DiyLightAnimation
Fun => The Porch => Topic started by: zwiller on December 13, 2013,
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Lost entire last weekend with DJing setup/teardown of niece's wedding. I have 3/4 of display up and finishing last few elements which of course took much longer than anticipated. Sleep deprived, no feeling in my finger tips, 6" inches on the weekend forecast. Hope to be live Saturday. Anyone else???
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That's normal. So what's wrong?
The minute you get the point that you are not doing anything Murphy will come along and fix that. :)
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I have a partial show up but had planned to be further along. First year RGB mixed in and it's been challenging. With all the delays due to family commitments I'm happy to be able to have lights up. Definitely learned a ton and have big plans for next year. I will also start much earlier to set up.
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That's normal. So what's wrong?
The minute you get the point that you are not doing anything Murphy will come along and fix that. :)
Touche'
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I went to Florida to visit my daughter last week and fell way behind. Got about 60% working for Tuesday and adding every day - and still the people come. I think I may be able to complete setup just before I tear it all down in January. :)
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Just about finished up last night and was running a dress rehearsal and my transmitter started to go out. I had a feeling. When I move the movers snapped off one of the legs of my antenna. I thought it might hurt my transmitter if I wasnt careful. I tried it and although it was not as good a range it seemed fine. That lasted for about 30 min. then it started sputtering. I shut it off immediately but now need to make a dipole to see how bad it is.
Are we still having fun? LOL
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Thanks guys, guess I am not alone.
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Almost everyone I know is still doing some setup and / or sequence tweaking. The only ones that are not are those that used 100% of last years elements and sequencing.
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Same boat without a skipper. I think my show has been running 2x when I get home since Thanksgiving weekend. Either I screwed up something with xlights, or the computer does something like sleep, or I don't exit and come back in or who knows.
Still sequencing have hours and hours into one song and its maybe a 1/3rd complete. Discouraging, and I need more lights.
Was putting up 1/2 of a DSC strip on a big bay window because I thought I had 2 strips left. It was a scrap and a full strip. Therefore that is coming from a different eBay seller than my normal one, so I am sure the colors will not match!
Spent hours last night with Mike from LSP getting the scheduler going. Will see if I have a show at sunset today! Last night I managed to screw that up too with manual.
Need to see if schedules does the shimmer and twinkle well, as the sequencer does not.
So I feel your pain, and oh I don't have a sign up yet for tune in. Everyone just slows down and moves on in a few seconds!
That maybe will be this weekend, maybe.
Going to watch the great Christmas light fight tonight!
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk
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I am so far behind. Late taking down Halloween, had a couple things that stayed up, then weather took them out. Work had a fire and days off went up in smoke.
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I'm not really scrambling. My show has been running since last weekend but I have a section of garland lights out that upon further inspection was a bulb that shorted out and melted the housing. So I'll be swapping that back out tonight or tomorrow morning. The sequencing needs work but I can't seem to get motivated enough to adjust it. I put my tree together in the living room and its been a fight to keep that thing lot this year. It is what it is.
DJ
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Almost everyone I know is still doing some setup and / or sequence tweaking. The only ones that are not are those that used 100% of last years elements and sequencing.
Not true, the ice put a big stop on my mega tree, to lights stopped work, still need to dig out the FM Transmitter, using same seqs as last year, still have christmas shopping that has to come first according to the boss. Guess imm not into that much this year as i was not going to do it because of the boss, then she says in late october that she just wanted different music, really now she tells me i think to my self.
oh well at least I have a head start for next year.
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I think I have figured out why I am disappointed is that I worked on my sequences all year so they are ready AND I finally made a tune to sign. So at least I did SOME things on time. Tonight or more likely real early Sat I plan to finish last rgb arch splicing, splicing live tree nodes, program and mount SSCs. Then at the crack of dawn start the last of the setup before the snow hits.
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I see sequencing tweaks that need to be done all season long. It's the nature of the beast. Sometimes things don't look as good as I envision, so I modify accordingly.
But as of Monday or Tuesday this week, I'm running all my sequences, radio imaging, etc to a perfectly timed out 10 minutes!
I still feel like I was "rushed" this year and didn't get to some of the projects I wanted. There's always next year!
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I've generally managed to leave things be for three days in a row. Want to make three mini trees to stick under my arches but tonight it's -10 and tomorrow 8" of snow. So i may just get back to cleaning up sequences. I have 4 I love. I have More that need some serious clean up
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i was scrambling to get my live tree filled with 4,000 mini's but learned a valuable lesson about store bought leds. THEY SUCK! lol 80% of my white are not working, 40% of my blue. I got the bottom row of branches and stopped. I think I am done scrambling. order light keeper pro but it won't be here until next week. 4000 minis wrapping each branch individually is a real pain in the rear but worth it when it's done.
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It's amazing how adding just a few new elements completely changes everything you do. I have a running show with mediocre sequencing. Everyone except me loves it.
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I've never in this bad of shape at this time before. But I did jump from under 4k channels to 18.8k channels and lots of rgb. I'm starting to get a grasp around how to marry LOR and nutcraker together ... but I found out that my 2013 LOR config file seems to reprogram things by accident. I think I removed things and should not have!
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Disappointing is when a show has run flawlessly 1 day then an SSC or cable which drives 4 Hexatrees goes bad and it's going to rain tomorrow. Murphy strikes again. Maybe it's just a cable gone bad and I can make a quick replacement tomorrow. UGH
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Mr Murphy has paid me more visits this year than all years prior combined !
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Mr Murphy has paid me more visits this year than all years prior combined !
Amen. I should send him a Christmas card.
My high-wire guy couldn't get here until yesterday (if it can go wrong, it will), but that was OK, since I was so far behind (ditto). All the upper elements are installed, but only a few working ... last night I was wandering around in the dark looking for my needle nose pliers and couldn't do the next thing without them.
All of a sudden I realized that I was cold, tired and dirty and hadn't had lunch. Decided that the Dec. 13 show would be just a few elements running my fade-in-fade-out test sequence without music.
I have a lot of non-show things to do today, so it probably won't be finished for tonight either.
\dmc
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I'm done scrambling, but feeling totally scrambled. Once I threw in the towel on adding RGB elements and decided to just tweak last years show a bit, things moved very quickly. I'm up and running !
However, setup spawned a dozen new design ideas, so I'm almost glad my RGB efforts got postponed. Now I'm just doing some sequencing for more songs and repairing things as fast as Murphy can put the kiss of death on them. Also plan getting a jump on next year by doing after-hours unit testing on new elements while the entire show is wired up.
Mike E.
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Mr Murphy has paid me more visits this year than all years prior combined !
Amen. I should send him a Christmas card.
It gets better and better ... my Lynx Splitter, which worked just fine on the bench six weeks ago, seems to have died in the field (it's in a TA-200, which itself is inside the power/phone box on the side of the house, so elements didn't hurt it).
Question I'm pondering: Do I troubleshoot the Splitter or do I just pull 50 extra feet of Cat5 (which, ironically, I have in reserve just for something like this)?
\dmc
PS: Murphy, thy name is Scrooge.
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Pull the cable, the simple things first!
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I would check to make sure that the splitter is still getting power. If so and this late into the season, I would pull the extra cable and look into what happened to the splitter later.
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It's "DONE" heatmizer is in rotation, WAY too long of a song, next time I will split something that long or look for a edit that is shorter..
Some flaws to fix in the next few days, but not many will notice besides me.
The wife went after some magnetic sheets to make tune in 107.5 to put on the garage door. I gotta make the DSC or flexible ribbon sign in the next few days. Thinking I might need to make a couple of signs from the sounds of it.
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No, but Thanks for making ME feel SO much better about my December 5th live date!!!!
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I'm so far behind that I basically didn't get anything done. I've decided to have a 4th of July show this year. Not because I want to do all the extra work, but it will force me to get my stuff done earlier.
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This took way longer than I thought it would, does not help when you continue to solder the splices when the wires are NOT IN THE TUBE. <fp.
I had the SSC programmed to match the same channels as something else in the yard, so it was just plug and play for showing up in different parts of the sequences.
Alan
(http://www.webbyhome.com/images/20131215_Tune-in-sign-sm.jpg)
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I think that I am done scrambling and am going to have to face the fact that I am going to be a pretty much static display this Christmas :-[
Yesterday's snow (16+ inches + drifts) has buried all my cables and some of the display elements before I got the LEs deployed. Lesson learned, I need to start putting stuff outdoors much earlier for next year.
Before snow (Friday, Dec 13)
(http://i42.tinypic.com/dcey6o.jpg)
After snow (Monday, Dec 16)
(http://i42.tinypic.com/2mgv4mq.jpg)
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Wow...that storm left 8" here....it must of really picked up steam over Lake Ontario...I was talking to a few guys from Nova Scotia at work on Friday and they were getting ready for it.
Get a 4' piece of rebar and a big hammer and then stick a 3/4" piece of PVC over it and then screw the cg1500 onto it.
this weekend we have 40-50degrees upon us so it's all going to melt. I'm worried about a few things, but will see how it goes!!
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Thanks for the reminder of why I moved south.
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Finished building and testing the last of my elements. Got another 1" of snow last night so about 10" on the ground here. Forecast is optimistic for late week so I have a shot. I am getting tons of calls and bs about being late...
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Note to self..look at rules around US citizenship. I guess the easiest way is to marry a US gal, mind you that would also be a VERY costly approach. At least fall is almost over and then only three months of winter before spring gets here. My fingers crossed already for the groundhog.
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Note to self..look at rules around US citizenship. I guess the easiest way is to marry a US gal, mind you that would also be a VERY costly approach. At least fall is almost over and then only three months of winter before spring gets here. My fingers crossed already for the groundhog.
Do you want us to get started with the on-line dating profile? >:D
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Question I'm pondering: Do I troubleshoot the Splitter or do I just pull 50 extra feet of Cat5 (which, ironically, I have in reserve just for something like this)?
I've compromised for the last three nights -- I took out a single element in order to cable in six elements.
This morning I pulled the splitter out of the cabinet and put it on the bench. Checked the AC on the near side of the bridge rectifier and all was well. Checked the DC on the far side of the rectifier and nada. Rummaged around for a spare DF01, replaced it and the splitter began splitting again.
Now I can put back the cabling the way it's supposed to be.
Of course, the next problem is taking down a PVC pipe full of pixels and splicing out the dead one ...
\dmc
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Oh boy. Splicing pixels. Is this the first bad one in the string or a common occurrence. I had two strings of 100 that ended up with 20 bad nodes in them. It was messy. Got the entire strings replaced and life is better. Knock wood.
I was smart I think when I mounted on the PVC as I used zip ties and didn't get too tight I could easily slide them out and replace.
Hope your splicing adventures are less adventurous then mine were.
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Had a good evening of prep. All remaining element channels programmed and tested. Ready for install. Target is Thursday when temps should rise and the 10" of snow will melt (mostly).
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Wow, Sam, you really are late this year. Did Ray's shipping delay set you back that far, or did the OCD creep in and get you? I'm not happy with any of the sequences, but they are running and I plan to tweak them a little bit more for next year after I make it up to 7 not perfect. Maybe by january 1 when I plan to take it down at least 2 will be no longer needing some tweaks.
Plotting on next years additions, just don't know what they will be yet.
Alan
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It was the perfect storm of Ray's delays, work, weather, and family events. I did lose last weekend to OCD: Found out you have to inject power on 20+ rectangular modules to get full white to look good. Fairly confident that once all is running I will more fun waiting for me...