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.