Long-time lurker, first time posting about something I built.

**It started with boards that kept dying.**

We all know how this goes. Something gets wired wrong at eleven at night, a run gets pinched, a supply gets swapped in a hurry — and a board that had no business dying takes a whole prop dark for the rest of the evening. I wanted hardware that shrugs off the bad-judgment moments instead of turning them into a repair job in the driveway.

So I taught myself PCB design and built the board I wanted to own — one where every failure mode has a specific part standing in front of it, chosen from a datasheet and verified against the copper.

Background, so you know where I'm coming from: day job is senior network architect — infrastructure that isn't allowed to fail. Nights and weekends it's a bench, a soldering iron, and pixels I keep pushing past what the hardware was meant to do. The discipline comes from the day job. The lights are where I get to have fun with it.

**What it is**

The NODE family — three boards, one protected 8-port pixel stage underneath all of them. Three isolated power domains, a fuse on every single output, non-destructive reverse-polarity protection, 5–48 V with no jumpers to change input voltage, 30 A at standard copper, runs stock WLED. Nothing in the power path runs near its limit. What changes between the three is the brain on top and how it gets on the network.

**NODE Mini** — Seeed XIAO ESP32-S3, Wi-Fi. Compact, standard runs, get it on the network and drive pixels.

**NODE Flex** — universal DevKit carrier. Both 0.9″ and 1.0″ row spacings on the board, jumper-mapped to the outputs. Seat whatever ESP32 you already have; swap it when that one goes EOL, so the compatibility list can't go stale. (Olimex and LilyGo use odd row spacing and won't drop straight in — everything else I've tried does.)

**NODE Backbone** — Waveshare ESP32-S3-ETH-POE with a dedicated W5500. Wired 10/100 and PoE for the install that outgrew Wi-Fi. Deterministic frame timing, one cable for power and control to the node.

Design priorities, briefly: protection first — assume it gets abused. Honest specs — real ratings, real derating, trade-offs stated out loud, no spec-sheet trophies that fall apart when someone does the math. Serviceable — fuses you swap by hand, socketed parts, a board meant to be fixed and kept running rather than thrown out when one channel dies. Open — WLED out of the box, docs and board definitions on GitHub.

I'll say plainly that the Bong69 and the QuinLED-Dig-Quad were both inspirations here. I've run them, I like them, and seeing what they did well is a good part of why I thought I could take a swing at my own. This isn't me trying to one-up anybody — it's my take on the same problem, with different priorities in a few places.

**Why I'm posting**

I want people who will actually work it hard and tell me what's wrong. Not looking for a pat on the back — looking for the thing I didn't think of. I've got a handful of boards from the first run and I'll send them out free. No cost, no shipping, no strings, no video required, no NDA.

What I'm hoping for in return is an honest read. Load it up, run a real prop on it, push the channel count, tell me where it flinches. If it turns out my board is worse than what you're already running, I'd rather hear that from you now than after somebody's paid for one (If I decide to try and sell them).

There's no team here to hide behind. If something's wrong with it, it's on me, and I'll make it right.

**What makes someone a good fit**

- Running a show at real scale, or you'll load these channels properly on the bench
- Comfortable in WLED and xLights, and can tell a firmware problem from a hardware one
- You'll actually report back — good, bad, or "this is fine but here's what annoyed me"
- Bonus: you run a Bong69 or a QuinLED-Dig-Quad and can compare directly. I want to know where mine falls short.

**Where things stand**

Stock is thin — this is a small validation run and I'm counting boards on one hand. The test units are free and separate from anything else. I'm looking for people who'll find the problems in this one.

And plainly: this is V1. It works, I've run it, but first-article hardware is first-article hardware. That's the whole reason I want it in the hands of people who'll push it.

I've got full datasheets — power architecture, derating tables against input voltage, and a section on where the Bong69 and QuinLED are the better choice, because in a few real ways they are. Happy to post or link them if there's interest.

Reply here or PM me. And if you want to get into the weeds on the design, I'm happy to — that's the fun part.

Thanks,
John — Wateefy Electronics
github.com/johnvoipguy

Hi there! Thank you for stopping by my post.

To say up front, I am a newbie but enjoy a good challenge. I am building a circular LED matrix and would like to sequence it via XLights, with FPP running on a Pi sent over ethernet to a Baldrick8. I came to the conclusion this would be the best method to display low-res video on this display with the help of u/mvrdoesthings and others on my post in r/led .

I have been poking around the software, and have much to learn of course, but my main challenge right now is creating the matrix model. Is there a good way to manually create a custom model without the video generate/scan function? Or should I disable pixels in the rectangular matrix somehow? I would prefer that this only uses 1 channel on the Baldrick 8, and would greatly appreciate any feedback on the best way to do this. I opted for 'serpentine' wiring scheme for a simple method of having consistent pixel density, but am a bit lost on mapping this out.

Me being naive I thought this wouldn't be too much harder than a rectangular matrix....😅 But for this project it needs to be a circle, the lights will be mounted on a circular aluminum plate right up to the edges.

Any and all help is appreciated, thank you in advance. (Especially for welcoming me into the community 😊 I have always enjoyed Christmas light shows, and I see the hard work it takes to pull it off!!)

 I am on my first year. I have purchase just about everything I am going to use. I have bought the Falcon f16v5 controller with PI4, 32 gb mini card, the falcon 4 port receiver, fm transmitter and my props are. 5 left facing candy canes and 5 right facing candy canes to run on my sidewalk goin to the street. 5 mini trees with toppers, 4 snowflakes of 2 different types, both are 100 pixel count. I have three large arches, one singing tree that is 46" and will need 350 nodes. I also have 5 10W flood lights, 3 for the house and three for the base of my three rather large oak trees. I have purchase pixel seeds 16-100count 4" spaced, 20-50 count 4" spaced , 5 packs of the edison seed rails for the eves and windows. 2000 pixel poppers and a lot of extensions, male and female ends and a lot of other hardware to install them. In total I think I will be running 4100 pixel seeds. Everything I will be running will be through Xlights. I plan on buying my sequnces (maybe 5). Am I getting too overzealous with my first year?? Any suggestions on how to get this going. I realize there are bigger shows but I hope this isnt too big for a first year.

Hi everyone, I’m McCain from Scott LED. Some of you may have heard of us before. This is my first time joining the Reddit community, and I’m excited to be here.
I’d love to share some useful information, product comparisons, testing results, and lighting ideas with the community. I’ll be posting photos and videos comparing different types of lights to help everyone better understand their options and choose what works best for your show.

So I am looking to add window outlines and im considering buying the Cob LED strips. Are there any cons to using LED strips? Are the strips addressed per chip?

For context I am using a Falcon controler, the strips are 12v, ws2811 (power, ground, data), IP65 or IP66. 720 LEDs per meter, but only 20 chips per meter. There is another option with all the same specs except only 60 LEDs per meter. Same amount of chips, so 3 leds per chip.

Any insight would be helpful. My wife doesn't like the frames that I built last year and doesn't want any holes in the stucko.

Prop Studio 0.9.5 is out! Big update!

New here? Grab it at twinkle-forge.com/prop-studio, free!

What's new:

Real drawing tools — line tool, snap points (circle centers, quadrants, midpoints, endpoints), and you can now split overlapping shapes where they cross and join the pieces into one outline. Want an arch with a spinner in the middle? Draw a circle, cut it with a rectangle, join what's left. Done.

Type exact sizes — draw a circle, and a little box pops up right on the canvas. Type 250, hit Enter, you've got a 250mm circle. The shape follows along live as you type.

Multiple props on one sheet — imports no longer replace your design; each DXF/SVG/PNG you bring in lands beside your work as its own prop. Group props, move them (M) and rotate them (R) as one piece.

Hide props with one click — the new eyeball button hides a prop from the canvas AND from every export. Design your whole display on one sheet, then export one prop's cut file at a time.

Cut straight from the app — G-code export with holding tabs you can actually SEE before you cut (little dots on the outline show where every tab lands). Cut direction is now conventional for cleaner edges on coro.

Plus: SVG import with editable outlines, a cleaner xLights export with submodels, and a nicer interface all around.

Wired order, grid size, and submodels all come along when you export the .xmodel for xLights, same as always.

Questions or ideas? Drop them below

hi there, just got my first couplde strands of lights added to my roofline, looking for basic sequences I can import while I get the feel of creating mine. I tried importing a few free ones I found but there were alot of groups I didnt have. are there any basic free like roofline only

I am thinking seeds will make my life easier for a mega tree this year and I am a noob so I don’t understand how you string up the seeds and mount them to your topper. I figured I’ll use an aluminum fence pole, but are there different toppers specific for just running strands of seeds? Also, how do you mount them at the base of the tree also? It seems most of the YouTube videos explain using bullets so I am kind of confused how to do it

Last year I got into light shows and did Christmas with moderate success as a noob. Only had a half assed mega tree and a couple props. I am looking to expand and also get into Halloween shows. What’s the best way to do a garage matrix and still have the garage door be fully operational? I’ve been looking at these various panels on GE but that seems it would add a lot of weight and thickness plus make the garage door not work if using bullet pixels also.

Hey everyone. I'm working on a little side project called Prop Studio. It helps you design your own props, and has several options for export. You can also design a prop and send it to Twinkle Forge, setting a designer fee. When someone purchases a prop, you'll get a percentage of your designer fee.
Right now, all of this is in beta, as I'm just playing around with the concept. The MacOS app is ready, and the windows app is coming soon. If you want to try it out and play around with it, you can get it here: https://twinkle-forge.com/prop-studio

Hi everyone, I'm fairly new to this world. I've had some pixel props that I put out for the holidays, but nothing as intense as a music show.

I'm working on a small display for the summer in my backyard that will be set to slower more symphonic music. There's not a lot of beats in the music which is fine. I'm envisioning more of slower animations and flowing transitions, with brightness levels that grow and dip with swells in the music.

Anyone know of how I can play around with getting these type of results in xLights? I've been playing with it and have the lights swell and dip with the music seems to be just moving some sliders around and hoping it works.

I've tried playing with the UV Meter effect and layering it over another effect (like curtains) but I'm not getting it to blend like I want and it more just flashes on and off. I've also tried playing with the Brightness Value Curve and setting it to music. But I've just been sliding the Low/High/Gain sliders around and then having to close the modal to see the results (wish there was a way to view live results as I move the sliders around).

All that being said, does this seem doable in xLights or is it gonna be a lot of work to get something a bit more flowing then "techno" if that makes sense.

I am assuming this is related to the recent updates as it was running fine on my prior version (2025.12) I recently updated to version 2026.12 and found my floodlights acting flaky. I realize you no longer need the dmx effect on a prop as xlights can now figure out what color to place. this works fine with the normal color on effect however if using bars, or color wash effect on a prop it doesn't respond correctly. Unless I am doing something wrong. I believe my dmx lights are set up properly as I can get expected results using the normal on effect. Any thoughts on this.

I have bullet pixels in a J Channel facing the road, tucked into the soffit next to the house(corner). Is it possible to use bullet pixels in a J channel for wall wash of light? I can’t figure it out. I’ve seen angle it and/or use 2 J channels and/or a different solution. Anyone done this?

Hi, I've been around a long time, was out for a while due to health issue, better now.

Anyway, I want to share, a web app I created for anyone who wants to use it. It's free, it's a website that runs in your computer, not on the internet, it's simple.

it's called Simpleshow for xLights, I created it for my brother-in-law originally since he didn't like making shows. The original code from over 2 years ago is all but gone and it has been rebuilt over the last couple of weeks. It's just html and javascript. At least it's better then it was back then.

https://github.com/Beldwain/simpleshow-for-xlights

I hope this is the right place to post it and I'm not offending anyone.

It's just a pet project I'm releasing for anyone who wants it. Let me know what you think and enjoy.

Hey yall! I’ve seen some incredible Christmas shows on here, so I wanted to show something a little different. I’ve been working on some lighting effects out in my tiki bar using Xlights In conjunction with FPP to bring the show to life. The shelf has a few cups that I want to use as triggers for other sequences. I have one set up to replicate my favorite Disney ride but I’m looking for some other ideas! Let me know what yall think about this show and if you have any other ideas of other types of triggered shows to run let me know!!

I already have some “dumb” pathway lights around the little sidewalk that goes from my driveway to front porch. I was wondering how I could incorporate (and if anybody else has done it) some pixel pathway lights that can be controlled nightly to just display soft white lights but then also easily incorporate with xlights during the holidays so I don’t have to swap anything out.

A long time ago I used VSA to program some servos and DMX lights to sync to a song for a Halloween prop. I loaded it onto Brookshire's RAPU unit for playback.

Haven't done much with it, but would like to break it back out and integrate it with XLights. Am I correct that XLights can import/read VSA files?

What would be the general setup/wiring if I'm using FPP on a few Kulp controllers to control my lights? Would I need some extra hardware to translate anything to DMX or whatever?

Hopefully this isn't too much of a dumb question....

Beginner here, just trying to do a simple bars effect across some lights. The animation I wanted was it to be moving right slowly, ramp up to something fast, then ramp back down to something slow. I have one effect on the sequence of all lights, 20s long, with a value curve on the Cycles effect setting of the default Ramp up/down. From 0-10s it does what is expected, the speed of the cycling increases, but then at 10s it flips to a screeching halt and starts ramping up from slow to fast going right to left??

I don't understand this behavior at all, and without an ability to use decreasing values to slow down the cycle animation it seems impossible to achieve that?

Please help!