Shooting Star Installation

In order to understand how the Shooting Star or Fireworks effects work we have designed a guide for installing fibers from ceiling to FiberFX unit.

Like any animation or pixel picture, the more points you have the better the picture looks! So lets take as simple 3 ft Shooting star or comet.

If you use the Guide to pick the numbers of fiber points per "inch" the you can calculate the number of fibers to the FiberFX modules you will need!

So to calculate the number of fibers in a 3 ft shooting star with a fiber placed every 1/8"

96 p x 3 ft = 288 Fiber Points

Now the FiberFX has 64 LEDs, Each LED can hold 20 Fibers based on a .75mm fiber. But that does not mean that you put 20 fibers per led, NO, if you put 1 fiber per led for the 3 ft @ 1/8" spacing you would need 5 Units. But now if you put 5 fibers per led then you would only need 1 Unit. But you now have 5 fiber lighting up at the same time giving you more of a "Train look" to the shooting star.

The average and least expensive way to do it is 1 fiber every 1" for a total of 64 points per ft. or 5 ft of effect. Now THINK about it, when you look at a comet or shooting star in the sky, the size you really see in the sky in no more then a few inches to a few feet of action !!!! So we are going for realism not chunky cheese effects here !!

Now first we must decide what colors the ends of the fiber are going to be and color them with the colored markers that came with your kit. You can special order units with Colored leds but unless you are correct in your estimation and color layout it makes it harder to make a color change in a visual endpoint quickly. The Example below shows a small Fireworks explosion and how to attach the fibers from endpoint to led unit.

Notice how we started from the center with white fibers, they were inserted in the 1st LED.

Then you place the next fibers a little bit out and color the ends whatever color you wish to see and insert them in the 2nd led. NOTE: Depending on what mode you have the FiberFX in, will give you the illusion of a fade out explosion or a quick blast look.

The best cable to use for the FIBERFX unit is the EG8 or EG12 endglow cable, why? because it make it easier to track what cable goes where. When installing the Fibers in the board or ceiling, you will need to shine a flashlight or some sort of light source at the visual end, and see what fiber lights up at the LED end.