Snowfall Tubes

[tbone321]

Yea, these are beyond non waterproof, they are completely exposed with no cover at all and it is MUCH harder than you think to seal them up in tubes.  Where exactly are you doing to place the tubes or more importantly, what will be the viewing angle of those tubes.  Remember that flex strips only have around a 180 degree viewing angle and usually a little less.  This also means that the tubes need to be properly anchored so that they cannot twist or turn in the wind.  If you want to hang them from trees where they may have viewing angles in excess of 180 degrees or where they may swing or turn, you might want to use Chris's idea of using string nodes in a clear tube. 

[dmaccole]

While I'm not trying to belittle designs from good DIYers, I had a lot of problems with, um, SLOW snowfall tubes.

Not only did I have water incursion, I was never able to get them to fire correctly during the show. I had them up for the 2011 and 2013 seasons (I skipped the 2012 show) and I attempted to drive them in a variety of ways, including heavy wire from the driving controller (R48lsd) at 5v and then reworking them with a small PS in each one and driving them with 12v.

Last fall there was talk about a cheap snowfall light available through Ray's store; I did some looking around and found these:

You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login

And these:

You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login

(They are the same product.)

I bought one 50cm (19-3/8") string and one 30cm (11-7/8") string from the eBay guy and one 50cm from Amazon.

I didn't like the spacing and wanted some 30s mixed in with the 50s. So I cut apart three strings and put them back together the way I wanted.

I plugged them into a spare MR16 (here's the Lynx connection!) 12v channel and then put a little 5v linear PS (I built mine but you can find them on eBay for $2-$3) right before the first tube.

They worked great; they do have the problem that they all start at the same time, but quickly go out of synchronicity. The key to these is that there is a big hole for each LED in the PCB ... after the LED is soldered to the board, it's bent to fit into the hole, so you can see the light from almost any angle.

These are not as bright as a SLOW tube, but considering these worked and the SLOW didn't ...

YMMV.

\dmc