DiyLightAnimation
Fun => The Porch => Topic started by: cmorda on November 30, 2009,
-
Well, I've been sitting on my two Lynx Express boards, fully built since February (I think) and a bare dongle board. Never got around to ordering the dongle parts until the week before Thanksgiving! D'oh!
Well they came in Friday and I was lucky enough to find another user (on DIYC) just a few blocks from me to program the dongle PIC. Got it all put together and just as I expected everything worked perfectly. Thanks RJ for a great design that just works so nicely out of the box.
I only have 2 Expresses and thought 32 channels would be hard to work with. But then I started putting up lights and I think I will be just fine for this year. 32 seems to be a nice number for me to start with.
I decided to make 2 7 segment leaping arches. Got one done today. 5 hours of work!! Ouch my fingers are sore. but it sure does look cool with the few test sequences I made for it.
I only have some fading/dimming going on right now. I will start with a simple song tomorrow or maybe after I get the other arch done. (Any suggestions?) I am not enough of a visionary to plan design and sequence ahead of setup. I really needed to see what it would look like before I could even think about sequencing. Just me I guess.
Thanks again to RJ for the design and effort of running this forum and everyone who does co-ops. I am very happy to be using this equipment this year!
Chris
-
I'm afraid you got the bug Chris. :) There's no hope for you now. ;D
-
Crude little video of the arch running a test sequence. Shot it on my phone.
Chris
-
Way to go Chris!
Start small... think BIG!
John
-
Greetings,,,
Looks good...
Keith
-
Thanks!
Glad it went well. Looking forward to a full video of the show when done.
RJ
-
I like those arches.
-
Chris,
Looks like you are on your way to a whole lot of fun. Which lights are you using in your arch?
-
Thanks for the compliments. The second one is almost done. I'm using a drill this time but it's still a lot of work. Labor of love :)
I used 7 sets of Wal-Mart clear 100 minis from last year. I got a bunch of them at 75% off.
Chris
-
I'm curious how you guys are making arches chase like that. If there's already an area explaining this just let me know, but If not I'd be interested in hearing what it took to put that together. It looks awesome.
-
I'm curious how you guys are making arches chase like that. If there's already an area explaining this just let me know, but If not I'd be interested in hearing what it took to put that together. It looks awesome.
There are a lot of tutorials on the net, YouTube etc... But here's an explanation of what I did:
10' electrical PVC (Grey) 7 strings of 100 ct minis. decided on 4" on either side for grass/etc (maybe snow for some but not here!). so then a little math: 10' X 12" = 120" - 4" - 4" = 112" / 7(strings) = 16" per string.
So I marked out the PVC with a sharpie at 4" from either end then split the remainder into 16" sections and marked those out. Now we have a PVC with all the marks. time to do the real work.
I took a Craftsman 12mm 1/4" drive shallow socket and squeezed/pounded it into the end of one of the pipes. I took my cordless drill and put in a 1/4" socket driver bit and put the drill into low gear. Now we have a way to spin the pipe.
So then I took a string of minis and cut off the string along socket and insulated the cut wires with heat shring tubing. I then wound the string on in a way that it kind of hold itself on. (lay down a bit of the string and wind over it. hard to explain). I wound it tightly and at the half way point (two wires between the bulbs instead of 3) checked my measurement to make sure I was on track. If it was going a little long (less than 8 inches remaining till the next mark) I overlapped it some to make the mark pretty close. Then I taped the end of the string to the pipe just before the first bulb making sure to keep it wound tight.
Then I would check each string after winding with the plug still attached to make sure I didn't stretch it to death (never happened) and cut the plug off and attached my 18/2 wire with solder and heat shrink tubing. taped it down the pipe at about 16 inch intervals (not covering up your marks though).
Then I repeated it until 7 strands were on. the part I never really solved was how to keep the pigtails from madly twisting around the uncovered pipe and themselves. (I left 10' of wire beyond the PVC for each strand (to go to my Express), with each one a few inches longer than the last to aid in identification).
The last thing I did in the house was bundle all of the 18/2 cables together with some large heat shrink tubing. I used 1" pieces every 16 or so inches. not covering it at all really but it really helps keep the wires from becoming a birdnest. I wired the leads directly into my Express, because I am too cheap to buy all those extension cords.
Of course there are innumerable different ways to accomplish this but this was my way. I am really cheap and would rather do extra work than spend money. I'm sure you could leave the ends on the light strands and use extension cords but it wouldn't be as clean.
Plus I took all those cut off ends and some more 18/2 cable that I had and made my own extension cords for other areas of my display. :) :)
-
My super cheap transmitter. $8.28
http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.12753
same as above but I gutted it and hooked it to an old PC power supply.
Digital tuning. Sound quality is OK. Range is good (at least 2 houses in either direction, sitting in my garage on the bench.)
This thing also has a USB port and an SD card slot and an infrared remote. I have no idea how they do all that for less than $9.
Chris
-
Looks Great
Bill
-
Holdman has a video of him spinning an arch.
http://www.holdman.com/christmas/projects.asp (http://www.holdman.com/christmas/projects.asp)
-
Update:
That transmitter sounds really bad, lots of power but also lots of distortion. Especially on the low notes. It is almost embarrassing to run my show on it.
I ordered one of these last night:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=300374447241&ssPageName=ADME:X:RTQ:US:1123
I think it's the same as the VastElec FM01. Hopefully it will sound better. I am building an antenna for it today.
Chris
-
cmorda,
Thanks for the detailed explanation of how you setup the arches. It helped a lot and actually given me some things to think about as far as construction.
~Dennis
-
gndn: No problem on the explanation. It was kind of fun to describe. My wife was wondering what I was doing pounding out the words on the keyboard though. :)
**
A little more info on my transmitter adventure: The day after I ordered the Vast FM01 I got the cheapo working pretty well by lowering the windows volume to about 15%. The distortions went away and it sounded pretty decent but weak. I think if I could have found the antenna connection and modded it like a belkin with a dipole it would have been suitable.
The Vast FM01 came in and I got it hooked up to a 1/4? vertical dipole like the one on c3i's site but cut for my frequency. The transmitter board fit well in my unused wireless TX case. It does need a good power supply. I tried a regular wall wart and it sounded auful. 60hz buzz like crazy. Hooked it up to an astron and it was nice and quiet. The signal is super strong. Probably too strong, but it sounds so nice.
**
Vixen (or maybe the drivers for the dongle virtual com port) has been giving me some problems with not releasing the com port. I have found that shutting down the show computer between shows seems to help. Also I tried to use the windows scheduler and it made the problem significantly worse.
**
Big thanks to tonypgst for uploading his sequences. I uesd two of them (techno Jingle Bells and carol of the bells). Beautiful work.
Just shot some video of the show tonight. Both songs. It is uploading to Vimeo as I type. I will post the link here when it's done.
**
It's been tons of fun and I am looking forward to next year already!
Chris
-
Hey cmoda could you provide a link for the astron you're referring to or where you got it from and it's specs. Also the link for the dipole. I'm looking to get a better transmitter for next year and have my current one as backup
gndn: No problem on the explanation. It was kind of fun to describe. My wife was wondering what I was doing pounding out the words on the keyboard though. :)
**
A little more info on my transmitter adventure: The day after I ordered the Vast FM01 I got the cheapo working pretty well by lowering the windows volume to about 15%. The distortions went away and it sounded pretty decent but weak. I think if I could have found the antenna connection and modded it like a belkin with a dipole it would have been suitable.
The Vast FM01 came in and I got it hooked up to a 1/4? vertical dipole like the one on c3i's site but cut for my frequency. The transmitter board fit well in my unused wireless TX case. It does need a good power supply. I tried a regular wall wart and it sounded auful. 60hz buzz like crazy. Hooked it up to an astron and it was nice and quiet. The signal is super strong. Probably too strong, but it sounds so nice.
**
Vixen (or maybe the drivers for the dongle virtual com port) has been giving me some problems with not releasing the com port. I have found that shutting down the show computer between shows seems to help. Also I tried to use the windows scheduler and it made the problem significantly worse.
**
Big thanks to tonypgst for uploading his sequences. I uesd two of them (techno Jingle Bells and carol of the bells). Beautiful work.
Just shot some video of the show tonight. Both songs. It is uploading to Vimeo as I type. I will post the link here when it's done.
**
It's been tons of fun and I am looking forward to next year already!
Chris
-
Antenna Info:
http://www.c3inet.com/FM%20Transmitter/index.htm
The formula he has in there ((468/freq)/2) gives you a result in feet for each leg. so just multiply that by 12 for inches.
I didn't use a BNC connector, just soldered some 14 gauge wire to my coax and hot glued the heck out of it into the PVC. The bnc connector would be much cleaner but I was pressed for time.
The Astron power supply I mentioned was just one I had around from Ham radio stuff. They are expensive for this application. A computer power supply made nice clean power too I just didn't want to listen to the fan.
http://www.aesham.com
Chris
-
OK, here's the link I promised. It took a really long time to upload 220 MB to vimeo.
http://www.vimeo.com/8435118
Starts out a bit quiet then after 20 seconds or so I realize it and turn up the car radio :P
Chris