Skip to main content

Terminology

As with any Hobby or community, there becomes almost a second language of terms that are ‘known’ and by just coming into the hobby it can take a while to understand, below we’ve started to put some of the commonly used terms so you can quickly get to speed with the discussions (and some of the community jokes)

  • 5v / 12v - the two most common power types when it comes to Pixels, don’t ask which is better (it’s 12v)
  • Bullets - A type of pixel
  • Controller - A hardware device used to manage the pixels and power distribution (i.e. an Baldrick Board, F16v3 or Arduino based device)
  • Coro / Correx - The plastic based material that many props are build it, when supplied from a reputable manufacturer they are often weather treated and will last many seasons
  • DMX - Digital Multiplex
  • FPP / Falcon Player - A piece of software that runs on a Raspberry Pi which can control a show and play sequences at preset times
  • IP54 (or better) - The level of water resistance something has (be careful when buying from less trusted retailers as they put that on everything)
  • Mapping - The process of taking a sequence and modifying it to your layout
  • P5 / P10 - Types of high density panels (the number indicates the mm distance between the LEDs)
  • Pigtails - The things in the end of a cable to allow them to hook up to another
  • Pixels - The LEDs that power the show (or lights as normal people would call them)
  • Power Injection - The process of adding additional power to pixels in a longer run (used a lot with mega trees or in the case of 5v, just used a lot)
  • Raspberry Pi - A tiny computer with more computing power than what launched the first space shuttle to the moon that we use to manage twinkly lights on our house
  • RGB - Red, Green, Blue - A Pixel actually consists of three individual LEDS one red, one green and one blue and the intensity of each is what gives the colour, the RGB value is the intensity level for each of the individual LEDS within
  • Seed - A type of pixel
  • Show - the entire thing from first pixel on to the last song is known as ‘the show’
  • Singing face - a type of prop where the mouth moves to the lyrics of the song
  • Square - A type of pixel
  • Strip - A type of pixel (friends don’t let friends use strip, unless it’s for arches)
  • xLights - the software used to power most of the light shows in the hobby
  • WS2811 / WS2812b - These are the individual addressable LEDs we call a pixel