Switched from LOR to Helix

B

bcowan

New member
I have been using LOR and D-Light controllers for the past 3 years. This year I decided to go the DIY route due to the cost of controllers and extension cords (oh and I also love building things). I built a Helix controller, one 32 channel SSR daughter card, one standard daughter card and 16 SSREZs for this year. I also switched from the Mobile Black Box FM transmitter to the Vastelec FM02 transmitter and built a dipole antenna from the wiki.

With all of the great people on this forum and the vast amount of information available, the assembly of the boards was very easy. It was a busy fall since I didn’t start any of this until September, but it was well worth it. I was able to double my channel count and add a mega tree to my display. Now that I am using DIY hardware I will be able to double my channel count again for 2011.

I would like to say thanks to Greg Bartlett for all of his hard work on the Helix. The Helix ran my display all season with no issues. I really love the stand alone ability of the Helix since my display is not at my house. I just plugged in the microSD card and the show ran flawlessly. Greg’s support is also excellent. He answered all of my questions fast and he also gave me a capacitor that was back ordered, so I could finish my Helix and get started testing it.

The Vastelec FM02 and dipole worked great. I got about two tenths of a mile out of it. It also sounds better than my Mobile Black Box transmitter.
I plan to build at least one more Helix and will do 2 displays for 2011.

Thanks again to everybody here on DIYC. This site is awesome!!!!
 
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Being a Helix user myself, I couldn't agree more with your post. It's a great controller, and Greg's support is second to none.

Welcome to the fold!
 
I'm glad the Helix worked out for you guys. I spent a lot of time last year to make it more reliable and user friendly. It is nice to hear that it all paid off. Thank you for the compliments.

I plan to continue improving it this year to include:

1) Adding error logging and a more graceful failure mode
2) Improving the GUI on the Helix Network Supervisor App
3) Creating a user manual

I've got a few other ideas and plans that I would like to try also but these are my top priorities.

As always, I'm open to suggestions and available for questions.
 
Well, if you could add a flamethrower to it so it could melt all the snow and ice around Dirk Nirkle's display, I'm sure he'd be interested in twenty or so...;)

Seriously, Any thoughts on having it control a LEDtriks board??
 
mikentn said:
Well, if you could add a flamethrower to it so it could melt all the snow and ice around Dirk Nirkle's display, I'm sure he'd be interested in twenty or so...;)

Seriously, Any thoughts on having it control a LEDtriks board??
Click to expand...

After my daughter and I attended the TSO concert we decided we needed to add flames to our display. We particularly liked the jets that shot straight up and changed colors. We're working on getting approval from the wife. So far no luck:lol:

On the other request, this is one of those "other ideas and plans" I've been thinking about. I contacted TimW back in early November to ask about the triksC communication protocol. I read it over and have been thinking about it. The communication link between the Helix and the triksC is a no brainer. The protocol is very similar to the Renard protocol.

However, I have three major problems:

1) Interlacing the triksC messages with the sequence event periods. The sequence needs to be updated every 50ms, but the triksC will likely need to be updated at a different frequency. I have an idea about this one, but it would relegate the triksC port to one of Channel Bank ports on a Network Node. It wouldn't be able to be implemented on a Network Controller.

2) From what I understand the triksC interface application does a lot of preprocessing of the data before it is sent to the triksC. This preprocessing allows various effects to be displayed. I would have to mirror this preprocessing with the Helix Network Supervisor application. This would take a lot of time.

3) I don't have a LEDtriks board/triksC to do any development. At this time it isn't in either the time or financial budget.

None of the problems above are too difficult to overcome but they will take time. I have higher priorities I want to accomplish before I try to tackle this one.
 
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