LIDAR came out. After cleaning up the scan (iPhone 12 LIDAR wasn't the best quality) in Blender, I spent a good many hours in Xlights placing every single light at its correct 3D position using the imported mesh as a reference. Laborious work, but with all 1300-odd WS2811 LEDs mapped in all 3 axes, it makes for a pretty beautiful product.

Using Xlights is great. For open source it's pretty smooth. There's a small learning curve for the technology, but making sequences a strong resemblance to video editing. The project has frequest updates, I haven't seen any project-breaking format changes in the 3.5 years I've used it, and it's clearly maintained by people who use it. Push new rendered sequences to my FPP-running raspi on the costume through wifi then editing the running playlist through a web interface on FPP on the laptop is a dream.

If anyone's curious:

FPP: https://github.com/FalconChristmas/fpp

My dreamcoat sequenced to Holst's Jupiter: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWzdUJsAMa4&pp=ygUNbGVkIGRyZ...

Timelapses of me making the costume: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PODWVIsqwwA&pp=ygUNbGVkIGRyZ...

I run my Christmas light show software (https://github.com/FalconChristmas/fpp) with a Pi: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vlxaA-ca6S0 :)

I use Falcon Player to run my show. This is software running on a Raspberry Pi that I upload my songs and light sequences to from xlights. FPP is configured to know where each light is plugged into on which pixel controller (small lighting computer). These controllers sit on my network and FPP pushes the data to them to play the songs/light sequences.

I recommend you to use a known working controller like this: the protocol is known (sufficiently reverse engineered ) to make it do anything you like. Tools like xLights and FPP can send data to the card and thus to the LED matrix.

You could also go the way of the LED panels (search for P5 Outdoor LED Panels) plus a Colorlight 5A 75B to control them. xLights and FPP support them well.

I don't think you need that much for it to work. I've seen so many cool light shows synchronized with music. You can use a Raspberry Pi and install on it Falcon Player ( FFP ) and connect everything through a network and maybe try on your laptop / pc a program called xLights to make some interesting stuff.

Details are here https://github.com/FalconChristmas/fpp

Happily! I will share what I use - please be aware there are lots of options in the space. Also, including my wife's advice from last year: Start small - one or two props can be make a great show and can be accomplished in a reasonable time frame.

Xlights: Sequencing and Scheduling software. This is what tells your lights what to do. (https://xlights.org/)

Falcon Pi Player (FPP): This software runs on your controller - A raspberry Pi or a Beaglebone are quite popular. This is what you run your sequences on. In my case, I drive my lights directly from my Pi. (https://github.com/FalconChristmas/fpp and https://falconchristmas.com)

You definitely could. All the details are available on the FrameworkComputer github org and you could either use what they have as a basis for a chassis or design your own custom chassis that fits the framework parts.

https://github.com/FrameworkComputer/Framework-Laptop-13

You can also buy mainboards[1] and expansion cards[2] (usb-c, hdmi etc.) from the same website. Depending on how beefy of a computer you want there are mainboards from 299 USD to 700 USD. So for ~500 USD you can get a very powerful tiny-ish computer. It obviously won't have the IO capabilities of pi-like hobby boards but it'll function great as a thin client for running linux / home automation stuff.

[1]: https://frame.work/marketplace/mainboards

Framework themselves do sell older mainboards at a discount.

So if this isn't the EC firmware flash, where is that? I peeked under all the components on the top side of the board that I could (fan, etc.) but couldn't find any other flash chips. I tried looking at the schematic, and while it mentions two flash ROMs, it doesn't mention where to find them. Reluctantly, I took out the mainboard and checked the under-side.

You can also buy a framework mainboard. It’s basically the motherboard of a laptop without screen, keyboard and trackpad.

And I don't mean ideologically, though that's good too. Their top end AMD Ryzen 7 main board upgrade kit is $700 and that's what you'd pay for a mid range business laptop. Add $40 for a mainboard case which basically gets you a new computer and it's not a bad deal at all.

What I don't get about your comments is that you're opposing upgradeability and repairability, when it's really just the same concept stretched further: instead of there being one spare part for anything that can break in a given model, you have multiple tiers for parts that effectively make the laptop more of a modular series than a single model, like Framework does. And to answer your question from a further comment, you can indeed upgrade to a later gen mainboard, in fact you can even go AMD.

If you are still looking for a place to start you should check out framework's github. They have a bunch of 3d models already designed. You can modify them and framework even has a process to submit possible upgrades for their designs. https://github.com/FrameworkComputer/Framework-Laptop-13