DiyLightAnimation
Fun => The Porch => Topic started by: scharbon on November 11, 2013,
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Seeing the "Operation Nutcracker" thread kind of got me wondering where everyone is with respect to their shows? Only 2 1/2 weeks until unofficial "lights on".
My status:
- I have all my light strings checked and ready to hang, I have all of my controllers checked and working (both SSC and DMX). ETD works
- I have 4 new songs and an opening sequence completed and looking pretty good (14 minutes of blinky flashy).
- BUT I HAVEN"T SET UP ANYTHING. Our HOA manages some of the property that I temporarily "appropriate" for the month of NOV/DEC and the lawn service guys haven't completed the season. Last year I set up one week too early and they mowed my power cords and cat5 cables (it was different kind of light show than I expected when I powered it up not realizing what they had done). I will not be repeating that mistake. My guess is I will not be able to start until next weekend at the earliest. I am confident, however, that I'll get 'r done.
Where is eveyone else on setting up their show?
Steve
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Most of the lights mounted on my house go up for Halloween - one of the beautiful things about using RGB. Nothing goes on the lawn until Thanksgiving week. Need to pick up the leaves as long as possible.
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Being my first year, I've gotten in WAY over my head...but... I did use Halloween to work out a lot of the bugs.
Done
1 - megatree built
2 - mounted roof and window lights
3 - tune to & singing coro sings built and mounted (twice mounted, because of wind)
4 - three arches built and mounted
5 - 21 candy canes planted and connected to the LEs
6- raspberry pi scheduler pretty much figured out and loaded with 5 test sequences to drive the signs and candy canes
7- 9' nutcracker built
Outstanding
1 - finish adding RGB to the sequence (it might just be a onsets and random light display for me this year)
2 - finish the three coro canes (if my order from Ray ever arrives)
3 - build the two aetherIIs
4 - build some mini trees (if my order from Ray ever arrives)
5 - figure out what to put on the dog house
Not 100% sure I'll be ready in 2 weeks, but fingers and toes are crossed!!
I just have to be 100% sure that I don't leave the wifes gift until the 24th of December. If she gets another vacuum this year it maybe my first and last year of this hobby!
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2 WEEKS, 2 WEEKS :-\
Oh that hurts.
As with DrLucas it's the first year, I don't even know what all I have to do yet, but just some of it.
Finish sequencing the first song, that's been a struggle learning the software, but making some real progress now.
Then pick two more songs with family help
need to order a fm transmitter!
Cut 32 extension cords up and put them on the LE's
Get the LE CG-1500's from fedex in a day or two and mount the LE's
Waiting on the etherdongle, need to assemble that
connect the conductor to the etherdongle and get that working
put out the regular christmas stuff that will mostly be run by the LE's (weekend after thanksgiving normally)
finish painting the window frame hangers (1st coat went on yesterday)
dado a groove for the flex strips to set in and solder the strings together since ray has no 90 connectors for the
WS2811 flex strings
build another 10 or so SSC controllers and program
put the pex tubes up with the flex strings in them and cut them to length and set the proper node count
Hmmm, might make it, maybe!
assemble said window frame hangers and properly label them as to which window <fp.
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Lots of time!!!
For my sequencing, I've taken a lot of short cuts to date...I was able to in the last 3 days learn enough about HLS , Vixen+ and Xlights to grab a bunch of sequences from land o lights and a few from Stuart with the animated faces and get my candy canes sequenced. The up side to that is I have 10 songs now that are pretty much sequenced with the 24 channel singing tree and 21 candy canes. The down side is I don't have the knowledge of actually how that was created. Unfortunately I won't be figuring that out between now and the next few weeks.
I have however spent the last 5 hours tonight with nutcracker and have 5 models sequenced in nicely with Carol of the Bells (david foster version). I still have the mega tree and the roof to do. The roof is just like a big window model, but not 100% sure yet how I'll build it. I think the custom model got me a work around for the window bug issue I was dealing with in xlights. I can't believe even with the awesome timing marks already created and ONLY 22 lines of music to sequence that it took me 5 hours but hopefully the learning curve moves very quickly for me.
My wife got interested in this again tonight when I found a great version of Frosty (the dean martin one) to do. Would be awesome if Stuart could do up an animated face for that song...that would be really awesome (hint!). If every day I can get one song done I'll be ready for xmas....I am really, really getting the hang of nutcracker/xlights now and starting to learn some of the ways to make visualing effects easier - and do really appreciate that lock down filter. I like to go with themes for colors and having the ability to pick just greens or reds is awesome.
This year will be a very good first year I believe for both of us! I just hope for your benefit that you have better weather than I do right now. I started the mounting in September because I needed the head start to work out bugs and really think through how I was going to mount..and I know that come November its near freezing and sucks to work outside.
Make sure you get a couple of videos of your show for all of us to enjoy!!
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I've got nothing up yet besides my roof star stand. Working feverishly to get 4000+ ss nodes into conduits. No sequencing but ill wing that last as usual. Still no sign of the Zeus --- without it I'm just running without a megatree that works and may try to use passive hubs and free up a ss hub somehow. The rgb should make the roof install a 1 day affair. The worst is that I'm sick and every night the chronic cough appears and I'm basically unable to do much. My whole house is flu like sick. Argh !!,
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have all of my controllers built and tested.
have had my star burst and smart string shooting stars built and tested. the same with my aethers.
trying to finish the covers on the last 7 coroflakes, and the assembly of 24 smart string arches...
still need to assemble 3 green house matrix panels -- and figure out any kind of animation sequences.
haven't started to attach 5000 pixels to my megatree. that will be the final element this year, but it likely won't make the thanksgiving roll-out.
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I don't have anything fancy for my first year so I'm feeling good about the Thanksgiving deadline. Lights are hung but I still have to run extension cords. Express is all tested but no sequences yet.
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Made some great progress today.
Got a little more sequencing done in LSP with no issues today. Used macros to do leaping arches and they look good in visualizer, had intended to hook them up to the real thing this evening and see, but got going with other pieces.
Attached the window frames with the wingnuts for final fitting, only had to cut one down a touch to fit inside the aluminum siding fascia. Got them screwed together to hold in place and then packed them to the shop.
Cut all the dado's on the window frames and got most of the way soldering the flex strip back together to wrap around the window from. Of course soldered one a section too long so have to lengthen a dada, but oh well.
Got word the Aethers shipped, woo hoo. more things to play with soon.
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Got word the Aethers shipped, woo hoo. more things to play with soon.
just built my first aether last night. WOW! better plan several hours for this build
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What do you need for the build?
I have printed instructions and I have my cases and power supply, but think I need heat sink compound and some wire. Anything else?
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I've got nothing up yet besides my roof star stand. Working feverishly to get 4000+ ss nodes into conduits. No sequencing but ill wing that last as usual. Still no sign of the Zeus --- without it I'm just running without a megatree that works and may try to use passive hubs and free up a ss hub somehow. The rgb should make the roof install a 1 day affair. The worst is that I'm sick and every night the chronic cough appears and I'm basically unable to do much. My whole house is flu like sick. Argh !!,
Very similar here. Day #2 stomach flu and finally feeling better. Waiting for a shipment from Ray to complete live trees, minis, and arches. That said, I'll say sequencing is 80%. Need to tweak last years yet and finish 2 I added this year then do the ogg file LSP export conductor loading dance. Tons of other things I don't even remember at this point...
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wait, you mean it's not January??? then surely it isn't even June yet, right? right? >:D
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No sequencing the last couple of days, but learned some more on LSP.
I got nearly all the soldering to wrap the flex ribbon around the window frames, however managed to blow out a fuse on one of my 16 active hub connections. I had gotten a little wide on a solder joint to the ribbon and connected +12 to one of the other channels with the tiniest little slip of solder, darn.
Just need to solder on the 4 wire pigtail now and stuff the ribbon into the dados. Will take a few pictures when they go up.
May not quite make thanksgiving weekend, but starting to feel like there is a finish line out there.
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Learned it helps to read the wiki and not assume.. spent part of tonight resoldering some wires on strings to match the wiring scheme in the wiki.
I have now got all my pixel strings functional with pigtails.
I have put 4 flex strips into the vertical pipe installed on the house. i started running cat 5 to places and realized I did not have enough so I have bought a couple passive hub pcbs from the store and ordered the bom from mouser.
Tested the amp draw of flex strips with the ws2811 and can run several of those off a passive hub with a 10 amp or so supply with no issue what so ever.
Figured out I can use a 90 degree 1/2 schedule 4 warmed with a heat gun to cap my 3/4 pex tubes and then put a ziptie on the 3 core conductor to keep it from falling out of the vertical pex tube on the side of the house.. <fp.
Need to go pick up some schedule 200 pvc tomorrow to wrap around my garage door opening.
made up 10 ssc pvc caps with the 3 core conductors stuffed through and the pigtails. Tinned the pigtails and can start on the pcb's tomorrow.
Alan
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I was hoping more people would post into this thread as I find it fascinating to read where other people are in their shows and to glean some ideas.
Last couple of days I spent soldering up another 10 ssc V4's. That should be enough for this year, but I still need to buy some more caps as I forgot to get them 2x now at the hardware store!
I thought I was being smart and bought 3 pieces of Schedule 200 pvc to put my flex strips in for along the house and garage opening, but after spending way too long stuffing 20' of flex strip into the first tube and pulling it out into the grass, I discoverd they are WAY more opaque than pex and I don't like how much light it takes away from the flex strip. SO that will be $9.00 wasted and a hour or so of my time.
I then connected 1 full flex strip to the other flex strip with the standard connectors, found 5 different ways for that not to stay connected together with tape before I finally figured out how to keep two different strips close enough to each other while being pulled through the tube to not cause a gap. Then I soldered on one more flex strip piece and should be right at the 128 node limit for 40 of flex strip. Pulls under 4 amps and works fab. This will go clear across the front of the house in 4 pieces of pex tubing that I will seam with 1" clear shrink tubing and zip tie to the house.
Tomorrow probably work on the garage flex and perhaps get some of the pex up onto the fascia. I found using a electricians snake is the best way to pull that much flex strip through quickly.
It's dropped below freezing here and projected to be for a few days, so might have to abandon that project for a couple of days and get the stakes in the ground for a lot of the original christmas type lights and inflatibles before I cannot!
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have all of my controllers built and tested.
have had my star burst and smart string shooting stars built and tested. the same with my aethers.
trying to finish the covers on the last 7 coroflakes, and the assembly of 24 smart string arches...
still need to assemble 3 green house matrix panels -- and figure out any kind of animation sequences.
haven't started to attach 5000 pixels to my megatree. that will be the final element this year, but it likely won't make the thanksgiving roll-out.
24 arches complete, ready for the yard
got a bunch of battery boxes and moved PS and controllers, ready for the yard
built power injection system for (2) 16-dumb-string trees, ready for the yard
completed one of three green house matrices, started some animated sequencing
changed the plan for the mega pixel tree, no longer using poly mesh -- now using EMT conduit and joining pieces to create 20' rigid lines... making some early progress on this
only 1.5 of the 7 coroflake covers are complete
finish panels, finish coroflakes -- put it ALL in the yard, do my nutcracker sequencing, finish tree.
still optimistic... :)
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Built two aethers the last two days - put in yard. Will test with a song or two tonight!! Waiting for square nodes to ship from Ray so I can finish my candy canes.
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Done sequencing of 7 songs. 4 new, 3 edited for new items
Roof line items are up and ready, just need to test snowflakes.
Still need to put out yard items, hook them up, and test. Hoping to do that this afternoon before snow gets there tonight. Weather is giving me my deadline :)
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Man,
I was on a roll for beating the Unofficial Thanksgiving Day Starting Point (I think it is officially called "Festivus. The holiday for the rest of us") but SWMBO put the kibosh on that idea.
For some reason, she doesnt want Christmas to start before Thanksgiving and has the inability to look past (ignore) all the christmas decorations in the yard. I was going to ignore her until I discovered that the probability of turkey on Thanksgiving day was linked to how few christmas lights were in the yard. :(
So I have sucessfully negotiated for cables, power cords, and controllers but no lights. Of course I get to put that up this weekend when it is in the low 30's and windy all day. I suspect she will be in the house looking out at me and laughing all day. Saturday after Thanksgiving looks to be my bit set up day. I think it will take me until Sunday to be complete.
Just reaelized I need to order Cat 5 from Monoprice D'oh!
Steve
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For some reason, she doesnt want Christmas to start before Thanksgiving ...
I agree with your wife. I truly swim against the tide here, I know, but my "lights on" date this year is Dec. 13. The show runs through Jan. 5. That's 22 days. More than enough.
This also means I don't miss Thanksgiving (if I don't want to).
\dmc
PS: I was building controllers today. I will build some more tomorrow. I will be done, but it will be close.
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I was offered to start putting christmas decorations out early, but I really prefer to let thanksgiving be about thankful and not about christmas, that comes soon enough. Now I have put some of the light holding fixtures on the house in the warmer weather, but you cannot really tell they are there unless you look for them.
Tonights work was about 60 minutes soldering up the etherdongle.
Hoping to be lights on Saturday night.
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I'm mostly done. Received my FM transmitter last night so I'll be testing some sequences this weekend. Next year I will be starting earler, haven't had a day above 40 in 3 weeks now and stringing my lights was a pain with how plyable the strings are not because of the cold.
Athough I will be using a lot of ideas I have found on the forum to hang things next year so maybe it won't be so bad.
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Mini tree, arches, and live tree lights still in China but plan to hang house outline and aethers. I guess it's fate that my jap maple still has leaves on it... Hope to get a newly built tune to sign running a sequence and a fm announcement or something. Sequencing is about 90% done. Hoping and praying that I will be "testing" a finished layout with a tryptophan buzz. Target for live is day after coordinated with my towns lighting ceremony.
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The lights on my house mostly go up for Halloween and then are left turned off until the Christmas testing starts. The yard stuff cannot be put out until the last week since I have to keep raking and shredding leaves or some of my stuff will look like it does for those in the snow areas except mine will be covered with dead leaves. The arches have been built and tested on the back screen porch. The mini trees have been upgraded to LEDs and have been tested individually. Now I am working on replacing bad pixels on my flexstrips in my pixel tree. Also got the standard LED strings for the mega out and need to test all 64 of them. Then there is the thing called sequencing. If this is like the last few years I will start with 2 or 3 songs and by Christmas will be up to 7 plus. I also have enough surplus flex to build a small matrix, but that will wait until the show starts and if I get done it fine, if not then there is always next year.
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Built the first of two ssr's today, need to figure out the starting channel programming on those with an etherdongle (can it be done?) The Ed is pixelnet and my usb dongle is pixelnet.
Got some more caps and finished up 3 more ssc's, I was ALMOST done programming them all for their spots when I remembered I need to TRIPLE the channel count, which means i need to reprogram all of them since they are all over each other now!
Decided if I was making that dumb of a mistake, that i was time to be done for the night. Also found one of my co-op ssc v4 pigtails was bad, but since I blew an SSC a few weeks back, it puts me back even.
Alan
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100% built, installed & tested.
Did 6 sequences this year.
First year for smart strings. Conductor works great (thanks RJ).
35000 beautiful little blinkers doing what they should.
Most important thing I learned this year is to order your stuff EARLY, like doing Christmas is July.
Thank goodness this hobby is a cheap one ::) well that what I tell my wife, just one more item dear.
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Thank goodness this hobby is a cheap one ::) well that what I tell my wife, just one more item dear.
I tell mine it's an incremental cost hobby, the first year is heavy because you need so much to control all the stuff she wants. >:D
Alan
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10 smart arches, 6 smart mini trees, 200 pixel roofline, 775 pixels in bushes, 8 old school mini trees, various small pixel elements all in yard. 800 pixel 12' tree in progress. All SSCs built, none programmed or connected to HUBs. One sequence done in vixen 3; 3 more partially started. Now waiting for PC power supply (old one died last Thurs) and trying to source a Zues or some extra SSCs. Lights on this Thurs?...I hope so!!! Procrastination? Never! This is early! Lol
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LOOONNGGGG day of soldering..
built both aethers and those DO take a long time, changed up the order a bit on the second one and it's a lot faster for me. The first one I followed the order towards the end and it's tough getting the ac lines and those 4 orange orange'/white wires soldered in there. Both cycled red green blue with the xlights test cycle which is a nice feeling.
Also finished up another 2 ssc's this morning, that's 18 in total, not bad for the first year eh?
I reprogrammed all the ssc's taking into account it's 3 channels per node. <fp.
Put the 40' of pex tubing up on the house soffit using zip ties and the mounting plates I found at the borg. To join them I used 1" clear shrink wrap, it does not have any strength like I hoped, but does align them pretty well and keeps one from being able to drop vs the other. Also put the pex on the garage soffit and around the garage door, just about there, just about...
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Flashed the pixelnet dongle over to DMX to use the starting channel utilities. Was not so bad to get it out of the socket on the dongle and into the ISCP28 I got with my pickit. Had to update the firmware to program that family of pics and it was a little wonky until I rebooted. I've decided any time the pickit changes firmware, I'm rebooting first before programming the pic.
The two Aethers now have their starting channels set, and I've changed my LSP setup to have a white channel and the normal rgb channel as well.
I also got the second Lynx set for it's start channel, I love those LED displays in there. I could have a full read out ticker type device made out of those!
Was going to set the start address on the ssr4 I built, but found the pic was not programmed from the co-op and I need a ISCP18A that I don't have to program it. Ordered one from ebay, but it will not arrive until at least Saturday.
Starting to cut the male ends off the extension cords from the dollar tree for the ssr and the lynx units. Not the kind of cords I wanted, but I never ordered the vamp plugs and the zip cord. I would like to find a source for true 2 wire extension cords for a reasonable price. Maybe I will ping Ray about finding a source in China.
Off for the next two days to try and get the goods out into the yard and finish some sequencing.
Alan
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I spent most of the day working on creating a mega tree structure for flexible strings. This is my first year and I got a late start. I am happy with the progress so far. The instructions on this forum for the hub, usb dongle, and SSC are great. I didn't have any issues with getting this to work on the first try. It was definitely rewarding the first time I got the lights to blink.
Jeremy
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Almost complete, I'd say I'm at 99%
Everything is out connected, tested, and working. Ran through all my sequences and I just have a few minor tweaks. Yippee!
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have all of my controllers built and tested.
have had my star burst and smart string shooting stars built and tested. the same with my aethers.
trying to finish the covers on the last 7 coroflakes, and the assembly of 24 smart string arches...
still need to assemble 3 green house matrix panels -- and figure out any kind of animation sequences.
haven't started to attach 5000 pixels to my megatree. that will be the final element this year, but it likely won't make the thanksgiving roll-out.
24 arches complete, ready for the yard
got a bunch of battery boxes and moved PS and controllers, ready for the yard
built power injection system for (2) 16-dumb-string trees, ready for the yard
completed one of three green house matrices, started some animated sequencing
changed the plan for the mega pixel tree, no longer using poly mesh -- now using EMT conduit and joining pieces to create 20' rigid lines... making some early progress on this
only 1.5 of the 7 coroflake covers are complete
finish panels, finish coroflakes -- put it ALL in the yard, do my nutcracker sequencing, finish tree.
still optimistic... :)
my estimates tend to be overly-optimistic. :)
I have my 3 light panels working -- they look great!! (thanks again for the idea, combustionmark!)
all 10? 12? power enclosures are ready to go... worked on waterproof extensions last night.
my son is finishing up the 15x 5-color mini trees.
I still have some coroflake covers to finish.
today looks to be sunny (but cold) all day -- it is a great opportunity to get stuff out in the yard.
I should probably mow first... :)
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Yesterday I got 16 pigtails onto the first Lynx (i takes longer to tin 16 gauge wires than I thought it would), but I figured out if you heat from the END it works a whole lot faster than the side.
To hold it above ground I used a 30" piece of rebar I sharped on the bench grinder and then pounded into the ground. For the LE part I used a spare Pex tube and ran a screw through the case into the pex at the two bosses for it and that worked fab.
Now when the wife came home and said what the "he two toothpicks" is that in the yard? That being a LE on stake with an squid worth of cables out of it. SOOO might be buying some extra extension cords to hide that a bit further away. ::)
Also got some of the static stuff that needs to go into the ground put out, made up the DSC string for the garage output and put that in. Moved some cat 5 around for the second active hub I picked up to make my life easier for cabling, put the last of the SSC controllers out and zip tied them in place.
Today I need to figure out how many more extension cords I need and what lengths, pick up some 25 count LED lights from the wallymart, get a few more rebar pieces, althought I am not remember why as of the moment.
Also drove myself nuts last night in LSP with timing marks and blue blue blue christmas by Mr. Elvic Presley, but I know what i want to do with that song so maybe it would be up. Be nice to toss some nutcracker effects into the LSP string for all the rgb lights to butterfly in different blues during long parts of the song,but I am not going to complicate my life with conversions and such for the moment!
Alan
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Too speed up tinning the power cord wires for an LE I put the iron in a vise and then have two hands free to hold the wire and the solder. Makes it go much faster.
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Rains the past couple of days have really put me behind. But, it brought some cold air here in FL...and that feels good compared to sweating and slapping mosquitoes the other night while wrapping trees. Took a "personal day" today and spent a solid 14 hours in the yard. Setup is 80% complete and I'm pretty sure I can meet my goal of Dec1 for showtime. Then it's the endless tweaking of sequences and addition of new ideas. I tend to do my prototyping while everything is setup to run, but in the wee hours when no one is looking.
Mike E.
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Too speed up tinning the power cord wires for an LE I put the iron in a vise and then have two hands free to hold the wire and the solder. Makes it go much faster.
nice, will use that method from now on, about to tin 96 connections for my zues boards
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installed 14 le's
5 sets of candy canes
decorated an 15 x80 roof 4 colors
2 eves' 80ft each 4 color icicles
28 ft mega tree
45100 lights hung so far
all le networked and powered 260 channels
road lights installed 1/8 mile
still have to put up cutouts and static lights
and performed dry run on whole setup
go live sunday
check it out on facebook
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Santas-Runway-Christmas-Lights-Display/337655112913225
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Show is up and running without any problems. Keeping my fingers crossed.
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WELL... I may have blew up an SSR today.. I used a three conductor power cord and cut the ground wire off with no hanging out wires. BUT when I had completely finished the SSR had it the case and closed the case, the ground wire slide down with the lid and hit the side of the fuse close to the large resistors. BIG flash, singed the case side, the board, darked two resistors. SO I figure I fried a chip or two. Look the board over, put the multimeter on a few things and swaped the chip closest to those resistors and powered up and nothing. DARN...
Futzed around swapped all the chips and still nothing.
SO I completely build another SSR, and I am sure my wire REALLY appreciated all my help with the trees (we put up3), 2 down 1 to go, while I did it. I completely finish the second SSR and nothing, nada, zip. Scratching my head when I decide to check the 120 on the connector. NOTHING. So I go plug the drill press into the same outlet, flip it on, and nothing. Hmm, well that would explain it. Go check the breakers nothing, try to reset the GFCI after I remember about it, nothing. Go look at another GFCI so I can remember what button does what as the one I was working from was under the table saw extension table and hard to see. Well if I pressed far enough the circuit reset.
Back to my just built ssc, and it CYCLES, SWEET.
SO that was about it for today!
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Quite a few of my neighbors already have nice (static) displays up. I'm still soldering my Aether IIs :-)
My goal is to at least have the basic display up and one song sequenced by Sunday night. We'll see.
I'll definitely be tweaking and adding more between now and Christmas. I don't know how people get it all done ahead of time, just put it up and don't touch it.
Gary
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Sorted out my bad strings on the roof finally with 200 of the lights I got from Ray this week. Hope no more bad nodes now. It was icy up there. Anyways back down safe and today I get my home made coro candy canes finished. Got one done last night. Two more to go today.
I'm also now sorted on the flickering lights. My psu was fine. I had a bad crimp on my end. That should be sorted out.
I have 600 lights remaining to put up. Not sure if I'll outline the bay window , do the remaining two eaves, wrap part of a pine tree or just decorate the dog house.
Have to move the aethers and the other floods around too now that my bay window is replaced.
I'll be up tomorrow
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Show went live Thursday night, one Express was not working and 2 of my three blow mold did not light. Fixed Express and blow molds yesterday and noticed 2 of my three RGB columns not working... Working on them today along with painting and installing my charity donation box. Still have to sequence a couple new songs but I have a plenty of old stuff I can update to fill in.
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Fixed a bunch of issues today...
Floods are almost online, coroflakes are partially out... only the megapixel tree to get out yet. everything is working and throwing out lots of beautiful, colorful light!
still using xlights test mode to drive the stuff -- it looks good, and my sequences are still "in progress" :)
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still using xlights test mode to drive the stuff -- it looks good, and my sequences are still "in progress" :)
Gee that sounds familiar!
I happen to have mine turned off at the moment, but ran alternate most of the day as I got more and more things plugged in a fixed up.
And the good news is my SSR that took a nice shock from a ground wire survived and all the chips seem fine. Will put a few more pigtails on it and put it in the show.
Alan
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Worked today on creating a mount for a coro star on top of my mega tree. I should have the mega tree up tomorrow. Today it got above freezing so it was a good day to anchor the base of the tree. :D Tomorrow I will working on stringing up the lights and putting the topper on. This is my first year and am really excited to get this up. I learned a lot this year and got a late start. I will definitely start earlier next year.
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OMG....what a LONG day!!
Anyways, I now have my candy canes mounted and tested. Lights on roof all fixed (fingers crossed FOR GOOD!). Have my three Universes all setup and everything is working. I'll need to move my coro star DSC channels around as I moved it from universe 1 to 3....AETHERs and other floods positioned perfectly now.
Tomorrow the PI and the transmitter leave the basement and get installed much closer to the road. I'll also go over all my sequences and see where I sit with them. Many need to be modified to add AETHERs and my tune in sign, but I'm 99.9% sure I'll be lights on tomorrow night.
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built etherdongle last night while sleepy, and installed the 8.0 clock wrong (turn 90 degrees from from where it should be)
got it fixed, and thankfully it's up and running!.
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all my strings that were acting up are repaired!!!
now on to the arches
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Almost everything is out in the yard, even the SSR I thought I smoked with a ground wire hitting the fuse. Solved that with some shrink tubing on the ground wire permanentely.
Arches are in the yard, might have one backwards yet. No sequences finished.
Got to spend an hour today putting an inflatable back into the ground as strong winds had ripped it out and it was hanging on by just the power cord.
Alan
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9 out of 10 trees for the display have been set up and or had lights strung up on them . The last one is a big one but will get done today
5 arches are out but the flex strips haven't been attached to them yet - that should get done today
All but one controller (active hub) are in the yard. That one will go out and everythign get connected to it after I eat breakfast
Need to hook up the audio. Not certain when that will happen - maybe today
I have tested every component (controllers, lights, cables, cords) individually. I have yet to test it all put together. Tonight if all goes according to plan, I wll actually run through the sequences and make sure everything works like it is supposed to. Took the day off so I could finish my set up. Didn't have as much time over the weekend as I thought I would.
Steve
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Was able to put the last few items up yesterday and started the show for this year.
Wow, once again waited until the last damn minute to do everything and got totally stressed out. Why do I keep doing this and vow to start earlier next year?
Steve
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One song done now with Candy Canes working. YEAH!!!!
Radio issues sorted out (I think).
Left to do.....finish the other 9 songs and add TUNE TO sign illumination, AETHER and more candy cane effects. Also kick around with new chase sequences and see how I can apply them to window outlines.
I did a HUGE clean up on ailse six with my hubs and wiring yesterday which is going to make a big difference if I run into any more issues.
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Was able to put the last few items up yesterday and started the show for this year.
Wow, once again waited until the last damn minute to do everything and got totally stressed out. Why do I keep doing this and vow to start earlier next year?
Steve
<la..
I was doing pretty good but Ray has continued to delay my shipment. Got nowhere with him on chat tonight. Trying to be cool but it is wearing on me.
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Done!! :)
Took longer than I thought, but I added a bunch of new elements so there were some growing pains.
Now its time to see if my flex strips, SSCs, and active hub in the battery box will stand up to bad weather. I added some 12 foot artificial trees this year. Getting them into the ground and standing them up was pretty easy. Now we'll see if they stand up to wind. I have them tethered to the ground with guy wires, but I can't help but think a decent wind pushing against a 12 foot tree will pull the stakes out of the ground. I went with 7 inch vortex stakes in lieu of the 14 inch vortex stakes. I thought they would be a pain to drive into the ground. They weren't. Now I wish I went with the 14 inch. Only time and a good wind will tell.
Show looks good. Sad to say it, but the artificial trees with lights in them are easier to light up and look better than the real 30 foot pine trees I used last year. Over the last 7 years, the trees have gotten to big for me to get up high. The trees must look "real enough" though, as I was on the ladder adding lights to one of the trees, a dog came around the corner is raised a leg against the other one and "marked" his turf.
Time to sit back and relax and enjoy the season.
Good luck to everyone else still setting up. Zwiller, your shows look great. I hope Ray gets you your gear in time for this year. Looking forward to more video's from you.
Steve
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Wow, once again waited until the last damn minute to do everything and got totally stressed out. Why do I keep doing this and vow to start earlier next year?
Steve
I hear you there. I got all mine up and even expanded to the neighbors yard, 24 channels I hadn't prepared for at all.
Curt
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Only one more static item to get out, and that one requires being wrapped in new lights for the last 2 years. <md..
Drug the wife out to help hang to big ornaments under the massive pine tree. I would like another 6 or 7 of those in different colors.
Want to find a large net light now for wrap the trunk with.
Alan
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Thought I would get a lot more done tonight then I did, played with the LSP scheduler for an hour and gave up, it was choking on it's own msq files in validating where you add the files to the sequence.
So I used a set of three testing files for xlights that basically run the whole set of rgb as a 2 strand tree for 1500 or so nodes, and then I toss in the blue christmas I have been working on for a few weeks here. it's mostly ok, will tweak it some more later. Off to fix up the channels in space odyssey then onto the fox song or something really short to get another song into the rotation.
Tomorrow I hope to get the FM transmitter up and running.
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So after three weeks of multiple unsuccessful attempts to get a hold of the lawn service company to see when they complete their Fall Service, I figured it would be safe to set up for Christmas. Certainly no one would be doing lawn work in December, so I started and completed my set up and completed this past weekend.
Guess who showed up today? <fp.
While I was at work I got a frantic call from my wife telling me the lawn service company was outside on our property and the common property (which I kind of commandeer for the show) with mowers, weed-whackers, and lawn aeration equipment. Bless her heart, she was out there telling them to not tend to the lawn in the areas of the cables and decorations, but there was a substantial language barrier. It appears they got the message/figured it out but we wont know until tonight when I get back and run the wires and try to run the show.
Sometimes stuff just happens.
Steve
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Completed the last of my 9 coro flakes Tuesday night, hung them last night -- and morning gusts of wind have whipped around the ones that were simply "hanging" from the house. Oh well... when the winds die down, I'll put them back into place.
Earlier in the week I had pixels in 3 flex strips go batty, causing 2 of my greenhouse panels to go out of whack. I didn't have enough flex on hand to repair everything -- but (in record time!) I should have new strips coming today from Ray to the house.
Only thing really left to do is get the Technicolor lights up on the megapixel tree... but I'm being careful to navigate all of the problems described by other Technicolor users. Once I get a reasonable plan, I'll tear into it... and hopefully have something working on Saturday.
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WOO HOO 3 sequences now. Thanks again to PeteandVannessa for what does the fox say. I finished converting that and am 95% happy with it, maybe tweak it some more in a week.
On the list is still making a better antenna, I stopped tonight to look for another 75 ohm balun and didn't find one. Will scrounge around tomorrow in the old kids game systems and if that comes up empty I guess it's an order on ebay from Miami or New Jersey, which means a week.
The parts came for the audio isolater pcb today, might make that up and see about getting rid of some of the noise in the FM transmitter.
Saturday plan to work on a really simple sequence like Jingle Bells or something to put into the mix, also have an SSC to set the proper start channel on, and to reprogram the start channel on my SS4 that i shocked a week or so ago. Maybe it will stick this time?
Might spend sometime tomorrow night doing things besides Christmas! oh the shame of it.
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WOO HOO 3 sequences now. Thanks again to PeteandVannessa for what does the fox say. I finished converting that and am 95% happy with it, maybe tweak it some more in a week.
On the list is still making a better antenna, I stopped tonight to look for another 75 ohm balun and didn't find one. Will scrounge around tomorrow in the old kids game systems and if that comes up empty I guess it's an order on ebay from Miami or New Jersey, which means a week.
The parts came for the audio isolater pcb today, might make that up and see about getting rid of some of the noise in the FM transmitter.
Saturday plan to work on a really simple sequence like Jingle Bells or something to put into the mix, also have an SSC to set the proper start channel on, and to reprogram the start channel on my SS4 that i shocked a week or so ago. Maybe it will stick this time?
Might spend sometime tomorrow night doing things besides Christmas! oh the shame of it.
I have 6 songs for just over 8,000 channels, 4800 of which is a pixel tree, with 192 being dmx if it would help you out. if peteandvanessa don't mind, I wouldn't mind getting a copy of "what does the fox say"