I need Help
- Thread starter Tom12
- Start date
Notenoughlights
400,000+ twinkly lights
For your budget, I would look at 12v seed pixels, a Quinled Dig-uno or Dig-quad for the controller and a 12v power supply. $200 is not a big budget, and at this time of year if you're wanting to start for 1st December you'll want to use fast shipping on most of the items. The controller will eat about $60 of your budget, the power supply (highly suggest getting a Meanwell branded power supply for reliability, less chance of releasing magic smoke etc). The seed pixels are probably the cheapest part of all this, for $100 you can get a couple of thousand. Bullet node strings are a little more pricy, and come in about $30-40/100 leds these days depending on the supplier, size of the wire between the leds etc, it pays to shop around. Ray Wu's store on Aliexpress has some decent products.
Things to note
- Use the ethernet version of the dig quad/uno boards, Light show data over wifi is asking for problems!
- The quin uno/quad can only drive around 2000 pixels maximum at 40FPS as they are ESP32 based. You could get away with 3000 if needed.
- The quin uno/quad runs the WLED software, this has offline effects that can run when you are not sending live data, useful if you want to run just basic effects without having to sequence them to music.
- There are other controllers available, however they are above your budget, or would leave you with minimal for other items, so I have not suggested these.
- There is no power injection accounted for in this list of items, speaker wire is great for this if required.
- You may require equipment such as a soldering iron, pigtails, heatshrink, solder, extra wire etc etc, if you don't have any of this, you may want to factor that in when buying equipment.
- Seed pixels are fiddly to work with, I would not suggest getting anything less than 100mm spacing if this is your first time trying out addressable lighting.
- Bullet nodes are more power hungry than seed pixels, and will require power injection more often (approx every 100 at 12v)
Things to note
- Use the ethernet version of the dig quad/uno boards, Light show data over wifi is asking for problems!
- The quin uno/quad can only drive around 2000 pixels maximum at 40FPS as they are ESP32 based. You could get away with 3000 if needed.
- The quin uno/quad runs the WLED software, this has offline effects that can run when you are not sending live data, useful if you want to run just basic effects without having to sequence them to music.
- There are other controllers available, however they are above your budget, or would leave you with minimal for other items, so I have not suggested these.
- There is no power injection accounted for in this list of items, speaker wire is great for this if required.
- You may require equipment such as a soldering iron, pigtails, heatshrink, solder, extra wire etc etc, if you don't have any of this, you may want to factor that in when buying equipment.
- Seed pixels are fiddly to work with, I would not suggest getting anything less than 100mm spacing if this is your first time trying out addressable lighting.
- Bullet nodes are more power hungry than seed pixels, and will require power injection more often (approx every 100 at 12v)
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This is the best option for your budget (and I speak as someone who makes a budget controller!), Your $250 AUD budget is a bit thin for a full show with music synchronisation, unless you've already got these in stock I'd look at another $100 for a Pi, SD card, speakers and an amp and then don't forget all the cabling that goes between things like your PSU and your controller (do NOT get cheap thin cable, it will cause issues)
I think your budget may be unrealistic dependingon your aspirations. You might get a good power supply, dig quad and some seed pixels/led strips for that if you just want a roof line or something. But if you want more complex set up you're going to need more pixels, enclosures,cabling, tools, something to mount lights on etcetera..
Not saying you can't do something but for that money it will be quite low level in my opinion..
Not saying you can't do something but for that money it will be quite low level in my opinion..
Tom12
New elf
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- Nov 14, 2024
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- #5
Hey I'm very new to this, is there anyway I could get a pre-assembled controller, and could you explain it as easy as possible? I could buy the key things first and spread it over two years also I was wondering if you know where to get the Arches that light up to?
Notenoughlights
400,000+ twinkly lights
a pre-assembled ready to run for $250, no. This might be your cheapest option https://www.hansonelectronics.com.au/product/baldrick8-rtr/ You will still need lights after this.
Arches are usually DIY items, either coreflute (Coro) with pixels pushed into it, or some form of translucent pipe (air seeder tube is popular) or electrical conduit bent into an arch shape.
Take a look at the 101 manual, it will help you a lot more than we can just by posting back and foward. https://auschristmaslighting.com/threads/auschristmaslighting-101-manual.1889/
Arches are usually DIY items, either coreflute (Coro) with pixels pushed into it, or some form of translucent pipe (air seeder tube is popular) or electrical conduit bent into an arch shape.
Take a look at the 101 manual, it will help you a lot more than we can just by posting back and foward. https://auschristmaslighting.com/threads/auschristmaslighting-101-manual.1889/