My Year in Review ...
Begining of year - out of work!
Spend lots of time looking for job...
No jobs to be had...
Decide to put in a garden.
Weird Spring weather pattern...
garden yields few results
gave up on garden for the year!
August - gave up looking for work - decided to retire...
September now, struck up casual conversation with fellow church member,
says he was starting a part-time job at the local park. The following week
I asked him how his job went. He explained that he was setting up an animated lighting display for the park
and asked if I wanted to see it!
Went to park - they were using LOR equipment and software along with Holiday Lights!
He shows me the sequencer! Since my background was in electronics and programming, I'm interested!
Early October now, a neighbor starts setting up his display. He's been doing this for 5 or 6 years and has a very nice setup.
Still intrigued, I go over and he shows me his gear - Animated Lighting - 96 channels - sub-panel in his garage - very nice!
Can't sleep, keep mulling over details about power and equipment needed.
I'm getting hooked... The mightest idea springs forth from a little seed!
Spare time spent reading about LOR and AL gear...
Mid-October now, I order my LOR1602W and software...
long delay till it gets here...
I decide to run four twenty amp circuits. Keep the clerks at Lowes and Home Depot busy!
I had only dealt with romex before so needed to learn lots about local electrical codes and practices.
decide to mount controllers inside basement which means everything is home-run...
need more wire...
cut hole in sill-plate - getting serious now!
drilled another hole to run two of the circuits outside.
Ordered 1000' SPT-2 wire and assorted plugs.
LOR still not here... ripped Linux off a spare pc and put XP back on to control the schedule...
November now, take inventory of any available objects I can use for my display...
LOR stuff arrives... mount controller and start running wires...
Out of wire, order another 1000'...
Start playing with S2, thought this would be easy... finally dawns on me that this is the tough part...
Decide to order packaged seqs from LOR -- ouch!
getting late now, but weather is good. Clean local Lowes out of LED lights during sale...
Scour internet for free seqs, most have way more objects and channels than my puny 16.
Dreams of adding even larger number of channels...
Love LOR stuff but need cheaper solutions...
Looking now at DIY solutions... Renard, etc... confusing what, where to get all of this. Seems like each piece
of the puzzle needs to be gotten from different sources... Will it all work together?
Stumble upon DLA and RJ...
Like what I see, decide to plunge...
This is like an exploration... got the dongle, assembled, doesn't smoke! Off to an auspicious start!
Mouser must think I'm nuts... every night ordering more parts as I discover even more RJ stuff...
Freestyle, SSR, DMX what the heck is that... another learning curve....
Meanwhile, manage to squeeze out three seqs of my own. Each one better than the first.. Still no match for the stuff
I see on the net!
Decided to have hour shows broken into 15 min segments - I want a msg every 15min - each segment with different seqs...
First run, disaster. scheduler doesn't do what I thought! Timing of seqs a little off, starts first song over, whole seg runs over 15 min.
Each subsequent segment delayed even more and so it continued. Added some dummy loops of 30 secs each to end of each segment.
re-arranged some selections to balance everything out.
Second run, no segment runs over their allotted time by more than 1 minute - life is good again!
Decide to to try LightShow Pro. Quite a change over S2. another learning curve - great just what I needed!
Vixen, isn't that a reindeer?
Xlights, sounds like a science fiction film from Alaska!
FS stuff arrives, driving RJ crazy with constant PM's about pcb's
Discover a fault in my plan. when I ordered kit parts from Mouser I told them to combine shipments!
They did!!! Spent half a day sorting parts for each kit...
FS built still no smoke! But is it working? Go thru troubleshooting guide checking voltages. Everything checks out!
Build SSR/DMX - no smoke yet! Put on some lights, success - they blink!
More dreams of filling out all 128 channels... More PM's to RJ for pcb's Mouser here we go again!
Cases, need cases. More learning about demarc cases and sources. Blue Ridge? What the heck is that!
First coop of 2011 hits, Lynx Express. Way cheaper than my LOR... Sign me up!!
Bank account dwindling...
UPS man starting to complain...
Lights!!! All these channels -- what to do! 2011 plans begin. Need more lights!
CDI sale - Oh the pain! This is starting to get expensive!
discover wireless - here we go again!
Smart Strings -- this is worse than pc's - everytime you turn around something new, better, and more money.
Aether - need to build a wall that I can flood!
Christmas almost here now, decide to put all aside - PEACE at last!
Been quite the year, and I wish all of you and your families the BEST of Christmas Wishes and thanks to all who
have helped me on this journey!
PEACE!!!
