# Light-O-Rama - Flickering Flames or Candles?



## Terrormaster (Sep 27, 2007)

Has anyone here used Light-O-Rama to control and animate flickering candle flames? I know LOR has a shimmer effect but that's a little too stiff looking for what I need to achieve.

Instead of being in the off position I'm looking for a soft low flickering flame that flashes or does a simulated flare up when synched with audio. Basically a lit flame that dances in intensity when I tell it.


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## corey872 (Jan 10, 2010)

Haven't specifically used LOR for anything like that. But have done some things with a similar app - Xlights. I suspect with either program, you could use the music backing track and program in what the LED does.

Is this part of a whole show? If you are just wanting to brighten a LED or two in response to music, there are likely easier ways than a whole LOR/XL set-up... but if you already have that going for other things and just want to add an element, it would be pretty easy. Possibly an LOR forum could give full expert advice.


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## Terrormaster (Sep 27, 2007)

I haven't purchased LOR yet myself. I'm evaluating whether it can even do what I need first since its such an expensive package. But yes, it's time-line based and you can sync it with audio tracks. 

Sorry if I'm sounding vague. This is one of those things I don't think anyone else has done yet. So I want to keep the specifics vague until the reveal. But if I can't pull it off or it doesn't work out I'll throw out all the details after the high-holiday.

For the sake of this discussion lets presume I'm doing singing and/or talking pumpkins. So instead of projecting their faces I want the actual candles to flare up in intensity/brightness in sequence to the song lyrics and to what they're saying when bantering. So I want the brightness to be low and twinkle-ish when they aren't talking or singing as if they were just normal jacks. Then brighten on the cues.

I'd also be interested in hearing about the software you mentioned. Does it come with hardware or is it DMX based? LOR has its own box with an 8 or 16 outlet configuration. Each box can be daisy chained together. The hardware is what drives the cost of the starting package up.


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## corey872 (Jan 10, 2010)

No problem on the vague part - I understand how ideas evolve along the way!

I think LOR may be a bit more plug-and-play, X-lights is a bit more DIY. ...and really, the whole pixel/LED light show hobby has advanced so far, so fast, I haven't even been able to keep up.

X-lights is freeware, so that eliminates some cost. For hardware, I think you can run the whole deal from a raspberry pi. Believe you might also need some controllers or a hat for the pi (least I think that's what they call it ...it would be like a 'shield' for an arduino). But either way, I could see controlling thousands if not 10's of thousands of LEDs that way.

If you wanted something similar but lower scale, an arduino / neopixel set-up might be the way to go. I think that would be a bit more hands-on / line by line coding, but might be cheaper for a few hundred LEDs.


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## CraigInPA (Sep 28, 2007)

As a LOR user for more than a decade, I can tell you what you're looking to do will be virtually impossible, or at least a huge feat.

LOR has 2 intensities of "on": full and half. 

LOR can ramp-up and ramp-down for other intensities, but you specify the length of the ramp up or down and it does it smoothly. You can chop the start and end once you have defined the ramps, leaving an intensity that isn't full or half or off, but this is a major effort.


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## Sunkenbier (Jan 5, 2009)

*Lor is fine for flames*

I use LOR to control RGB LED strips. Ive cut the strips to have just a few LEDs per piece and I put those in pumpkins. In an arch at my house I have over 20 pumpkins hung with flickering candle effects. In this manner I can make the lights do any color and any intensity between 1-100%. It takes manual work but I have each pumpkin flicker differently and control it to .1 second. Can do it more minutely but I didn't bother


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## Daphne (Oct 18, 2006)

This is probably not even close to what you want but anyway.... I have a large pumpkin creep type prop that has a red CF bulb in his head. I wanted to have it flicker at different intensities so I plugged it into a thunder and lightning machine. When the music hits high notes and is louder, he flickers more aggressively/brightly. One year, there were some little kids that were really scared so I told them to go over to him and sing Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer super loud. They were able to control the intensity of the flickering with their singing and forgot to be scared. It was adorable. Sorry, tangent... Anyway, you probably want considerably more control than that but thought I'd throw it out there just in case.


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## KillerJ (Jun 27, 2010)

You absolutely can use LOR to emulate the flicker of a candle; especially if you use incandescent bulbs. LOR AC controllers can control lights from 0% through 100% intensity, not just on, off or half as another user stated. For our display, we use the foam Jack-o-Lanterns with the 7 watt night light bulbs. Below is an 0.8 second snippet of the flicker effect that I came up with. It takes all of 30 seconds to program the 8 timing blocks and duplicate them horizontally until the end of your sequence; in my case, 80 seconds total sequence length.


```
<channel name="Jacko" color="33023" centiseconds="80" deviceType="LOR" unit="1" circuit="4" savedIndex="3">
	<effect type="intensity" startCentisecond="0" endCentisecond="10" intensity="30"/>
	<effect type="intensity" startCentisecond="10" endCentisecond="20" startIntensity="25" endIntensity="35"/>
	<effect type="intensity" startCentisecond="20" endCentisecond="30" startIntensity="35" endIntensity="25"/>
	<effect type="intensity" startCentisecond="30" endCentisecond="40" intensity="30"/>
	<effect type="intensity" startCentisecond="40" endCentisecond="50" startIntensity="25" endIntensity="35"/>
	<effect type="intensity" startCentisecond="50" endCentisecond="60" startIntensity="35" endIntensity="25"/>
	<effect type="intensity" startCentisecond="60" endCentisecond="70" intensity="30"/>
	<effect type="intensity" startCentisecond="70" endCentisecond="80" startIntensity="25" endIntensity="35"/>
</channel>
```
In summary, the timing blocks for the sequence are set to 1/10 of a second.
For 0.1 second, set intensity to 30%.
For 0.1 second, fade up from 25% to 35%.
For 0.1 second, fade down from 35% to 25%.
For 0.1 second, set intensity to 30%.
For 0.1 second, fade up from 25% to 35%.
For 0.1 second, fade down from 35% to 25%.
For 0.1 second, set intensity to 30%.
For 0.1 second, fade up from 25% to 35%.

Rinse and repeat horizontally for the duration of your sequence. In my case, I duplicated the entire channel two times and offset the timing for each new channel by several tenths so that two Jackos side-by-side did not repeat the same pattern.

If the OP wants to increase the brightness during certain parts of the song, just increase the intensity listed here by 10, 20, 40 or 60% depending on the effect you're looking for.

Here are a couple of sample videos:









Hope this helps!


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