2023 is done, starting to plan for 2024: what will you keep, what will you change?

ryanschristmaslights

ryanschristmaslights

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Happy New Year to all.

Well another Christmas lighting season has concluded, how did it go? I thought it might be interesting to share below any changes you made for your 2023 show and how that went, plus what further changes you might make for next Christmas. Have you began thinking ahead to December 2024 or is it too soon? 😀


In 2023 I completed a multi-year retirement of old single colour LED strings. All of the garden bushes for the first time were pixels, although I still have a small amount of 'dumb' multicolour lights that I use as filler in the garden and along the side fence (for now?). At this stage I don't intend to change these old filler light strings, but perhaps in future years....maybe? As for the pixelised garden bushes these worked well. Perhaps the one thing I may change is add on one additional string to one of the bushes to increase how far back the pixels go (to look better if viewed from the side, which can happen due to being on a corner block). Old sequences were updated with the pixel upgrades in mind, sometimes using different colour combinations for different songs to change things up a bit.

Also upgraded and rebuilt, my mega tree is now all pixels. For next Christmas, I will likely increase my mega tree's density from 18 strands (about 200°) maybe to 28 or 32 strands (about 210° or 240°). This change should be similar to upgrading a 180° mega tree from 16 to 24 strands.

xmas23-mega-tree-pixelised.jpg

I also have two old 4-tier rope light roof stars that I am thinking to retire and replace with a pixel version. I have already bought 2x 92cm coro stars for this but now not sure whether I'd actually prefer two groups of smaller stars. At least there is time to think this over!

The last potential addition that could happen is adding a coro sleigh and reindeer on top of the carport roof (out of frame on the right of the above photo). In previous years in that spot I had a ropelight angel, but moved it somewhere different for 2023. On the main house roof and several years back I used to have a ropelight sleigh with two reindeer but it became faulty and TBH was rather cumbersome to get up on the roof.
 
For me this year I set out to remove as much 240V AC from the yard as possible, and instead distribute power to remote areas via 24V DC. Thanks to the awesome crew who hang out in the chat room I was able to achieve most of that goal - just two remaining very close to the house. Thankyou guys! You know who you all are!

I added a row of candy canes along the front retaining wall, added some more mini mesh spiral trees to fill out the yard, and replaced some old failing strip. Other than that, 2023 was about having a better pixel year than 2022! And thankfully that came to be - only one pixel replaced, which failed after a few hours of running, so very close to a DOA. We had some heavy rains and wind again, and I ran throughout - something I was very wary of doing in 2022. So that is a win!!

This year number one on the list is to rebuild everything in the garage into a proper "control" cabinet.

Second is to complete the migration to 24V power distribution.

Then, in no particular order:

- 2 more mini mesh spiral trees
- Bigger, denser megatree, possibly using seeds
- possibly get something up on the roof
- house outlines (though I'm still on the fence about these too)
- get at least one car back in the garage 🤦‍♂️
- sequence a song myself from start to finish
 
This year I added the seed icicles with the custom PCB's to house them, and they went perfectly. Like all pixels, I had some failures and the RJ9 plugs made swapping out the dead pixel mid show 10000000 times easier than if I had to bring out a soldering iron and juggle wires while being watched!
I also added the matrix over the driveway, I thought that 35 pixels across would be enough, so I am now debating weather to add another 34 columns to densify it up.


As for 2024 plans, these were supposed to be plans for 2023 but life got in the way, so they got pushed to 2024.

- A starburst 2 meters across and 2 meters tall to put on top of the 6 meter mega tree, this will feature 25 arms made of threaded rod with GS8208 pixels in a triangle formation on each arm and a trail of seed pixels 10-20 seeds long hanging from each arm to give a "falling" effect like seen when a firework bursts in the air.

- A snowman approx 2 to 2.5m tall, this only got pushed out of the 2023 to-do list because the person I had contacted about getting some steel bar spheres created never returned my emails.

- Maybe something in the back yard if that ends up being tidied up enough for me to put on display, the washing line looks a little empty so it could do with a bit of a light-up.

- Build a new controller box for the one that decided it would fall apart when I took it out of the shed this year, its lid was held down by bricks this season.

- Build a series of H-bridge controllers to run the Bunnings 2 wire fairy lights at high capacity, as I have had enough of setting up the little 8 function controllers every night, these new units should be able to handle 15A which is a fair few sets of Bunnings Christmas lights to reach that level of power. I will have two types of these controllers, one set to 100% static all on, and one with the twinkle effect. The hardest part will be either finding enough of the plugs to connect my existing light sets to these new controllers, or deciding to cut all the plugs off and wire on those CCTV style barrel jacks, as they're fairly cheap.
 
Building hardware takes me a long time (literally months using every spare Saturday and many nights) and I can’t do the same again next year. I’m going to have to do much more mid year or none at all… I had maybe 10 failures out of 2500 pixels and that will put me off too if I end up replacing all 2500 of them as they may all die by next year…

If I do continue though:
  • Lift everything from the house up to the roof or put it on the fence as the whole house is pretty much hidden by the garden
  • Put some hooks under my roof screws so I can hang the eaves outlines quickly
  • A house topper star
  • maybe a mega tree
 
Going to redo some of my props and reallocate outputs so I have less power injection needed (I run 5v).

The shows have evolved over the past five years and I've added more each time. It needs a little replanning to get it back to something a little more logical for all the connections.

Best thing I added this year was some panels for the full length panes of glass either side of my front door. Colorlight cards are the way to go!
 
I have ordered myself a laser cutter and this year I want to make some control boxes that are just a bit for refined then the hand cutting of acrylic that my old boxes are, I don’t plan on replacing all my boxes but adding some small improvements to them such as some led lighting in the lids so when I open them the light comes on and I can see what is inside instead of having to try and carry a torch in one hand and play around with the box in the other.
 
My plans are to add a mega tree to the show.
Thinking about 10 or 12 foot tall with 18 or 24 strands. The star is not included in mentioned stats
A 10 foot tree may not qualify as “mega” but using a 50 light pixel string at 2 inch spacing should work out to be around 10 or 12 feet
Plus that fits my budget and all that I want to attempt. 😁
 
I didn't make my mega tree in 2023, but did get all the electrical components. So I should make it.

I may add more icicles this year on my peaks.

I may retire my north pole sign with matrix (my old tune to sign before I got the EFL Radio).

Maybe add more snowflakes.

But other than that I may rearrange the layout for something new
 
I was late. Very late.
I focussed on the new props being the gutter matrix which went up quickly and worked great for 1 night, then the wind brought most of it down just as quickly as it went up :( So that took a few days to repair and secure properly, but very happy with the result.
The garage matrix was next and whilst it was only up for 5 blinky days I loved it. Its the only thing that is still up as I need to work out where to store it!
As a result of the above lateness I did not put out the yard items like arches, candy canes, coro stars & P5 tune to sign (which needs to have new outdoor panels installed)

As for 2024 plans, I think I want to increase density of the megatree. It is 20 strands at 180deg but at 2in spacing, I think i'll increase to 1in spacing.
I bought and built the set of 3 ChromaPresents last year but like the rest of the yard items never got deployed (need to add port to MT enclosure)
I also bought a fan arch matrix last year and will likely buy another one.
 
I quite liked my solar panel matrix this year. It was an interesting experiment that paid off, and got a number of positive comments.
It was made from 3x brands of seeds (two panels of each brand) at 100mm spacing, butchered together. It'll be interesting to see how each brand faired over summer up there.
I'm going to rebuild these, doubling the density each direction to 50mm, (so 800px instead of 200px each) and switching them to 24V seeds.

I'm also thinking of doubling my MT density in two directions. Mine is currently a 20x75 at 2" spacing, so filling in the extra nodes and running Alternate on each strp. The horizonal density will be increased by adding in seeds between the existing strands, keeping the same topper etc. The same 50mm 24V seeds as the solar matrix, doubled over for 1". This will also give me a tree-within-a-tree, which could be submodeled and used for different effects.
This will also necessitate a rebuilt of the MT control box to support 41 outputs instead of the 12 (1 unused) it has currently.

My singing elements will be roof mounted, I wasn't too happy with them lower this year. So there will be some bracketing needing to be done for that.

I am sure there are some other things I can do but I'll figure that out as the year goes on
 
This was our third year of full RGB only after 12 or more years doing A/C lights and unfortunately our last year in Orlando, we are moving back to the UK later this year, and at the moment have no idea where we will be living, that should be fun....

We will be starting from scratch on a new house, I guess a blank canvas will be something different. Would really like to get a mega tree up and running if we can also add some more singing faces for halloween and xmas.

We are taking about 90% of our RGB kit with us back to the UK, the PSU's can be switched to 240v no problem, the controllers will not be an issue either, most of it looks like it will pack into shipping crates so as we are taking it down at the moment, I am popping pixels out of holes in 1/2" conduit where needed, removing matrices from frames we built for them, sorting cables into their respective sizes, bagging & labeling them and generally making sure that what we are taking is really required. A good excuse to go through everything we have accumulated over the last 15 years of holiday lighting and sell or throw out what we no longer need.

We were really pleased with our final years show and hopefully will be able to do something as good or even better in the UK. Looking at the prices of pixels and parts in the UK, I think we may well stock up on a few thousand of them before we go home, I'll take a chance that we don't get a bunch of iffy pixels that we will probably not be able to get replaced under warranty.

And this year as we are winding down and hopefully not going to be so busy around Easter time, I will maybe get to go to the Florida Mega Mini and say hello/goodbye to some people I have wanted to meet for several years.
 
Like Iain, my house is mostly hidden by a bush so i had moved everything to the fence line and i was so much happier with the result. 2024 will be about filling out the space with a few more props. Considering a matrix on the fence, will see how the wallet goes this year. Currently doing a lot of playing around with my ideas in xLights, so many options!! Also, the new features in the latest version of xLights are very cool (Base Show folder and Aliases). Now that i have a solid base that i am happy with i want to try to do a few of my own sequences.
 
My wife suggested this year that we put the light display behind the house - which is against a road, whereas the front of the house is in a cul-de-sac that people can't drive past. I didn't do it, but I think next year might be the year to do that. The trouble is we only have one circuit that's really rated for the power requirements (The same circuit our Electric vehicle charges on) so if I want to move to behind the house, I need to call up an electrician.

Beyond that, I have 5v arches I want to move to 12v (to match the rest of my stuff). Probably time to add sound/music to the mix as well. I guess some props, but I don't know what...
 
Last edited:
aeiche said:
My wife suggested this year that we put the light display behind the house - which is against a road, whereas the front of the house is in a cul-de-sac that people can't drive past. I didn't do it, but I think next year might be the year to do that. The trouble is we only have one circuit that's really rated for the power requirements (The same circuit our Electric vehicle charges on) so if I want to move to behind the house, I need to call up an electrician.

Beyond that, I have 5v arches I want to move to 12v (to match the rest of my stuff). Probably time to add sound/music to the mix as well. I guess some props, but I don't know what...
Click to expand...
My suggestion is to be careful you do not distract drivers that might cause an issue. I too live on a cul-de-sac with a 4 lane state road (45+ MPH) behind my house. last year a new 6' privacy fence went up to help with noise and other issues. I've been very careful to adjust my display as to not distract drivers with any direct lights or other distractions. This also means I won't use moving heads due to the same limitations.

Just something to think about.
 
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