OT: I just know someone on this forum is responsible for this.

MarkTTU · Dec 10, 2005

Don't know how many of you have seen this, but its one heck of a show. My understanding is that it was coordinated by lots of networked PLCs... Take that comment with a grain of salt as it came to me via my girlfriend's dad's welding forum buddies. Regardless very cool sequence.

http://m2texas.com/xmaslights.asf

rsdoran · Dec 10, 2005

you are late

Eric Nelson · Dec 10, 2005

There's a second video of that same house HERE...

-Eric

Tark · Dec 10, 2005

Bah Humbug

randylud · Dec 10, 2005

You have to have a lot of time and some bucks to even attempt that level of seasonal madness. I like the control end of it but the show is a little ostentatious! But, it is fun to watch and try figuring out how they did it.

elevmike · Dec 10, 2005

Mark,

There's already been a thread about this exact video. I did some googling and found another forum where the origional builder posted the video. He use a Light O-Rama controller and broadcasts the music on a low power FM station, so you can pick up the sound track in your car or with a walkman etc.. There's a sign to the lower right that tells the FM channel to tune in to here the sound track. The Light O-Rama controllers are not that expensive and the software maybe downloaded from their site. This particular setup required 88 outputs.

I spent a little time attempting this with a DL06 and discoverd quickly that PLCs are not well suited to sync-to-music light displays. The best I could do was create a big drum timer to record keystrokes from a homemade keybord connectd to the plc inputs. I ran out of memory real fast.

Rick Densing · Dec 10, 2005

He has shut it down after a car accident on the street.

MarkTTU · Dec 13, 2005

Guess I was a bit behind the times on this one... Still pretty cool though.

Mike, I'm impressed you tried it. Too bad you ran out of memory in a DL06; at the very least the story would have been impressive.

rsdoran · Dec 13, 2005

I spent a little time attempting this with a DL06 and discoverd quickly that PLCs are not well suited to sync-to-music light displays. The best I could do was create a big drum timer to record keystrokes from a homemade keybord connectd to the plc inputs. I ran out of memory real fast.

Mike if you ever decide to do it again here is a thought. Use a music program, Goldwave, Cakewalk etc and develop your high/mid/low timing sequence then develop the ladder to follow it.

I am not sure I am explaining this properly. The idea is to have a recording that the plc starts, at the same time it starts the plc program....timing would be very important.

The only issue is that plcs when repeating can change timing due to scan so you may need to actually stop then restart the process new to rerun the show. The off/on delay shouldnt take more than a few seconds. The critical aspect is being able to maintain an exact start time for the program and the recording but if anyone can you can.

Using this idea you could start/stop an external device that plays the music that is interface to broadcast on FM as mentioned.

MarkTTU · Dec 13, 2005

rsdoran said:
Mike if you ever decide to do it again here is a thought. Use a music program, Goldwave, Cakewalk etc and develop your high/mid/low timing sequence then develop the ladder to follow it.

I am not sure I am explaining this properly. The idea is to have a recording that the plc starts, at the same time it starts the plc program....timing would be very important.

The only issue is that plcs when repeating can change timing due to scan so you may need to actually stop then restart the process new to rerun the show. The off/on delay shouldnt take more than a few seconds. The critical aspect is being able to maintain an exact start time for the program and the recording but if anyone can you can.

Using this idea you could start/stop an external device that plays the music that is interface to broadcast on FM as mentioned.

Genius!

Now that I'm thinking about it a little clearer. You could set the DL06 scan time at 50ms; now you know your scan time exactly. Then you could run a timer that lasts as long as the song. Now just have a set of compares to the timer accumulator on each rung and use OROUTS. Should be pretty simple really. The first thing the timer would do is send an output to the external music device. Timing is key, but it should be doable.

elevmike · Dec 13, 2005

What I did was use a TMRAF (1/100sec) to index through the entire memory area. (V10000-V17777 = 4096 locations) .01 sec per index.

Each Vmem would sequencially contain an image of the recorded inputs (16)for that step in time. The image was recorded by copieing V40400 (input image register)in each location for that step. To playback, the image is simply copied to the output register V40500 (Y0-Y16) as the code steps though the memory indexing again with TMRAF (every 1/100 sec).

So do the math. 4096/100 = 40.96 seconds. Kinda short...If all the Vmem were used it might record 70 seconds or so.

tom_stalcup · Dec 13, 2005

On an unrelated note, does anyone know what music the first video(mentioned in this thread) is set to?

elevmike · Dec 13, 2005

Widzards in Winter by Trans-Siberian Orch.

MarkTTU · Dec 13, 2005

elevmike said:
So do the math. 4096/100 = 40.96 seconds. Kinda short...If all the Vmem were used it might record 70 seconds or so.

What if you used a normal timer? I think 0.1s would be close enough (maybe, maybe not), but that would give almost 7 minutes.

What about hard coding the sequence in the ladder one rung at a time? Then your not restricted by VMEM.

rsdoran · Dec 13, 2005

What about hard coding the sequence in the ladder one rung at a time? Then your not restricted by VMEM.

I think thats more along the lines of what I was trying to say. Do not try to get the music into the plc, just develop a ladder based on the high/mids/lows etc of the music then time the program to work in parallel while the music is playing.

OT: I just know someone on this forum is responsible for this.

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