Hi from NZ - "Tory Street Lights - (NZ)"

Joined
Jun 23, 2010
Messages
27
Tory Street Lights – New Zealand

Hi, I have been registered here for a few years, so I thought it was time to introduce myself :)

My name is Terry Sutton, I’m 75 yrs young, and I live in Nelson, at the Northern end of the South Island of New Zealand with my wife of 50yrs, and I must admit that I have the “CLAP” a “Christmas Lighting Addiction Problem” J We have two adult children, a married Son who is the Assistant Computer Network Systems Manager for a very large secondary school, and a married Daughter, who trained for 3yrs in the US in French Mime, stage direction and performance, she delivered us twin grandchildren six years ago. I have always been involved in Electronics in one form or the other. My career started as a Radio Studio Panel Operator, then Maintenance, and studio installation. This morphed into 25 odd years in Television Transmission, rising to Snr Technical Officer level, helping maintain some 80 + sites of TV and radio transmitting stations, big and miniscule, as well as some Microwave links as a first line callout. After the TV employment ended I was employed as a seasonal “Service Engineer”, maintaining labelling machines in the fruit industry for 15 years. To keep my hand in I currently help maintain the local access Radio station and it’s network of studios. I have been involved in Church musical groups since I was a teenager, playing music, constructing instrument and PA amplifiers, as well as some instruments themselves. We also got involved in building and racing Model Powerboats, constructing the control gear myself, then, after a back injury, I revived my interest in Model Railways, now “Christmas Lights” as well.


We have lived in our 119 yr old house for 40+ years and have always had Christmas lights up in one form or another. The bow window in the front lounge of the house has had a Christmas tree in it as long as we have been here. I built a pair of random timed Triac switches that have run the lights on the tree for 35 yrs or so which added some animation to the tree along with the store bought flashing strings. One year when we were late in putting the tree up, a neighbour asked “Where is the Tree??, we are waiting to see it”


I discussed the possibility of computer animation of Christmas lights with a friend that had a large static display, he was keen to add it to their display, but his business was too all consuming, and we never followed it up. When I finally retired I browsed across several Computer Animation of Christmas lighting sites on the ‘net. While recovering from a dose of the ‘flu in late 2009 I found DIYC (Do It Yourself Christmas), Christmas lighting Forum based in the US, and the fount of knowledge available there was amazing. I then rapidly built 120 Channels of a “Hill 320” controller from junk box stuff that I had lying around, also discovering that I already had sufficient Opto-couplers and Triac’s to construct the Solid State Relays/Switches required to control the lights. A modified MP3 Player with a RF booster amp provided the radio link and we were away. I went the “Hill 320” path because I had already built a Model Railway controller interface using an almost identical circuit some years before.


I now have available over 1,200 Channels of “Renard 64” fully dimmable controllers housed in three old computer cases. With my background in Radio studio’s and Television Transmitter/translator installations etc, I operate my gear completely differently to the US “Norm” in that I have all my controllers, switches and power supplies relatively centrally located. The Solid State Relays are all constructed on strip board, and mounted in plastic lunch/freezer boxes inside modified surplus plastic Battery Electric Drill cases, they are set up as 8, 16, 24, 32, or 40 Channels per box, as required. These are then run out to the display items in heavy duty multicables in multiples of Eight, with appropriate professional heavy duty plugs and sockets for each cable run. Setting up is "relatively" “Simple”, for example two eight channel arches run out in one 18 conductor cable, with 16 conductors carrying the power feeds from the Solid State Relays to the light strings, and the return running back through the two spares plus the very heavy shield. Naturally this is only for the low voltage items, which is most of the display. The few mains strings I use have long tails attached and they are run from 2 x four socket, modified “Multiboxes”, connected to 230Volt Solid State Relays, also mounted in plastic lunch/freezer containers for safety, as well as being inside a modified old plastic Battery Electric drill cases. The Solid State Relays are connected to the Renard 64’s with 9 pin “D” range extension cables (8 Channels + Common return), of which I now have a large box full .


This is a very expensive method of setup if one had to buy all the cabling hardware, thankfully I had access to the necessarys for free as it became available when the business was closed, and we were made redundant. Otherwise it would all have been residing in a very large skip, or have been converted into “Beer Money” !!


I am heavily indebted to the local recycling centre as the source of the “unwanted” plastic Battery Electric Drill cases, many, many, hundreds of metres of power cable, “old” UPS Transformers, armfulls of “Gazebo Frame” tubing plus their fittings, many strings of “Old” Christmas lights, and “old” mains fuse carriers, that work perfectly in my application. I have been able to purchase these items for relatively small money, and put them into “service” in my setup, keeping them out of landfill for now. J


Only in the last few years have I been able to purchase LED strings, at reasonable prices, in individual colours. These have been modified for my application, with extra resistors for current protection, and bridge rectifiers installed to operate on my AC switches.


I have now replaced some of the LED strings with Pixels, around 5,000 of them, currently run out of the xLights sequencer via WiFi to 23 x ESP8266 Pixelstick modules. I am going to replace the WiFi link with hard wired cables and a Falcon controller next year due to interference in the WiFi band creating hassles this year.


I plan the channel layout on a 2,500+ line spreadsheet which has gone through a number of iterations. This is a huge help prior to setting up Vixen 2.1x, the sequencing program that I use, and then import into xLights, ensuring that I plan the individual strings of lights in the correct order for the display demultiplexer, or controller, and the switches from the start.


I built a two panel “Ledtrix” a 16 x 96 “LED” matrix display a few years ago. The panel is 2.4m long by 500mm high, has 1,536 LED’s in it, which are all hand wired, and run with a “PixC” interface. They are driven by “LTC”, a command line utility triggered by the sequencing playout program. This allows me to “talk” to the assembled viewers without “saying” anything!!, by informing them of the name of the current song playing, and other information. We also have a pair of small commercial LED display panels out on the front fence to reinforce the FM Transmitter frequency to the viewing public.


As a novelty I created two 600mm diameter supersized "Christmas Balls" that have animatronic faces with eyes/eyelids/eyebrows and mouths that "sing" a song within a sequence, all animated using 8 model control servos inside. They have proved to be a real hit with the public.


A small Chinese manufactured FM stereo transmitter now provides the RF FM Transmission to the cars using a Low Power FM frequency. The transmitter has a pair of professional studio quality audio peak limiters in front of it to keep the peak audio levels under control. The audio input rack also houses a couple of power amplifiers, (Ex a discarded car radio), which allowed me to place speakers in the front garden, operating “very quietly”, so that those “passers by” that do not have a radio with them can hear the music.


The complete system operates on two 10amp power cables. Each cable passes through an earth-leakage controlled circuit breaker, mounted in a portable “switchboard” case. This also houses a pair of miniature clamp meters inside to monitor the current on each cable. After the Earth Leakage Circuit breakers are a pair of 25 amp commercial heavy duty solid state switches, ex Photocopiers, which allow automation of the power to the display. To do this I derive 9V DC from a Plugpack, plugged into a mechanical time switch, set to turn on ½ an hour before the “show” and off ½ an hour after the “show”, this turns the power to the display on and off respectively. I discovered that the biggest waste of power has been transformer core losses, both in the mains isolation transformers, for the mains strings, and the step down transformers to run the low voltage, (12 Volt, and 24 Volt) AC items. Selecting the “Best” combination of transformers to do the job saved me a huge amount of power and the “LED’s” this year reduced the power consumption even more.


The Pixels are powered by a pair of 200 amp 5 volt supplies and a pair of 75 Amp 5 Volt supplies situated close to the appropriate banks/groups of Pixels, all recycled from various sources


From my meagre beginnings in 2009 with 120 channels, this year we have now climbed up to around 750 Channels of Renard control, of individual strings/lights, plus 15,000 channels of Pixels or around 47,000 lights. The neighbours are thankfully very supportive, and we have been selected as “prize winners” in a local radio station run “Christmas Lighting Competition” in three of the 10 years. The 2018 season produced a vehicle count around the 1600 + cars as well as about half that number of folk walking past to watch, with lots of very positive comment. Considering the local population is only around the 46,000 mark we feel very honoured, and humbled, to see the number of cars we do, considering we are one of only two “Computer Animated” displays in the district.

Cheers,

Terry
 

QLDKing(Brad)

Senior elf
Joined
Dec 28, 2016
Messages
561
Location
Albany Creek
:jawdrop: Best new member intro I have ever read.

I feel like I am going to short change you with my response, but a belated and very warm welcome to ACL.

Brad
 

kevr

Full time elf
Generous elf
Joined
May 2, 2010
Messages
373
Location
Kaiapoi, New Zealand
Hi Terry,

A few Kiwis are popping up here lately so welcome to the group.

If you need spares for those Ledtrix or Pix C call in to Kaiapoi next time you're down this way and you're welcome to them.

Cheers Kev
 

kevr

Full time elf
Generous elf
Joined
May 2, 2010
Messages
373
Location
Kaiapoi, New Zealand
Just checked out your walk through video on YouTube Terry and was reminded what all the early wiring was like. Mine was small but for a big show like yours the wiring is out of this world, you are a legend!!

For anyone that want's to have a look back at how some the the early shows were put together have a look at Terry's video, programmed in Vixen 2 which was fantastic in its day but wow what you can now easily achieve in xlights. Good to look back and see how far this has come so quickly (sounding like an old man now)
 

buzzdude

Full time elf
Joined
Oct 7, 2013
Messages
183
Location
Chrinside Park, Vic
Hi Terry
Welcome. Very interesting read and loved the walk through video. You would have OH&S people over here going nuts with their clipboards at the cabling and controller boxes :D. Best part is, it all comes together for a great show at the end. Well done and again.... welcome.
Shane
 

Mark_M

Annoying Elf
Joined
Dec 30, 2018
Messages
914
Location
Christmas Light world
Hello Terry,
You've definitely been an inspiration once I saw an article on the news about your display, I recognised right away it was Vixen running. Definitely an amazing effort for making all those controllers and corresponding hardware. I thought my first setup (2018) in computerised lighting was a mess and too many cables, you've blown me out of the water. Your setup even blows East Gate Church's (in Auckland) display.
Just like you, i'm wanting (I should say "going") to purchase a Falcon controller and get started on pixels. I made a thread asking about making my own boards to control "dumb strings", I'm sure you'd be able to give some valuable advice. https://auschristmaslighting.com/threads/making-my-own-boards-to-control-dumb-strings.11320/

Good to see another kiwi here, we're slowly beating the Aussies!
 
Joined
Jun 23, 2010
Messages
27
Hi Terry
Welcome. Very interesting read and loved the walk through video. You would have OH&S people over here going nuts with their clipboards at the cabling and controller boxes :D. Best part is, it all comes together for a great show at the end. Well done and again.... welcome.
Shane

Hi Shane,
Thankfully the display is totally on my property, with the gate firmly shut when the show is running. Since most of the display is running on 24 Volts AC or lower by definition is isolatated and safe :) A few "eons" ago I was the H&S officer at my place of employment ! :-(

Thanks for your comments and observations, very much appreciated :)

Cheers,

Terry
 
Joined
Jun 23, 2010
Messages
27
Hi Terry,

A few Kiwis are popping up here lately so welcome to the group.

If you need spares for those Ledtrix or Pix C call in to Kaiapoi next time you're down this way and you're welcome to them.

Cheers Kev

Hi Kev,

Great to hear that you are still alive and well and have your display operational, I will certainly keep your offer in mind :) The "old" Ledtrix is still going well, just the odd LED failure creating a hassle intermittently, but it is doing the job it was made for brilliantly now triggered by xLights scheduller but still controlled by "LTC". I am still getting my head around xLights, I imported all my Vixen 2.1x sequences into xLights and then sequenced the Pixels using it, but the learning curve is still rather low, and rising very slowly!!! Hopefully in the next week or so I will get my sequences from this years display up on the 'net, twice as many Pixels as 2017's display, with a lot of added graphics since then!

Cheers,

Terry
 
Joined
Jun 23, 2010
Messages
27
Hello Terry,
You've definitely been an inspiration once I saw an article on the news about your display, I recognised right away it was Vixen running. Definitely an amazing effort for making all those controllers and corresponding hardware. I thought my first setup (2018) in computerised lighting was a mess and too many cables, you've blown me out of the water. Your setup even blows East Gate Church's (in Auckland) display.
Just like you, i'm wanting (I should say "going") to purchase a Falcon controller and get started on pixels. I made a thread asking about making my own boards to control "dumb strings", I'm sure you'd be able to give some valuable advice. https://auschristmaslighting.com/threads/making-my-own-boards-to-control-dumb-strings.11320/

Good to see another kiwi here, we're slowly beating the Aussies!
Hi Mark,

Nice to hear from yet another "Kiwi", thankyou for your nice comments about the setup, it maybe a bit cumbersome, but it works for me. The "Old Renard" controllers do exactly what they are intended to do reliably, which is more than the ESPixel stick Radios did for me this year, hence my planning to purchase a Falcon F16v3 to do the work for me next year.

I am afraid I am not up with the play with your construction of dumb RGB strings and controllers, the "Aussie" guy's that offered advice are far better informed than I so I will leave it to them to guide you.

I modify any regular LED strings that I get from suppliers like Bunnings/Mitre 10/Warehouse/Kmart and add an extra current limiting resistor in each set of 10 Led's, a 470 Ohm resistor does the trick, and where necessary I rearrange the sets of LED's so that they are all lit when a DC powersupply is connected to the start of the string. I then add a bridge rectifier to the start of the string so that it will operate without flicker from a 24 Volt AC supply.

The current batch of Icicles from Bunnings have a pulsewidth multi-effect controller on their ends, I have modified several thousand of those LED's by cutting and reversing their wiring every 10 LED's (2 x drops) so that they all light up when powered from a DC supply, I then dunked them all in clear Lacquer to seal the back of them to help reduce water ingress and make them last longer! This modifying takes a lot of time but in my mind is well worthwhile as there is no half wave flicker, if only the Chinese manufacturers were not trying to cut their wire costs!!

Cheers,

Terry
 

Mark_M

Annoying Elf
Joined
Dec 30, 2018
Messages
914
Location
Christmas Light world
Hi Mark,

Nice to hear from yet another "Kiwi", thankyou for your nice comments about the setup, it maybe a bit cumbersome, but it works for me. The "Old Renard" controllers do exactly what they are intended to do reliably, which is more than the ESPixel stick Radios did for me this year, hence my planning to purchase a Falcon F16v3 to do the work for me next year.

I am afraid I am not up with the play with your construction of dumb RGB strings and controllers, the "Aussie" guy's that offered advice are far better informed than I so I will leave it to them to guide you.

I modify any regular LED strings that I get from suppliers like Bunnings/Mitre 10/Warehouse/Kmart and add an extra current limiting resistor in each set of 10 Led's, a 470 Ohm resistor does the trick, and where necessary I rearrange the sets of LED's so that they are all lit when a DC powersupply is connected to the start of the string. I then add a bridge rectifier to the start of the string so that it will operate without flicker from a 24 Volt AC supply.


The current batch of Icicles from Bunnings have a pulsewidth multi-effect controller on their ends, I have modified several thousand of those LED's by cutting and reversing their wiring every 10 LED's (2 x drops) so that they all light up when powered from a DC supply, I then dunked them all in clear Lacquer to seal the back of them to help reduce water ingress and make them last longer! This modifying takes a lot of time but in my mind is well worthwhile as there is no half wave flicker, if only the Chinese manufacturers were not trying to cut their wire costs!!


Cheers,

Terry

Hello Terry,

I thought you would like the idea of making those "dumb string" boards, I’m in a similar situation of having non-addressable lights to control. My Setup 2018 I simply used 3 Arduino Mega’s as a USB controller and that didn't work out, mostly because of Vixen not working properly. Which is why I’m going to take the plunge and switch to pixels. There's nothing wrong with using an Arduino for this, it just was a terrible experience having to sit behind the computer and reboot Vixen when it just stopped sending serial for no reason even with me spending a fair bit on USB over ethernet (active) adapters. I'm planning on buying an F48 simply because it seems like a better idea to have a differential board where each of my controllers usually sit and have the mainboard inside even though my friend hates me because it misses out of so many other types of pixels (chip set).

I know what you mean about using store bought lights, it annoys me how they have a series sets in reverse polarity to save on an extra wire and requiring something like an H bridge. I stay away from store bought lights and purchase battery powered “seed” lights off eBay.

The only reason I’m making my own boards is because I’ve made the transistor boards all ready from scratch (photo etching method and drilling every hole) and because I’m on a teen agers budget, my parents only pay the power. I'm not driving RGB strips, it's just an easy way to control my existing lights with this new system. Most strings are low power enough to connect straight to a pixel node board, so I might not even need to convert these transistor boards.


Thanks,
Mark
 
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