Before Mattos Designs, there was an apricot orchard in San Jose — over a hundred years in JR Mattos’ family, and the actual birthplace of the Sasquatch MegaTree, the Evo, and everything else you know his brand for.
In the newest episode of the guest interview series, JR tells the full story: the grandfather who got him into this hobby, the invention process behind one of the most-copied products in the space, and the gamble he made during COVID — betting a nonprofit’s last dollars on a drive-thru light show nobody thought would work.
It didn’t just work. It’s the reason Mattos Designs is a full-time business today.
Watch the full conversation above to hear it in JR’s own words — including the question he asked every furious visitor stuck in that two-hour line.
This is part of an ongoing series introducing the people behind the products, shows, and displays across the holiday lighting hobby. [Link to other episodes in the series]
Falcon Player 10 is officially out. Not a beta — the real 10.0, shipped 21 August, closing out five public betas and roughly a year of work. It’s the biggest release in FPP’s history: 1,440 commits, 22 contributors.
I put together a full walkthrough covering everything that’s changed, and spent the most time on the one feature I think actually matters most this release — a real conditional trigger system.
Why this release is different
FPP 10 sits on Debian 13 instead of Debian 12, with a new kernel across every supported board — Pi, BeagleBone, BB64, all of it. That foundation shift is what makes everything else in this release possible, from the media engine swap to the hardware support underneath.
What’s new, at a glance
Media engine, boot & performance — VLC/SDL is gone, replaced by PipeWire + GStreamer, which brings multi-zone audio, AES67, and Opus RTP. fppd starts about 8 seconds sooner on a single-core BeagleBone, and boot time is trimmed more broadly across the board. The headline number here: panel frame prep is up to 4.6x faster on BBBMatrix, thanks to tiled/fused pixel string prep and idle panels parking their PRUs instead of burning cycles.
Interface & workflow — Dark mode across the whole UI, a 3D Virtual Display, the DMX Tester rebuilt as a full Channel Fader with RGBW testing, a calendar scheduler, and a redesigned playlist editor. FPP also now has a formal three-tier UI system — Basic, Advanced, Experimental — which is where the new trigger tools live. Plugin Manager got a redesign too, and plugins now load and unload at runtime without restarting fppd.
Hardware, pixels & networking — DPIPixels replaces rpi_ws281x. BBShiftPanel gets multi-matrix support, four new panel chips, and 1/64 scan. Falcon V4/V5 receivers are supported, per-port pixel protocols expanded, and PocketBeagle2/AM62x boards can now drive 128 strings from a single PRU. mDNS/Avahi auto-discovery means FPP boxes find each other on the network automatically, and MultiSync now defaults to unicast for new installs. A late addition from beta5: a bulk pixel-data API for Pixel Overlay Models — so tools like xLights can push a full frame in one call instead of pixel-by-pixel — plus image draw/scroll support in the Overlay Model Effect itself.
The big one: a real trigger system
This is the part I’d tell you to watch even if you skip everything else.
FPP v9’s GPIO Inputs, Events, and Command Presets gave you flexible one-shot triggers, but no conditions and no memory of state. FPP 10 adds If Condition and Set Variable command types, backed by real Variables and Recurring Tasks pages, plus the plumbing to make it usable in production: command source logging, control-channel values passed as parameters, %VAR:name% on the command API, and trigger-recency compositing.
What that actually gets you: multi-step interactive props, time-and-condition combinations, and a way to debug what fired and why — instead of hand-rolling logic around FPP’s edges. This is shipping, stable functionality in 10.0, not something to wait on.
Built to last
Five betas’ worth of crash-hardening, watchdog work, and a real security pass went into this release. It’s not beta-cycle trivia anymore — it’s just what 10.0 is built on. As one concrete example, the beta cycle caught and fixed a Pi 5 update bug that could leave a board unable to boot, before it ever reached a final release. Flashing is also more reliable across Pi/BeagleBone/BB64 now, and the install images are about 725MB smaller.
Before you upgrade
A few things changed under the hood that are worth knowing before you jump in: rpi_ws281x is dropped, VLC/SDL is removed, WiFi support is in-kernel only now, and Remote XXXX + FPD dongle support (deprecated since 9.0) is gone. Most plugins will need reinstalling. If you’re moving from 32-bit to 64-bit, that requires a re-image — not an in-place upgrade.
Same advice I’d give for any major upgrade: back up your config and test on spare hardware first if you can.
What’s next
Full timestamps and links are in the video description. If the trigger system is as interesting to you as it is to me, let me know in the comments what you’d want a dedicated build-from-scratch tutorial to cover — it’s looking like the next video.
Patrons got early access to this one — if you want future videos a few days ahead of everyone else, https://www.patreon.com/GregMacaree is there for that.
I’m excited to share the latest episode in my guest interview series — this time featuring a name a lot of you will already know: Ron Howard.
Ron’s route into the holiday lighting world isn’t the one you’d expect. He started out as a drummer in a band, moved into photography and sales, and eventually found his way into xTreme Sequences, where he’s become one of the driving forces in the sequencing community. In this interview, we talk through that whole journey — how he got started, what’s kept him in the hobby (and industry) all these years, and the perspective that only someone with his depth of experience can offer.
Whether you’re just getting started with xLights and pixel lighting, or you’ve been sequencing for years, there’s plenty in this conversation worth your time.
This is part of an ongoing series where I sit down with well-known figures across the holiday lighting industry to hear their stories — so if you enjoy this one, keep an eye out for more episodes coming soon.
Grab a coffee and give it a watch above ☕✨
Enjoyed this? Subscribe on YouTube to catch future episodes as soon as they land.
Just wanted to pop in and say the beginner series is still 100% happening — “Your First Animated Light Show — From Zero to Showtime” hasn’t gone anywhere, it’s just taking a bit of time to get right behind the scenes. More on that soon!
In the meantime, I’ve got a new one for you to check out: I got my hands on Pixel-Now’s new Infinity Series ∞Bullets and put them through their paces against regular 12V resistor pixels — power draw, actual light output, running temp, the works. Honestly the numbers surprised even me.
I’m pausing the weekly videos for a few weeks — not stopping, just regrouping. Here’s why, and what’s coming next.
The short version: I’ve been hitting the weekly slot, but I haven’t been making each video as good as I want it to be.
So I’m taking a few weeks to rebuild how I make videos, and to put together a proper beginner series from the ground up — six episodes that take someone from “what is this hobby” all the way to running a small show on their driveway. If you’ve been subscribed for a while, thank you for the patience.
The next video you see from me is going to be a good one.
In this weeks video we take a look at the new Pocketscroller v3 panel matrix controller from Kulp Lights. One small cape, Eight Hub 75 Outputs, 40+ P5 panels wtih 12 bit colour, every output has the E. line so P2’s, P3’s etc. are now in the game. The Pocketscroller v3 from Kulp Lights pairs with the Pocket Beagle 2 to replace a stack of gear with one tidy install. Onboard OLED, RTC, Gigabit Ethernet, 3 Powered USB, Eight User GPIO’s. From $65.
Thanks to Dan Kulp https://kulplights.com for sending me the Pocketscroller used in this video.
This week we take a look some of the new lines to hit the market in 2026! Featuring products from Visionary Light Shows, Kulp Lights, Mattos Designs & Build A Light Show / Gilbert Engineering.
In this video we setup 3 Matrices, P10, P5 & P4 and run them in a side by side test to see which would work best in your show! We set them up using the new FPP 10 (development version) using colourlight cards and compare how they look at distances up to 100′
This week we reivew the new Kulp Lights K16-Pro 16 port pixel controller powered by the new Pocket Beagle 2 Industrial!
Its a great controller, with 16 onboard pixel ports, 8 differential outputs and it runs FPP 9.5 locally on its 64Gb eMMC memory allowing it to run standalone or in remote mode as part of a larger show.
Whats the difference between a Phoenix Connector and an X-Connect?
In the weeks newbies video we run through all the common connectors used in the hobby, explain each from standard controller connectors, through pixel connectors and ending with a quick review of the Slip Connect from Lipich Engineering.
