Everything you need is on this page, in the order you need it. About fifteen minutes from now your controller will be on your Wi-Fi, your lights will be lit, and you will know where every setting lives - all from your phone.
Worth laying out on a table before you start, so the whole setup runs without a trip back to the shed.
Pixel lights are particular about power in a way most household electronics are not, and the wrong supply damages them rather than simply not working. Two minutes here settles it.
Your wall socket supplies AC power. Your controller and your lights both run on DC power. They cannot be connected to each other directly. In between you need an AC-to-DC power supply - the brick or metal box that plugs into the wall and gives you low-voltage DC on the other side. Light strings are usually sold without one, so it is often a separate purchase.
The supply has to match the lights you bought. There is no universal answer, and no setting on the controller that compensates for a mismatch:
Your lights will say which they are - on the strip itself, on the reel, or in the listing you bought them from. Where the marking has worn off or the listing is vague, the seller can confirm it faster than testing will.
A supply also has to be strong enough for how many lights you are asking it to feed - a small one running eight full ports will sag, flicker, or simply give up. Your light supplier can tell you what size you need for the number of lights you are running, and it is always worth leaving yourself some headroom.
None of the above has to happen today. The controller runs happily from its USB-C socket - a phone charger or a spare port on your laptop is plenty - which is enough to bring it up, put it on your Wi-Fi and work through every screen in this guide at the kitchen table.
USB-C will even light some pixels, so you can watch a test pattern run on a short string at your desk. It is a genuinely useful way to get familiar with the controller before anything goes outside.
Do them in order the first time. After that you can jump straight to whichever one you need. Every change you make is saved on the controller itself and survives being unplugged.
Apply power. That is the whole step - there is no network cable on this controller.
If you are doing this at a desk rather than out at the display, a USB-C cable from a phone charger or your laptop will wake the controller up on its own, and will even light a short test string. You can work through steps 2 to 6 that way, in the warm, before anything goes outside - just keep it to a few lights, since USB supplies only a trickle of power compared with a real display.
A red dot sweeps back and forth across the first few lights on port 1, like the front of a certain 1980s television car. That little swoosh is the controller saying hello. It only happens at start-up, and it is your first proof that power, the controller, and your wiring are all doing their jobs.
A brand-new controller does not know your Wi-Fi yet, so it makes its own: a small setup network that exists purely so you can tell it which Wi-Fi to use. Give it about fifteen seconds after power-up, then open the Wi-Fi list on your phone and join:
ShowSpark-XXXXThe password is showspark. The last four characters of the name are unique to your controller - the same four as in its default name - so two controllers on a bench never get mixed up.
A few seconds after you join, most phones notice the network has no internet and pop up a sign-in page - a Sign in to network notification on Android, a sign-in window on an iPhone. That page is the controller's own control center, and it greets you like this:
The first thing you see. Its button takes you straight to step 3.
Press Go to Network settings on the welcome notice, or open Network from the menu. The Wi-Fi Network card at the top is where the controller learns your Wi-Fi:
| HomeNetwork (secured) | ●●●● -48 dBm ch6 |
| Garage-Lights (secured) | ●●●○ -63 dBm ch11 |
| Neighbor_2G (secured) | ●●○○ -74 dBm ch1 |
The Wi-Fi Network card a few seconds after Join Network. Example names and addresses - yours will show your own.
The controller tries your Wi-Fi while keeping its setup network up, so you never lose the page. If the password was wrong, the card says so plainly and nothing is changed - correct it and press Join Network again. Your Wi-Fi details are only saved once your router has actually let the controller in.
When it succeeds, the card shows the address your router gave it. Ten seconds later the setup network switches off - that is expected. Reconnect your phone to your own Wi-Fi, then open the controller at its own name:
showspark-xxxx.localIt is the setup Wi-Fi name in lower case with .local on the end - the same four characters. The numeric address the card showed works too; write it on a sticky note.
Further down Network, Device Name is what the controller calls itself - "Roof Line", "Front Yard". It saves working out which is which once there are two of them. Its .local address follows the name you save, and the hint under the box always shows the current one.
Out of the box the controller takes its address from your router (DHCP), which is fine for most homes - xLights and your browser can find it by name. If you would rather it always lived at the same number, switch DHCP off, enter an address, and press Check Availability first: the controller asks your network whether anything else is already using it.
The controller has eight light ports, numbered 1 to 8, matching the eight connectors on the board. Nothing to assign, nothing to move - port 3 on screen is the third connector in your hand.
Open Pixel Outputs and you get eight cards, one per port. This is what a single card looks like on a controller straight out of the box:
One port card. The green tag on the right does the channel arithmetic for you - 300 lights using three channels each lands this port on channels 1 to 900.
For each port you have wired up, set:
Leave Start Ch. on auto. That tells the controller to lay your ports out end to end, one after another, which is exactly how show software expects to find them.
The last two fields can stay as they are. Group Size is for treating several lights as one big pixel, and Brightness % trims one individual port - useful when a single run is brighter than the rest of your display, but not something you need on day one. Press Save.
This is the most satisfying step, and the one that saves the most time. You can start the test from the Pixel Test button at the bottom of the Pixel Outputs page you have just saved (the same button is on Diagnostics and Display), or by tapping the small Pixel Test button on the controller itself.
Each press moves to the next test, and the screen shows which one is running:
One more press turns the test off. Holding the button on the controller turns it off from wherever you are in the cycle.
When a computer streams a show to your lights, it has to send the data in a format the controller understands. Think of it as choosing a language - both ends have to pick the same one.
Open Live Input. The four options - DDP, E1.31 (sometimes written sACN), Art-Net and Glediator - are competing standards that do much the same job. What they stand for matters far less than both ends picking the same one.
Your controller arrives set to DDP, which is the simplest of the four and the one most people use. Unless you have a reason to change it, leave it alone and set your show software to DDP as well. Here is the page:
Live Input as it arrives. The only box you touch is the top one.
Do not be put off by the wording around it. Those grey notes are there for people wiring this into unusual software, and the dashed box simply reports the number the controller is listening on - it fills itself in when you choose a protocol. Leave FPP Start Channel at 1. Then press Save, and the setup is finished: your controller is on your Wi-Fi, it knows about your lights, and it is listening.
Afterwards, the control center's Visualiser page shows which prop landed on which port. If you plugged something into a different socket than you planned, drag it to the right port there and press Apply to Ports - no trip back to xLights needed tonight. Make the same move in xLights when you next sit down with it, because the next Upload Output replaces this layout with xLights' own.
You do not need a computer, a sequence, or an SD card to see something beautiful. Open Effects, pick a pattern and a color palette, and press Start Effect. The controller invents the show itself.
The Effects page. Two dropdowns, two sliders, and a button that starts the show.
There are 35 patterns built in - among them Rainbow, Chase, Twinkle, Fire, Plasma, Lightning, Bouncing Balls, Fireworks, Candy Cane, Snowfall, Icicle Drip and Halloween Eyes - and 15 color palettes, including ready-made Christmas, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Valentine's, Patriotic, St. Patrick's, Easter, Winter and Hanukkah sets. Drag the speed and intensity sliders while it is running and the display changes under your hands.
The pattern flows across all of your enabled ports as one continuous run, so a sweep travels over the whole display instead of restarting on every port. Press Stop to hand the lights back.
When you hit a combination you like, name it in the My Effects box and press Save Effect. It keeps the pattern, palette, color, speed and intensity exactly as you set them, and one click loads it back later. Presets are the one part of this page that does need an SD card in the slot, since that is where they are kept.
Slide an SD card in, put your show files on it, and the controller becomes a complete show player - no computer left running in the garage all December, and no dependence on the Wi-Fi signal while the show plays.
Open Content Manager and drag your show files and music onto the Upload Files panel, or click it to browse - they travel over your Wi-Fi, so there is no card reader to find. A progress bar tracks each one and it appears in the library below. Upload one at a time and let each finish. If you use xLights, its FPP Connect feature sends shows to the card the same way - both methods happily live side by side.
The File Library on the same page lists everything on the card, and you can play anything by hand to test it. The buttons are color-coded so nothing that stops a show ever looks like something that starts one: green plays a show, blue plays music, and red stops or deletes.
Then open Playlists to group your shows into an evening. Press + New Playlist, give it a name, and add your shows with Add Sequence. A playlist can mix them with the built-in effects from step 7: save an effect on the Effects page first, then add it with Add Effect and choose how long it runs - "five minutes of Candle, then Wizards in Winter" is a perfectly good evening. Tick Repeat playlist continuously if it should go round and round, then press Save Playlist Set to SD Card.
Open Show Scheduler and pick a saved playlist from the list. Turn on Enabled and choose the days of the week and the start and end times. Leave Restart if it finishes early ticked so a playlist that is shorter than its time window starts again instead of leaving the display dark. Tick the date-range option if it is only meant to run for a season - a range that crosses New Year is handled properly. Press Save Schedule to SD Card.
The clock looks after itself: once the controller is on your Wi-Fi it sets its time from the internet, and it takes its time zone from the phone or computer you browse from. Visit Clock / Time only if the controller is somewhere other than where you are browsing from. Daylight saving is handled for you, forever.
One window per playlist. A green dot means it is scheduled; grey means it is not.
Show Overview, the first page in the menu, shows what is playing right now. While a playlist plays, its Playlist Queue lists every item with the one playing marked and how far through it is. Previous and Next jump between items - handy for checking a song without waiting for the whole evening to come round. They wrap around at either end, so a press never ends the show.
Give the sound file the same name as the show file - Wizards.fseq and Wizards.mp3 - and put both on the card. They start together and stay locked in step. Plain MP3 files work best, without embedded album artwork. Open Audio & Speakers to choose where the music comes out:
Two things worth knowing about once everything works. Both live on the Firmware & Backup page.
Press Check for Updates. If MicroCyb has released something newer, the button becomes Install Now and the page lists what changed. One press downloads it, checks it, and installs it over your Wi-Fi. The controller restarts once, the page reconnects on its own, and your settings - including your Wi-Fi - are kept. It takes about a minute; just leave the power on.
Anything running is stopped first - a show from the card, scheduled or not, and any live stream from your computer - so pick a moment when the display is not entertaining anyone.
If a new version ever gives you trouble, Show previous versions lists the earlier releases, and you can go back to one the same way. Each one says whether your settings carry over; where they might not, it tells you to save a backup first.
Under Backup & Restore, press Download Backup. One small file on your phone or computer now holds everything you set up: network, ports, model names, the xLights layout, protocol, clock, audio, playlists, schedules, and your saved effects and colors. (Your sequence and music files stay on the SD card.)
Restore from File puts it all back in one go - after a factory reset, or onto a replacement controller so it is set up exactly like the old one. The controller restarts and the page reconnects by itself.
The menu down the left of the control center (behind the menu button on a phone), in plain English and in the same order - Your Show, then Controller Setup, then System.
Almost every first-day hiccup is one of these, and none of them mean anything is broken.
Give it fifteen seconds after power-up, then pull down to refresh the list. A controller that already has your Wi-Fi saved is on your Wi-Fi and does not broadcast a setup network - find it at its own address instead (step 3), or hold Factory Reset to start over.
Running on USB-C with lights attached? Unplug the lights and try again - a power-hungry string can starve the controller before its radio starts.
Open your phone's browser and type http://192.168.4.1/ - it always works on the setup network. Then check the phone has not quietly switched back to mobile data or to another Wi-Fi because the setup network has no internet; choose stay connected if it offers.
The radio is 2.4 GHz only, so a network broadcast only on 5 GHz will never show up. Pick the 2.4 GHz name, or switch 2.4 GHz on in your router. Press Rescan after moving the controller - a network too weak to list is also too weak to run a show on. A hidden network can be typed in by name.
Nothing was changed - the controller is still on its setup network and still showing you the page. Wi-Fi passwords are case-sensitive and at least 8 characters; press Show password to check what you typed, correct it and press Join Network again.
First, make sure your phone is back on your own Wi-Fi - the setup network switched off when the controller moved over. Then open showspark-xxxx.local (the setup Wi-Fi name in lower case, plus .local) or the numeric address the Wi-Fi card showed when it joined.
On a Windows PC, a .local name may not load while your network is marked Public: open Settings > Network & Internet > Wi-Fi, choose your network's properties and set Network profile type to Private. Or plug a USB-C cable from the controller into the computer, open the small SHOWSPARK drive that appears and double-click START HERE - it always opens the address the controller is really using. Your router's list of connected devices shows it too, under a name starting ShowSpark.
That points at Wi-Fi rather than the controller. Check the signal icon at the top of the control center: fair or weak means the show data is struggling to arrive. Move the controller or the router closer, keep metal and walls out of the way where you can, or play the show from the SD card (step 8), which does not use Wi-Fi at all while it plays.
Start with power. Your lights need a DC supply of their own; if the controller's web page loads happily but nothing glows, that supply is the first thing to look at.
Running on USB-C? It will light a few pixels, but a full string asks for far more power than a USB socket can provide, and the usual result is a display that stays dark. Connect the proper supply before concluding anything is broken.
Then check direction: light strings are one-way, and the little arrow printed on them must point away from the controller. A string wired backwards stays perfectly dark and looks exactly like a broken one.
Finally, make sure the port is switched on in Pixel Outputs and its light count is not zero.
Harmless and expected. Different manufacturers send their colors in a different order. Go to Pixel Outputs, change the color order for that port, save, and run the light test again. Work through the options until red really is red.
Usually the light count for that port is lower than the number of lights actually hanging there. Re-count the string and correct the number in Pixel Outputs.
If the string dies at the same physical spot every time no matter what you set, that is hardware - a damaged light or connector. Everything after a failed light goes dark, so the first dark light is the one to replace.
Your controller arrives at 30 percent brightness deliberately - it is gentle on a small bench supply and much kinder to your eyes indoors. Raise it on the Display page whenever you are ready.
Before you push it to full outdoors, make sure your power supply is comfortable with every light at maximum. That is when a display draws the most - and if turning the brightness up brings on flicker or odd colors, the last entry on this list is the one you want.
Live streaming always wins. If a computer is streaming a show to the controller, it will not play from the card at the same time - stop the stream and the card takes over again within a few seconds. The control center tells you when this is what is happening.
Otherwise: is the card actually in, and formatted as FAT32? Use Refresh SD Card if you swapped cards while it was running. If a file genuinely cannot play, the controller says so in plain language and tells you what to change - follow that message, it is usually a one-click fix.
That is the schedule doing its job. While a playlist's time window is open, the schedule keeps it running, so a Stop only lasts until its next check - a few seconds. Show Overview says when a schedule is in charge.
To finish early tonight, open Show Scheduler, untick Enabled for that playlist and press Save Schedule to SD Card; the show stops and stays stopped. Remember to tick it again before tomorrow evening.
If the controller can no longer reach the Wi-Fi it remembers, it keeps trying in the background and, after a short while, brings its own ShowSpark-XXXX setup network back up so you can still reach it. Join that network as in step 2 and do step 3 again with the new details - nothing else needs redoing.
Want to start completely fresh instead? Forget this network on the Wi-Fi card, or the Factory Reset button, both bring the setup network back. Factory Reset also returns every other setting to new; a backup puts those back in one step.
These are the same symptoms as asking too much of USB-C, and the underlying cause is the same: the lights are drawing more power than is actually reaching them. On a real supply it shows up in two distinct ways, and the pattern tells you which one you have.
The whole display misbehaves at once. Every pixel draws current, and across hundreds of them it adds up quickly - a supply that cannot deliver the total sags under load. The giveaway is that it gets worse the brighter you go. Turn the master brightness down on Display: if everything steadies, the supply has reached its limit rather than the controller doing something wrong. (If it looks uniformly dim but perfectly stable, that is the 30 percent factory brightness above, not a power problem.)
The start of a run looks right and the far end fades. Colors drift as you walk along it - whites going yellow, then orange, then red toward the end. Power is being lost along the length of the wire itself, so the last pixels receive noticeably less than the first. The cure is power injection: running a second pair of wires from your supply to the far end of the string, and to the middle as well on long runs, so power arrives from both directions instead of trickling the whole way down. Feed injected power from the same supply, and keep the ground shared.
This is also why longer outdoor runs tend to be 12V rather than 5V - the higher voltage loses less over distance. How many lights you can run before injection becomes necessary depends on the strings you bought, so your supplier's guidance beats any general rule of thumb here.