Smart string icicles

[smeighan]

I am thinking of making 5 pixels (with the 3" spacing) and then having 30" of wire and then 5 pixels .etc.

I am thinking of putting the 5 pixels into thin pvc. One end would have a cap that i will have a hook for attaching to my tree branches. I have protoyped a target generator and will create effects in Nutcracker similar to what Madrix does with their ceiling full of icicles.

One question is how long can the cable be from the smart string controller? I was thinking of hanging 10 icicles from one controller, 5 pixels in each.

This means 50 pixels and 450" of cable. Will i have a voltage drop problem?


===========15" cable ========>+   +=========15" cable =================+  +======= 15" cable ========
                              |   |                                    |  |
                              X   |                                    X  |
                              |   |                                    |  |
                              X   |                                    X  |
                              |   |                                    |  |
                       15"    X   |   15"                              X  |
                        down  |   |    up                              |  |
                              X   |                                    X  |
                              |   |                                    |  |
                              X   |                                    X  |
                              |   |                                    |  |
                              +---+                                    +--+

X=pixels



thanks

[MrChristmas2000]

It might depend on what type of pixels you plan to use, rectangels, strips, or pixel strings.

I separated the rectangles by a total distance of 8ft and had to do power injection on the opposite end. I plan a test soon of separating the rectangles by a distance of about 15ft and I'm pretty sure that power injection will certainly be required there.

[pk]

Sean -

What if you used 1" thin wall PVC and put the controller in the first icicle.....

[smeighan]

Sean -

What if you used 1" thin wall PVC and put the controller in the first icicle.....

That is what i plan on doing. I will will have 30" spacing between icicles. I want to put 50-60 icicles on my tree (5 or 6 ssc's) and then sequence the tree. I have a plan on how to locate all 50 of the individual icicles (each will have 5 pixels) in x,y,z space. This would allow me to do things like spirals across the tree, meteors that are not just one icicle, but the whole tree.

shh, it is my secret auto configuration of 3d object sin my yard project.

[taybrynn]

Its a neat idea.  I think the odds of possibly losing signal or voltage between nodes is rather high.  I used the modules into mega balls with maybe 20" between each and some just could not do the distance while others had no problems.  So I would test it out in advance to make sure it all works.  In fact, I did that, but still had to remove a couple balls that would not re-transmit in the field for some reason.  Luckily I had quick connectors between every ball, so removing the troublesome balls was easy.  In fact I replaced them with extension cords (wire only) in between with quick connectors on either end and then it worked.

[chrisatpsu]

once you start fabricating the aperatus, (Lol, sounds sooo technical)   you can test out with your first string, since i think you might end up making more than one.


a nice thing about all the rgb pixels everywhere is you can randomly turn them on for a quasi-strobe effect.   
last year i has the bottom half of the mega treee in rows of red and white, and had the top mostly blue, with some white scattered about.   i then turn on just the white (in the blue) randomly to give a little bit of sparkle to my patriotic part of the display.  if came out really well.   but on that note, you can make eveything random and red, or teal, or whatever. sure they may not be as bright as strobes, but it still gives off a really cool effect.

[n1ist]

You could always use a larger guage wire between the icicles; that would cut down on the voltage drop.
/mike

[pk]

Based on taybrynn's comments, it sounds like you will have problems with 30 inches of wire between icicles. IMO it is a data signal integrity issue rather than a voltage issue. (The explanation gets a bit too technical for a thread)   There is the null node option where a node is used to just regenerate the data signal and is never turned on.