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.. 

Pressing on..

After being sick last week, it knocked me back about a week with the outside lights. I have played some catch up but still a ways to go. On Sunday I put together a Pixel Matrix that I got in.

I had to solder together 4 sets of pixels with a total of 162 pixels. Then I had to put all the pixels into a Coro board that has 162 holes in it to make a matrix that is 18 pixels wide by 9 pixels high. 

It took a while to get all the pixels installed but it worked out well. I will be able to scroll text on this matrix or even show animated sprites. Nothing high resolution. I will say original Nintendo level graphics. My plan is display the FM frequency so people will know where to tune in and listen to the music that will be coordinated with the lights.

I also had to put pigtails onto the 8 sets of 50 lights for my mini trees. I put together a test tree with pipe cleaners to tie them to the metal wire.

Now that I got pigtails onto the 8 sets, now I can use wire ties to put them on there for good. I hope to have those done by Sunday so I can start to get the software side of things put together.

Got sick but chugging (or coughing) along..

Last week I started to get a small cough and by Wednesday I woke up and did not feel good at all.. Typically I will take a day or two off and just suffer through it at home in bed. But this time felt different, I was struggling breathing and my throat and upper chest were hurting and there was a little bit of blood in the mucus I was coughing up. So I decided to go to Urgent Care (which is next to my work) and have them look at it. The Dr said it looked like a normal cold but I am weezing a little bit which is a sign of possible Bronchitis. So she prescribed me some antibiotics to get rid of any issue there and there isn't much she could do about the cold/virus part. Didn't take long after the antibiotic for the chest pain and weezing to subside. The virus/cold lasted another couple days. Unfortunately I am still coughing. I think it's a mixture of post nasal drip and allergies that is causing it. The down side is that as a sales person, I have to talk to people. Well it's hard to talk to people when you are having a coughing attack. Since I have high blood pressure I can not use decongestants as they increase your blood pressure. So I am living off of cough drops for the most part. I hope it clears up soon.

Final initial tests

Well I have finished my initial tests that I needed to do so I can plan my layout. On Saturday I brought out last years controllers and hooked them up to make sure they are still operating and then I put them into a test pattern. Then I hooked them up to the strips I have left on the roofline all summer. Everything tested perfectly. The strips along the roof line looked great with no bad pixels.

My plan for Sunday was to mow my lawn and then straighten out all the strips. They are inside a pipe called PEX that they use for water. The PEX over time has tried to curl back up so the strips look a little wavy. Unfortunately the weather was not so great in the morning and I couldn't mow the lawn due to the wetness of the grass. So I mostly relaxed till noon and then went up to radio shack to pick up a couple items I needed for the radio transmitter. After I got back I ran a test on that.

The transmitter works better than I thought it would. I took a drive around my neighborhood to see how well it transmits. With the transmitter inside the house I was able to drive through most of my neighborhood and hear it.

After that successful test I just relaxed and really kept thinking about my next steps. I decided to pull out my sequence player and get that up to speed. The player is a Raspberry Pi Model B using Falcon Pi Player software. 

The Raspberry Pi is just a small computer you can buy for around $40. It only has the bare essentials on it. You need an SD card to run the Operating System and a USB Drive to be able to save Sequences, Music and Video. I also added a USB Wireless Ethernet Adapter. The Pi already has an Ethernet port but that will be used to communicate with the e6804 controllers via e1.31 (essentially DMX over Ethernet) so I will use the wireless to be able to access the Pi to set things up and control everything via their web interface.

I turned on the Pi and everything booted as it did last year. I knew they had a new version coming out so I looked to see that I was running version 0.2 and I noticed that just a few days ago they released version 0.4. I downloaded it and installed the new software.

After a little while the Pi rebooted with the new software without any issues. It also was able to read my old sequences and settings without any issue. 

My next step is I really need to finalize my layout and elements so I can start working on putting it together and also setting up all the software. This is my kind of project. It makes me think and keeps me busy.

Good tests

Well tonight I tested all the new lights I got in to make sure they work with no issues and everything worked as they should.

Pretty much I got 500 bullet style pixel nodes that will be attached to some wire to look like a small tree.. 50 per tree and I plan on 8 trees so that will leave me with 100 extra nodes.

Then I got 300 technicolor nodes that will have C9 frosted covers on them to give a traditional Christmas light look. I got these to possibly replace the RGB strips along the roof line. I will attemp to test the strips tomorrow night or Saturday night. If they are good to go and don't seem to have any issues then I will have these to do another task. I'm just not sure what that would be just yet.

The last thing I got were 10 plastic frosted RGB stars. I have to do a test but these may go on part of my roof or I may have to make something with a mesh for them to attach to. We shall see.

The Sandevices E6804 has a built in test pattern to test these lights without a sequencer to do it for you. You access this through a web server built onto the device and using a web browser on a computer or tablet/phone.

Well I am done for tonight.. Will make slow progress over the next few weeks into mid-October to have them running for Halloween. 

Just starting

Well I have started getting my Christmas lights put together. This evening, after work, I put together a box, that is water resistant, that contains a 350watt 12volt 30amp power supply and one of the light controllers that will communicate over ethernet using e1.31 to the sequencer. The controller is made by Sandevices called an e6804 and two of the four channels will control 8 of the Christmas trees I am going to put together. More on that later. I will have room to add more things to this controller in the future. Over the next few nights I hope to test all the RGB light strings I got in to make sure I have no bad pixels and I hope to pull out last years boxes to test my overhead lights that have been up all summer to see if I have any bad strips. 

Blessed

I was really blessed last weekend by Ron and Faye. They took me and my brother to Dallas, TX to see the Cowboys play the 49ers.

It was an awesome time. Despite the Cowboys losing, I got to see this awesome stadium and get to see my team play (horribly I might add) at home.

The main video display in the stadium is absolutely awesome. It goes from the 20yd line to the 20yd line. That's 90' long (not inches but feet). The display is crystal clear as well. During the game you had to remind yourself that your at the game and to stop watching the TV.. 

The day after the game we went back to the stadium for what they call Rally Day and a stadium VIP tour. The tour was awesome as you got to see a lot of places you wouldn't normally have access to like box suites and the locker rooms for both the team and the cheerleaders. Also got access to Jerry Jones private viewing area for the game.

After the tour we had the opportunity to go on to the field and do whatever. Take pictures, there were people kicking and throwing footballs, there were cheerleaders taking pictures with people, signing autographs  as well as some alumni players. Had the opportunity to see the five Lombardi trophies as well.

Our seats for the game were awesome. Before the game we got to see some celebrities on the field like Emitt Smith, Kelli Finglass, Charles Haley and Jerry Jones.

Another cool thing is that I ended up on TV at the 2min warning towards the end of the game. It was taped prior to the game. I knew they were taping me. 

I had an absolutely awesome time and I wanted to Thank Ron and Faye for everything. It was a true blessing.