Status Check?

[arw01]

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!

[Steve Gase]

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...

[drlucas]

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.

[twooly]

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

[scharbon]

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

[dmaccole]

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.

[arw01]

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.

[tjbrickner]

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.

[zwiller]

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. 

[jnealand]

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.

[arw01]

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

[tomwb301]

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.

[arw01]

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.

Alan

[loveroflife96]

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

[arw01]

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.   

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...