Falcon Player's purpose is to play shows created in xLights, controlling your lights. These shows are saved as .fseq (sequence) files in xLights, then copied to Falcon Player on the Raspberry Pi.
The idea is to create short sequences 1-2 minutes in length. When no one is controlling your lights, Falcon Player will randomly choose sequences to play. This allows people living in your neighborhood to watch your animations without any effort. When people on the Internet want to control the next animation to play, they "vote" on a sequence. Votes are tallied at the end of the currently playing sequence, determining which sequence is played next.
Uploading show/sequence files to Falcon Player
Falcon Player makes it easy to upload the sequence files that you created in xLights from your home computer to the Raspberry Pi. These sequence files are saved in the xLight's "show" directory. Pressing [F9] in xLights will indicate where your show directory exists, but you will need to close xLights then open this folder with your operating system to reveal all of the .fseq files you have created.
In the Falcon Player menu, choose "Content Setup > File Manager", then click the Sequences tab. The "Sequence Files" section should be empty as you haven't uploaded any sequence files yet. Click the blue [Select Files] button, then browse your computer to the xLights show folder where your sequence (fseq) files are located. When you select your fseq file from a show and then click [Open], the file is immediately uploaded to Falcon Player on the RPi. Repeat these steps to upload your all of your fseq files. The Sequence Files section should fill-up with all of the fseq files that you uploaded.
If your sequences have music, you also need to upload the sequence's related MP4/MP3 file. Click the [Audio] tab above, then the blue [Select Files] button, then browse your computer to the xLights show folder where your music (mp3) files are located. When you select your music file from a sequence and then click [Open], the file is immediately uploaded to Falcon Player on the RPi. Repeat these steps to upload your all of your music files. The Audio Files section should fill-up with all of the music files that you uploaded.
NOTE: If your sequence uses music (such as an MP3 or MP4 audio file), the music filename must match the sequence filename. For instance, if you have a sequence named "SilentNight.fseq", the related audio file must be named "SilentNight.mp3" or "SilentNight.mp4". Exact capitalization is important, too.
Creating playlists from the show/sequence files
Now that your show/sequence and music files are copied to Falcon Player, the next step is creating playlists for each sequence.
To create a playlist:
- Click the Content Setup > Playlists menu in Falcon Player. In the New Playlist field, enter a name (I chose to call my regular playlist the word "on", it's not a very good name), then click the [Add] button.
- Scroll to the bottom of the window to the Playlist Details section.
- For the Type field, choose "Sequence Only" if your sequence does not use use. If it does, choose "Sequence and Media" instead.
- For the Sequence field, choose your regular/fancy show/fseq file from the drop-down list. In the Media field, choose the music file (mp3) that is associated with your sequence.
- Click the [Add] button.
- Click the [Save] button to save the playlist.
- Now repeat the above steps for all of your sequences, creating a playlist for each sequence..
Integrating Falcon Player into the voting system
Falcon Player has a feature called Dynamic Playlist that chooses sequences to play based on the status of a webpage. As website visitors vote on the sequence to play, the highest rated sequences is stored on the website in a file named dynamic.json. Each time Falcon Player finishes playing a sequence, it reads this file from the website to choose the next sequence to play. If there is no one controlling your lights (if there are no active votes), the system will choose a random sequence instead.
To configure Falcon Player to do this, you need to create a special playlist with the "Dynamic" event. The playlist will auto execute custom scripts on the website before and after the Dynamic event to update and interface with the voting system. Finally, you will configure Falcon Player to play the "dynamic" playlist repeatedly. You will learn how to do this near the end of these instructions.