Create a variety of xLights animations as multiple playback files

To animate your lights, you create special effects in the xLights program, then save these effects as a "sequence file".  The sequence should be 1-2 minutes in length.  You can create sequences that are synchronized to music, allowing people to choose songs that they wish to see and hear.  This page doesn't explain how to create sequences in xLights; you can read how to do this in the xLights instruction manual here. 

For Internet control of your Christmas lights, the idea is to allow people living in your neighborhood to watch your sequences, but allow the each sequence to be chosen by people on the Internet who want to control your lights.  When the Internet people have finished and no one is controlling your lights, sequences are chosen at random.  Thus Internet people only have temporary control of your lights; when there is no one controlling them, your regular show plays for the people in your neighborhood as usual.

When you save a sequence in xLights, two files are created: an .xml file that allows you to edit the show later (adding or removing animations) and a .fseq file that is used for animating your actual lights.  The fseq file tells which bulbs need to be which colors at any point in time during the show playback.  It is like a canned recording of the animation.

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.

NOTE: When saving your sequences, do not use spaces or commas in the filename! 

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.

The next step is setting up a Raspberry Pi computer to play these .fseq files, in the next part of these instructions.