What element(s) are you building or installing this week? - 2022

[ryanschristmaslights]

It is the weekend again, how are things progressing for your 2022 display?

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Over here I've been bending and painting conduit that will be used to support the small garden edging arches. In the middle of painting it started raining briefly, but then after I packed everything away it stopped. Just my luck!

Still to do... thread some steel rod through the drilled hole, to be used as ground stakes at each end of the conduit.

Small boscoyo arch with a painted conduit frame

• ryanschristmaslights
• Oct 22, 2022

20mm conduit roughly bent into an arch shape and then painted. The drilled hole at the base is...

 

[Christmas on Clarafield]

Finished off the two 50x6 matrices to hang on either side of the front door. So now it's on to building controller boxes. Hopefully, I can get the smaller one to go on the roof finished this weekend.

 

[Kingfisher]

I still have so much to do, but work keeps me from being able to do it. Though I have managed to finish the frame for my photo backdrop, sadly the ozito stapler broke as I was stapling it on, haven't had the opportunity to take it back for a replacement yet.

Probably the biggest thing for me to do is to program the display, and sort out the audio. As well as testing a few components.

 

[djgra79]

Basically finished by Halloween display and added some new IR spot lights.
But Christmas display I have now taken delivery of the final pieces of my megatree re-build (thanks @burnt ) so I can now begin pushing pixels and making strands.

 

[Jase]

This year we've gone a full show with dialogue in between each song. Yours truly is doing one of the main character voices alongside my younger daughter who's doing the other. My other daughter has designed some new singing elements that we'll be incorporating on the roof (gotta work out how to fit them up there yet haha). Also will be adding some spinners, a couple of floods up our front tree and outlines on the roof! Will be expanding to 32 ports on the main controller. Adding a couple of extra power supplies, an FM transmitter and a tune to sign. This sounds overwhelming now I type it up. Have been sequencing for a couple of months now. Hopefully all the songs come up a treat. I'm pretty fussy lol.

 

[Freman]

I am working on all the things simultaneously...

Candy canes, upgrades for the mega tree, power supplies and controllers.

The dig uno is on a bracket that slides over a 12v power supply.

 

[Notenoughlights]

This weekend it was...

- Put out as many standard string lights as I can
- Run power to control boxes where possible
- connect up all the dumb string lights to plug packs and multiboards
- connect up the simple pixel props, arches, firework, carport etc
- do a failure test to see what has failed sitting in storage.. (One had failed and is now working again???)
- Put out all waterproof kmart containers that house all the multiboards through out the yard
- Wire 2x 50 pin plugs onto the roof lights for easy connection in the future then give up on wiring to the controller because it's too hot.

 

[Domestos]

I've managed to finish my Christmas layout in Xlights.
Build and tested my two lower column matrixes (although they are only 4 pixels wide).
Installed and mounted the Mini Moving Head bar that will house 4 small heads.
Finished 1 sequence. Yay.

 

[Skymaster]

This weekend was alot of work -
* roof props wired up completely
* house verticals and washes completed with the strip changes
* Gutter lines all sorted
* Waterproofed all my power boxes and diff boxes which had leaked (prior to commissioning, stupid design!)
* DC lights up on the palm trees and fence
* Control boxes laid out and chained down
* everything plugged in
* Testing!!

Just the megatree to go. Feel pretty satisfied so far for a first year.

 

[ryanschristmaslights]

...Put out as many standard string lights as I can...

This weekend I too was putting out some 'old school' string lights on/around some shrubs - single colour LEDs, in my case. These were bought between 2007 - 2009 IIRC and mostly still work OK. But starting to think about replacement options over the next few years. One idea is to replace them with an older style DC24V 'RGB' dumb strings with separate red, green and blue leds in a diffused cover (see example image). They're not RGB 5050 leds, but separate strings of red, green and blue LEDs (presumably 5mm LEDs) with a common V+ wire. I had some of these on my porch poles from 2012 (after another member here found them while on a trip to a Guangzhou lighting exhibition) up until last year (colour mixing does show hotspots that in my opinion made whites less stark) . Or maybe those garden shrubs could also end up with GS8208 RGB pixels eventually, perhaps...... decisions, decisions.



Also this weekend was more painting. This time some timber that'll have polycarbonate endcap fixed to it for some pixel strip. Said pixel strip was listed on AliExpress for cheap and should have been 12V GS8208 but was wrongly advertised and actually seems to be 12V WS2815 without gamma correction (luckily I did receive a 50% refund due to the error). PS: the polycarbonate endcap price has gone up since I last bought it years ago - $10.30 per 3m length now, wow .

Just the megatree to go. Feel pretty satisfied so far for a first year.

Wow, you're really powering ahead! What start date are you aiming for - December 1 or sooner?

 

[Kent]

This weekend was the first new elements of the year for me - five arches down, three to go.
GS8208 strip supplied in 2m lengths, pre-terminated. Arch foot 3d printed using the design by @Freman (thanks!)
Purchased 15m of air seeder, was supplied a bit over 16m which allowed me to get 8 arches rather than 7, which is good as I realised I needed another and was wondering where I could get another 2m from. Problem solved.

(video - https://photos.app.goo.gl/WKwNirrC39G4XJov6)



@ryanschristmaslights I the following GS8208 samples with my order this year, I believe they have them in a smooth frosted style too, similar to what is in your post.

 

[Skymaster]

Wow, you're really powering ahead! What start date are you aiming for - December 1 or sooner?

Aiming for Dec 1 or the first weekend following. Megatree won't go up until the last week in November, I've got a week off work to get it built.
Wanted to make sure i had everything else sorted because come mid December I'll have zero time for anything once baby #2 comes out and I'll be looking after 2 year old while the Mrs recovers.

 

[djgra79]

Finally started pushing pixels last night! Need to wait until tomorrow (Cup Day) to pull down Halloween so I can test fit on the new megatree

 

[Kent]

So, next thing I'm onto is hedge matrix. Purchased 2x rolls of 10m x 0.9m bird mesh from Bunnings each hole is 12.7mm square. Perfect length and height for the vertical face of the hedge, will cut down the second roll to 60cm to go across the top.

So far I'm 1m into the vertical face, 9m to go, then the top

 

[Notenoughlights]

This weekend, weather dependent.. or wind dependent I want to attempt at least one of my mega trees, if the wind is too strong, I will end up either building my power distribution box, or running all the low voltage wires to the front of house main control box, and connecting all that up.