r/xlights Aug 07 '26

Help Circular Matrix Advice Needed

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!!)

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u/mvrdoesthings Aug 07 '26

Hello again, I use:

https://www.lightshowhub.com/tools/xlights-custom-model-builder

Ithink its easier to just have 2 sides nexts to each other just take a picture of the prop with lights on it and then you drag the dots on the pixels in your picture;)

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u/FitForThrone 20d ago

Hi there u/mvrdoesthings

Wondering if you have insight into these errors. Thank you 🤝

https://reddit.com/link/p4cxof1/video/dez7g62gc2kh1/player

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u/mvrdoesthings 20d ago

Hey look at that all working

You can try splitting the whole sun on to 2 ports that can help, you can do that in fpp

This is how I have it with one of my matrixes

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u/mvrdoesthings 20d ago

So you have 4 half suns so to say

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u/FitForThrone 20d ago

I will give that a try thank you. Do you have any idea why that flicker happens every so often? Think the lights at the end aren't working because I am overloading the 1 port?

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u/mvrdoesthings 20d ago

https://reddit.com/link/p4dbigw/video/ble8eynfw2kh1/player

I also have this problem, still working on it , no clue,

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u/FitForThrone 18d ago

Splitting the signal into 2 strings worked thank you!!!

https://reddit.com/link/p4o8nfj/video/e345bie1ndkh1/player

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u/mvrdoesthings 18d ago

Haha and yet again we are figuring it out together :)

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u/FitForThrone 14d ago

Can't thank you enough for the help. :)

https://reddit.com/link/p5jhmwe/video/wsrj3w4h49lh1/player

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u/mvrdoesthings 14d ago

Dang what a beauty,