LED Setup and Testing
The 2018 Cheesy Arena field uses two different kinds of addressable LED systems: Advatek Lighting LEDs for the Scale and Switches, and Philips Color Kinetics LEDs for the Vaults. The official FRC field uses Philips LEDs throughout, but the Advatek ones are much less expensive (if also not as bright and less robust).
The Vault LEDs and controller are provided by FIRST as part of the 2018 field elements.
Each Switch or Scale LED set consists of the following elements:
- 1x Advatek PixLite 4 MkII Rugged controller
- 1x Mean Well HLG240-12 power supply
- 4x DCDC30 Pixel Tape LED strip
The Vault LEDs and controller come already installed in the vault top. Each vault is supplied with power and Ethernet from the nearby alliance station.
Two LED strips, mounted one above the other for added brightness, are used for each Switch/Scale plate. Those on the scoring table side are plugged into the two ports on the front of the PixLite controller, and those on the opposite side are plugged into the two ports on the back. Each controller is supplied with power, and Ethernet from the field network (VLAN 100), which is routed from the scoring table to the Scale, and from there out to each Switch.
The Advatek LED controllers and Vault Tops that travel with the Cheesy Arena road case have already been configured to the default IP addresses; however, if it necessary to reconfigure them or discover/set their IP addresses, do the following:
Advatek: Use the Advatek Assistant (pre-installed on the Cheesy Arena computer in the road case) to set the following settings:
- LED type: WS2812B
- Number of LEDs per string: 150
- Port 1: DMX universe 1, 0-149
- Port 2: DMX universe 1, 0-149
- Port 3: DMX universe 2, 0-149
- Port 4: DMX universe 2, 0-149
Philips: Use QuickPlay Pro (pre-installed on the Cheesy Arena computer in the road case) to discover the IP address; no setting changes should be necessary.