Who are you?
We are a small privately-ran light show in Elberfeld Indiana, operated by John Lord and Jessica Williams.
What is Twinkly Master?
It is a very basic program that is a start at building a cross-platform program that will run on MacOS or Windows. It's eventually going to be a docker image hopefully. It has one benefit over Artnet 2 Twinkly: A full web interface accessible from any device on your network. However for now it's missing many features you might want, especially layout exporting. It is sometimes quite difficult to get working on Arm devices as you cannot have the arm version of net core installed.
When are the light shows?
They are normally every evening all October and December. November can have unthemed shows but the transition takes a long time to set up.
WHY are you doing this?
Frankly it grew from one light string. My first string came with the Music dongle and I wanted more control than the dongle provided. I wanted to get it working with XLights. I managed to make that work, and my integration is older than the one in XLights or FPP and is more reliable. As I added more devices, I had people sending me free hardware to get the software working better. When I saw what was possible, it just got bigger and bigger. This year we added over four thousand lights.
What is the framerate limiter?
It limits the amount of frames that are transmitted to a specific device by skipping them if they come in faster than about 30fps. Many twinkly devices can handle receiving frames faster than that but there are signs that they can't. If you see weird delays in what is displayed vs the transmit time, it could be you are sending frames too fast for the device. Additionally, it has been shown that you can't send 40fps to a pro device that is fully populated. It will truncate what it's displaying to draw the next frame which results in the last string showing updates only intermittently.
Be aware that this feature works by dropping frames so you effectively cut the frame rate in half if it's over approx. 33 fps. This means if you're running a 30fps sequence you get 30fps but if you're running a 40fps sequence you get 20.
What is Artnet 2 Twinkly?
It is a program that receives artnet from any software that supports it and allows that signal to be sent to Twinkly devices, on a per-pixel basis. The software also allows editing of layouts and specifically supports XLights models.
How much is the license?
Depends. For personal users or businesses using it just for a small display, I allow you to test the program and you get to pick what you think it's worth. I will issue you a lifetime license no matter how much you give me.
For businesses planning on making money from the display, the license is yearly and terms will be discussed. The price is reasonable and comes with tech support.
Why does Artnet 2 Twinkly need a license?
The short answer is, it doesn't. It works with gen 1 and 2 devices as-is, unlicensed and allows you to bypass the unlicensed warning in settings. The license is specifically for enabling Pro controller support.
How does Licensing work?
If you are a business that intends to use the lights to make money somehow, I lease them per year. This comes with tech support. If you are a private user, I sell lifetime keys. If you are interested, contact me and I can issue you a temporary key good for a few weeks so you can test and ensure it works for you.
If you’d like more information about Artnet 2 Twinkly's features, get in touch today by filling out the form on the home page.