2012 Build and videos.

[harrison0550]

First off I just want to say a big thank you to everyone here that helped me out over the last year. Truly a great group!

I tried to keep track of the build as it went along so............

First Project:

Building the frames to hold the singing trees on the roof.

Attaching the wire frame trees with rope light zip tied to them to the frame.

Rinse and repeat 3 more times.

Hooking up the 2 LOR boards to control them.

Fun part watching them light up!

Now lets get off the roof for a while and take on project #2
the mega tree
First we drove a 16ft chain link fence post in the ground 2ft deep. Then measured out and evenly spaced 16 stakes in the ground around the post. Took bailing wire and attached it to the wooden bun on top of the tree with bolts then wrapped it around each stake at the bottom.

Now its time to wrap it with lights. Round and round we go. I used 2 strands of 100 count minis twisted together to make it brighter and fuller on each channel. 16 channels total.

LOR controller inside.

 

[harrison0550]

more of the mega tree.

Moving on to project #3
the arches.

Time to drag out all the tools for pixels and soldering iron. I first drilled holes in 10ft of pex tubing and stuck the pixels into the hole. If you drill the right size hole the pixels will lock right in place and are hard to get back out.

The pex wasnt stable enough to support itself so I got 4 pieces of conduit 10ft long each and drove a rebar stake about 1ft deep in the ground 7ft apart and put each end of the conduit over it. Then I just carried the pixel arches to the conduit and put 4 zip ties on it to hold the pex to the arch.

Results so far......

Walking back and forth turned into pain so I just stuck a fold up table in the yard o put all the tools on and finish those last solder connections.

 

[DeeJai]

very nice work, good to see how others attach stuff to the roof.

have u got a link to this pex tubing? I do like the look of the arches you have and am curious

 

[harrison0550]

Oops I completely skipped the controller assembly.
I used 3 ECG-P2's and mounted each one in an enclosure with a power supply.

Then mounted them close to where I needed them. This one is drove into the yard in between the 2 arches.

I ran all 4 arches off of it plus the 3 spiral trees in my display. Power and data was all ran out of this one enclosure over cat5 to all those elements.

This is when I was wiring up the trees.

That night I mounted 2 more ECG-P2's in enclosure along with a couple extra power supplies for power injection and 2 more LOR boards.

Project 4
house outline.

I made frames for the windows out of siding and hot glued the pixels to it evenly spaced.

Then they went up. Pic also shows the icicle lights and floods on he house.

For everything else I used those little plastic clips and a lot of them.

One P2 controls each side of the house and power and data was ran exactly like it was for the one out in the yard.

The last thing was the mini trees out front. Cant believe I dont have a daytime pic of them but they are basically plastic mesh wrapped in a cone shape with 18ft rope light wrapped around them in a spiral. I recycled some old light strands and instead of using spt wire to run to each mini tree I ran a strand of lights. Kinda doubled as extension cords to power the mini trees.

And lastly a video of this years efforts...................

Pop Love 2012 mashup

 

[harrison0550]

very nice work, good to see how others attach stuff to the roof.

have u got a link to this pex tubing? I do like the look of the arches you have and am curious

http://www.homedepot.com/h_d1/N-5yc1v/R-202033097/h_d2/ProductDisplay?catalogId=10053&langId=-1&keyword=pex&storeId=10051#.UN6A8HezmuI

Not sure where to get it over there.

 

[Binkles]

Ok, officially in love.


Two aspects, actually 3 that I would like to ask you about.


What sort of spacing do you have between pixels on your arches?


How tall are your spiral trees and the length of pixels?


And umm, design of the trees, are they freely available.


Thanks for showing your build, really appreciate it.

 

[mick8248]

looks like a lot of hard work that has payed off, great display and sequencing.

 

[muzzag50]

Absolutely Awesome.

 

[Bird]

Awsome sequencing.
Great display
Very nice sharing build
What are you using for controller boxes?

 

[Benslights]

thanks heaps andy any chance of a how to and drawing of your talking trees

 

[fasteddy]

Great sequencing there which really shows your talent, Looks like you used a bit of nutcracker to get the desired effects for your show. Thanks for sharing your build info, it always helps others

 

[kel]

 

[Blickensderfer]

Awsome display and sequencing.

 

[Christmas on Clarafield]

Great job. Thanks for taking the time to show off the build.

 

[harrison0550]

Thank you everyone!

I'll try and answer as my questions as I can about it.......

Binkles:
The spacing between pixels on the arches was 2 inches apart. The house was 4 inches apart.
The three smaller spiral pixel trees are 3ft, and 6ft tall. They are the normal 3 pack you get at retail locations. I pulled the incans off them and attached pixels.
I think you are asking about the singing trees. They were originally designed by Sally Simpson and her niece Maggie last year. Holiday coro has them made out of coro as well. I had mine made out of wire frame from Doug at Wireframedlights but I think shipping over seas would be brutal for either option above so I will try to make a how to on them.

here are a couple of closer pics of them, and the layout of them.

The second pic is Dougs layout he used to bend the wire and weld them up. I dont think he would mind me posting it over here due to shipping I imagine most of you guys would just want build them yourselves. If he does ship over seas and the price is reasonable I do highly recommend him, he does amazing work.

Bird:
Those are cable tv house boxes just like the 1500's etc. The only difference is I work for a cable provider in the states and got all mine at work, I have no idea who we order them from or who makes them.

Yagonna Lights:
When I start taking them down next week I will video them in more detail and get some more pics.

Eddy:
I did use Nutcracker for some effects but my method of using it wasnt probably what most folks did. If I generated an effect I liked I didnt paste it into the sequence, I created a test sequence and pasted all effects into it then changed them to my liking and length before copying into my main sequence. I also used BobO's tool extensively for flipping entire sections of sequence in different orientations in the test sequence before adding to the main sequence. Flipping things and pasting something originally designed for one element into a different element really created some cool effects along with overlapping effects. I call it "screwing up to the beat"

Sorry about the large pics in this post, didnt want to shrink them down so you could see how I attached the rope light and mounted the frames.


Thanks Everyone!