Been a while

It's been a while since I last posted. I had got sick for a little while so progress has been slow going. I am starting to run out of time. I have been having issues with my 4 other trees.. I decided against using a spiral and will do matrix style mini tree. I will have more options when sequencing.

I took the spiral cage and used 1/2" hardware cloth and cut them in strips. I used 50 pixels and the pixels fit great in the 1/2" hole.

Now the stars that I have I attached to the top using zip ties and eye hooks. I had wiring issues being different than the pixels so I had to open the stars and rewire them. Well my first round I had issues using butt connectors. I tried to go the easy cheap way that ended up causing problems. So I had to open them back up and solder them with some extensions.

Well after running some tests after redoing all the stars, I ran into more problems which seemed to be power issues. Bad data was being sent past the stars. Now I am at a loss and am frustrated. After some thinking I decided to take the LEDs in the stars and put in my own LEDs. It won't be as bright but I will be able to use multiple colors in the star.

I got two of them done tonight and have two more to do and then I have to zip type them to the trees. In the end it will look like this.

Hope to have them done before Thursday and I hope to have them on the lawn Thursday morning and figure out where to put my Technicolor C9 pixels. I hope to have everything done and running next weekend. 

Halloween over time for Christmas

Now that Halloween is over, it's time to continue on to more of a Christmas atmosphere.. Hallmark channel has started 24hr a day Christmas shows and I need to finish up my other lights and start to get them in place.. Today I removed my trees and matrix so I can do one final lawn mow for the year. Thankfully that is all done. 

I am now putting the bulb covers on my technicolor strings. I was doing them the wrong way before which hurt my hands. How they go together is with a plastic coupler but it didn't work so well by just screwing it together.

So I kinda learned that if I heat up the coupler that it will losen the plastic enough that it goes right on and then it hardens as it cools.

And now I just have 299 more to do. Much easier than how I was trying to do this earlier.

After these are done then I need to finish my mini-trees. The ones I have already done may get redone as well because I like how another person did something similar and I may replicate that.

No more Halloween

Well I am done messing with Halloween.. As I have said before, I am not a big fan of it to begin with. I don't want to put too much time into messing with the lights for Halloween when I have a lot to do for Christmas still. So tonight I figured out good coloring for Orange on the RGBs (standard windows orange comes out yellow on the pixels so had to make adjustments to look orange which was almost red in windows) and for purple. After getting the colors right I used Vixen 3 to sequence in some animations and got them running. No music though..

My next step is to continue on towards my Christmas display.. I have 4 more trees to put together and I have a lot of thinking to do for other elements.. I still have a full roll (5 meters) of RGB strips, 300 technicolor pixels and 10 RGB stars to figure out what I am going to do with. I also have to pull my RGB Flood lights out. 

After I get all of that worked out then I need to build a sequence which is not proving easy. Takes a lot of time and thinking involved. Have to pick out music and have to try an visualize how I will edit the lights to it. Pressing onward....

Spooky..

As you know, I put out my trees and got everything running. Even got to do some sequencing. As I worked out the bugs in my configuration, it really bugged me having trees on the Lawn for Halloween. I am not a big fan of Halloween but I am just using the holiday as an opportunity to get my lights up early. Similar to someone who drinks, use any holiday as an excuse to drink more.

I was thinking about disconnecting the trees and putting them away till after Halloween but I decided to get creative and try to figure a way to not have to put them away. So I decided to dress the trees up. I went to Home Depot and got an acrylic globe for outdoor lights and got round outdoor plastic table cloth to turn my trees into little ghosts.. 

Now it will be any easy turnaround after Halloween to switch back to trees. I just have to take them off (hope it doesn't get too windy).. I can also learn how to sequence them while being Halloweenish.. 

The colors of the LEDs were supposed to be the same color but it took me a little bit to figure out what I had wrong in my configuration. I had my LED Flood Lights programmed in but not hooked up so it threw off the colors.. Got that all fixed and now I am ready to sequence.

Getting closer..

Was able to straighten out all the PEX along the roofline and setup all the controllers as well as install the matrix and four trees. If all goes well, I hope to run my ethernet wires and get the raspberry pi and fm transmitter installed tomorrow and I will be ready to program the sequences in.

Making progress..

Despite still getting over this sickness, I was able to rebuild my control boxes. They are now prepared to be mounted on 2' fence posts. Also mounted the components on a premade board for the power supply and controller board to mount to. 

I had to do three boxes. Each have a 350w power supply, e6804 controller board and two spots for power injection which need fuses to protect the wires.

I also put bolts in the back so the boxes can mount to the fence posts with wing nuts.

My next step is to install these boxes outside, doing some wiring, turn on the roof lights and install clamps to start straightening the lights on the roofline.

After the roofline is complete, I can start my final programming for Halloween and get that running. Then I need to figure out where I am going to put the rest of the lights I have for Christmas and finish the other 4 trees I have.

This weekend went well..

Got accomplished what I was looking to accomplish. First I got the lawn mowed. Hope it was the last time or at least second to the last time having to mow the lawn.

The second thing I wanted to get done was having 4 mini-spiral trees complete. Each tree takes a couple hours to put together. 

Thankfully I got all 4 completed. Not only was I able to complete them but I was also able to hook the system up to the network and use XLights to send more comprehensive patterns to the controller to see what adjustments I need to make.

I did notice that I will need to do power injection either between tree 2 and 3 or at the end of tree 4. Power injection is needed when the 12v drops too low to fully power all the strings. Adding an additional 12v to the end or middle will allow more power into the strings.

Here is a video of the trees running under XLights..