Number of minis in a mega tree

[castortiu]

I finished my mega tree and I'm disappointed with the luminosity, I did a 15 feet 64 channels WRGB 180 degress, it has 3 strands per color/channel with a total of 19200 minis, I did not test yet with the the LE's turning on the whole tree but just turning on every channel manually and looks too dark. Also because I did just a 180 degree base the lights are much closer each other and still doesn't look good.

What’s is the average of minis for a mega tree to look good and bright?, I think may be the problems are the minis, I got the minis from Fred Meyer and the luminosity of each color is lame, specially the blue and red.

Cas.

[RJ]

My first year was 48 channel of minis one string each channel of red green blue and it was pretty bright. I use Walmart 100 count mini's.

RJ

[kylec]

Mine is the same as RJ.  16 channels / color, 1 string / channel.  I thought it was plenty bright!

Kyle   

[rrowan]

Hi Cas,

Just a thought are you using the LE to control the lights?

If so have you play with different light curves. While it won't make it brighter it can help the dimming range. I don't know if there is time to send a set to RJ for a custom light curve or if RJ even has time to do that this late in the season.

Cheers

Rick R.

[magic8192]

I used 14,400 minis Red Green Clear last year on a 20 ft mega tree and it looked good.

[Made2Rock]

Mine is 48 channels with 200 minis from Wally World and the thing is BRIGHT. Boils down to 12 double strings of Red, White, Blue and Green.

[castortiu]

Yes I'm using LEs, but I'm testing every channel individually just plugging them at the extension cords.

I'll upload a pic tonight, but I have 20K lights and don’t look good, I spend $500 on lights in this tree .

I don’t  have a Wal-Mart close to home, and Home Depot doesn’t sell Red/Blue/Green minis, just clear or multis.
Didn’t go to Lowe’s yet but too late to change now, at least I’ll try to get different brands and compare with the Fred Mayer brand.

I’ll upload a pic of the boxes too, may be you want to stay away from this brand.

Cas.

[jnealand]

My old tree had 32 strings of 100 ct minis in an up and down next to each other config 4 colors, 8 strings each.  It looked ok, but I was only using 16 channels 4 per color.  Last year I switched to 64 strings of LEDs in 4 colors.  Much brighter and I used 8 channel for the clear light and just total color for the RGB and it looked much better.  Combining two colors at a time looked great and I could also spin the clears in conjunction with another color for variety.  This year my lights are the same, but am going to 32 channels which will give me 8 channels per color letting me spin all the colors.