Guidance on the Best way to setup Segments for Column lighting on home

Questions
1

I have a question on the best approach to using segments when I want to accent columns or areas of the exterior of my home.

For example, I have strings along my roofline. I would like to light up segments that downlight columns around my home/porch. I have done this with segments where every column is its own segment, and that works, but I am wondering how others approach this kind of setup to provide the best versatile adjustment from that saved presentation with the column segments defined?

2

Roughly (very) speaking, the two approaches are:

  1. Break the whole string into segments that match some physical and/or logical part of your setup.
  2. Use an LED map to virtual re-wire the string and put physical/logical groups of LEDs together.

From your description, I think you’re doing (1) already. Controlling the segments independently across presets can take a little managing sometimes. Saving each segment individually (use the Checked Segments Only option) can give you better control on what turns on and off with different presets.

Approach (2) really just gives you some more flexibility in doing what you’re doing in (1). With an ledmap file you can do a “re-wire” so that all the LEDs in “Column-B” come directly after the LEDs in “Column-A”. That let’s you create a segment that is twice as long to incorporate the 2 columns and display the same colours/effects on both. You can get more complicated, doing things like “interleaving” LEDs so the LEDs come out (for eg): ColA-1,ColB-1,ColA-2,ColB-2….. That lets you easily do a Swipe effect on 2 columns and keep them synchronized.

There are many more possibilities, especially as you can turn ledmaps on and off in different presets. Takes some planning and testing, but can be very effective.

3

Thanks, I have done the Segment route and saved it as a preset, but was thinking there may be a better way. Appreciate the response and thoughts