2023 Journey - First display for JohnnyBoy

[Johnnyboy]

Conduits and flakes
After getting a promotion at work, it has been hard to get some blinky blink time after so many long workdays in the last few weeks. Thankfully drilling conduits and pushing pixels doesn’t require the grey matter to be in tip top shape.

Flakes
The main thing my wife wanted in our display was snowflakes, and she wanted lots! So from my initial design of around 8 snowflakes, we somehow ended up with 20! Having custom length pixels with 2m long pigtails on start/finish is going to make connecting them up a breeze and will require no additional extension cables. Honestly can’t go on enough about how good custom length stings are. I mistakenly ordered only 16 strings so needed to make up 4 stings the old fashion way.

So here is my flake tower!

20@48 pixels

I have also purchased 15 lengths of 20mm pressure PVC pipe and metric tonne of elbows and tee’s to put together some roof mounting for the flakes. Stay tuned for that journey in the next few months


Conduits

For those following along, I have continually put off drilling all the conduits for the house and roof outline. I did drill a few hundred holes a few months ago and then put it in the too hard basket. Well, I wanted my garage floor back, so it was time to get to work.

While I saw some quite impressive 3D printed jigs, I don’t have a 3D printer and felt the jigs seemed overly complicated, so I decided to just mark up the conduits and drill with a very basic jig that kept the conduits centred. For marking, I laid a bunch of conduits on the ground all together (I was typically marking up 8-10 at a time) I used some scrap bits of wood to hold it all together while marking then used a pencil to mark between the two conduits to have a straight line on two bits of conduit. From there I laid out some pixel strip next to the conduit to get the accurate 1inch spacing (tape measure would have also done the trick) and used a set square to mark pixel locations across all 10 conduits at once for one pencil mark. Then moved up the each pixel hole……100+ times

Then the drilling….and drilling….and drilling.

I was using 25mm electrical conduit (grey stuff) purchased at bunnings for the task as the conduit walls are relatively thin compared to reticulation pressure pvc pipe. Fun fact, the 25mm electrical saddle clips work on 20mm pressure conduit. I will be taking advantage of this for my prop mounting as pressure pipe has waaaay more connector fittings available compared to electrical fittings.

Early trials drilling with a forstner bit didn’t go well, it took big chunks out of the conduit even though I was going very slow and using a brand-new bit. Some people have had good results, but it didn’t work for me at all, not sure why. Take two was a $18 set of generic stepped drill bits I found on amazon. Worked amazingly well and could drill quickly with no ill effects. Boy does the drill bit get hot after drilling a couple hundred holes at a time!

First, I had to drill one side with the 12mm bit all the way through so that it drilled through the other side a little. Then once one side was done, I drilled from the other side out to approximately 18mm. I was using a 20mm forstner bit, so just needed to set the drill press stop at 18mm, I could have drilled to 20mm, but on the few times I tired, the length of the 20mm bit was widening the 12mm hole I already drilled on the other side! The second side drilling was very quick as I didn’t have to line anything up, having the pre-drilled pilot hole made it self-centre and I only needed to be vaguely in inline before drilling down.

Each length of conduit was cut to be 100pixels long possible to prevent any unneeded splicing, and also making them interchangeable was handy

Pushing the pixels was easier than into 10mm xFlute coro. Pixel pliers are really needed, and I found the best method was to twist it in place rather than rock it in place.

So here we have it, 2420 pixels for a total of 4840 holes drilled in all its glory.



Was it worth it? no idea, time will tell
Next weeks task it to build 3 controllers boxes and upgrade the existing 2 boxes with smart switches. So much still to do!

 

[Skymaster]

Bloody hell. What an effort on the drilling. Well done, looks superb.

 

[LettCat]

Conduits and flakes
After getting a promotion at work, it has been hard to get some blinky blink time after so many long workdays in the last few weeks. Thankfully drilling conduits and pushing pixels doesn’t require the grey matter to be in tip top shape.

Flakes
The main thing my wife wanted in our display was snowflakes, and she wanted lots! So from my initial design of around 8 snowflakes, we somehow ended up with 20! Having custom length pixels with 2m long pigtails on start/finish is going to make connecting them up a breeze and will require no additional extension cables. Honestly can’t go on enough about how good custom length stings are. I mistakenly ordered only 16 strings so needed to make up 4 stings the old fashion way.

So here is my flake tower!!

20@48 pixels
View attachment 23185
I have also purchased 15 lengths of 20mm pressure PVC pipe and metric tonne of elbows and tee’s to put together some roof mounting for the flakes. Stay tuned for that journey in the next few months


Conduits

For those following along, I have continually put off drilling all the conduits for the house and roof outline. I did drill a few hundred holes a few months ago and then put it in the too hard basket. Well, I wanted my garage floor back, so it was time to get to work.

While I saw some quite impressive 3D printed jigs, I don’t have a 3D printer and felt the jigs seemed overly complicated, so I decided to just mark up the conduits and drill with a very basic jig that kept the conduits centred. For marking, I laid a bunch of conduits on the ground all together (I was typically marking up 8-10 at a time) I used some scrap bits of wood to hold it all together while marking then used a pencil to mark between the two conduits to have a straight line on two bits of conduit. From there I laid out some pixel strip next to the conduit to get the accurate 1inch spacing (tape measure would have also done the trick) and used a set square to mark pixel locations across all 10 conduits at once for one pencil mark. Then moved up the each pixel hole……100+ times
View attachment 23187
Then the drilling….and drilling….and drilling.
View attachment 23186
I was using 25mm electrical conduit (grey stuff) purchased at bunnings for the task as the conduit walls are relatively thin compared to reticulation pressure pvc pipe. Fun fact, the 25mm electrical saddle clips work on 20mm pressure conduit. I will be taking advantage of this for my prop mounting as pressure pipe has waaaay more connector fittings available compared to electrical fittings.

Early trials drilling with a forstner bit didn’t go well, it took big chunks out of the conduit even though I was going very slow and using a brand-new bit. Some people have had good results, but it didn’t work for me at all, not sure why. Take two was a $18 set of generic stepped drill bits I found on amazon. Worked amazingly well and could drill quickly with no ill effects. Boy does the drill bit get hot after drilling a couple hundred holes at a time!

First, I had to drill one side with the 12mm bit all the way through so that it drilled through the other side a little. Then once one side was done, I drilled from the other side out to approximately 18mm. I was using a 20mm forstner bit, so just needed to set the drill press stop at 18mm, I could have drilled to 20mm, but on the few times I tired, the length of the 20mm bit was widening the 12mm hole I already drilled on the other side! The second side drilling was very quick as I didn’t have to line anything up, having the pre-drilled pilot hole made it self-centre and I only needed to be vaguely in inline before drilling down.

Each length of conduit was cut to be 100pixels long possible to prevent any unneeded splicing, and also making them interchangeable was handy

Pushing the pixels was easier than into 10mm xFlute coro. Pixel pliers are really needed, and I found the best method was to twist it in place rather than rock it in place.
I recently analyzed the advantages and disadvantages of my approach to this issue. And I came to the conclusion that it would be more profitable when paying in NZ dollars. Along the way, I found an interesting article about NZ dollars in online casinos here. You can also read. Maybe you will find it interesting.
So here we have it, 2420 pixels for a total of 4840 holes drilled in all its glory.
View attachment 23188
View attachment 23189View attachment 23190

Was it worth it? no idea, time will tell
Next weeks task it to build 3 controllers boxes and upgrade the existing 2 boxes with smart switches. So much still to do!

Wow, that's a lot of work you've done. I would definitely need some grey matter here
I wonder what it will look like in functioning mode. Do you plan to place these snowflakes in random order or in a pattern?

 

[Johnnyboy]

Wow, that's a lot of work you've done. I would definitely need some grey matter here
I wonder what it will look like in functioning mode. Do you plan to place these snowflakes in random order or in a pattern?

From the limited sequencing i have done in xLights, i think it should look pretty good. I tried to spread my display out as much as i could so the whole house effects have as much coverage as possible.
Snowflakes i am using come in two versions, a 2 prong and 3 prong version both 48pixels each. I don't think it would matter too much if i mixed them up when mounting, but i have them laid out in alternate 2/3 prong order.

At the start of this threat i posted a photo of my current layout. Will have 12 flakes on the roof and the other 8 on the house. I'm yet to make the mounting, so the exact layout may change a little.

2023 Journey - First display for JohnnyBoy

Hi All, About time I created a post with all that i have learnt so far and how my journey is unfolding. In 2022 i got into the Christmas spirit buying a bunch of standard led lights and ornaments and decorated the back yard. Then in the Boxing day sales this evolved into buying more lights and...

auschristmaslighting.com

 

[Iain]

I think lots of smallish snowflakes is a great idea - you'll get both individual effects and the whole-house lightup thing going... Makes me rethink a bit!

I'm curious about the conduit - I was thinking of cutting a slit in the back of mine instead of a second row of holes. That way I could keep the wire inside the conduit and get the whole thing closer to the wall. How are you mounting it to the wall with the wires out the back?

thanks!

 

[Indigogyre]

I think lots of smallish snowflakes is a great idea - you'll get both individual effects and the whole-house lightup thing going... Makes me rethink a bit!

I'm curious about the conduit - I was thinking of cutting a slit in the back of mine instead of a second row of holes. That way I could keep the wire inside the conduit and get the whole thing closer to the wall. How are you mounting it to the wall with the wires out the back?

thanks!

I'm not sure how he is planning to attach the pvc to his house but I used these types of mounts to great success!

Store

Our store is loaded with great 3D printed products for all uses.

sfl-designs.com

I printed them out in various sizes depending on my needs. They ended up having a secondary purpose of forming a cable channel along my garage which helped a lot.

 

[Johnnyboy]

Controller Boxes
Early in my lighting journey I made up a receiver box and it turned out ok for a first attempt but still could use some improvement. I also (naïvely) thought I would only need 2 of these receiver boxes……nope, needed 4. As part of this process I also wanted to upgrade the timers from the manual rail programmable timers to full WiFi/smart switches for greater control and visibility of the show and clean it up a little to reduce wire strain.



Box Templates and Cutting
If you haven’t already used it, I would strongly suggest you checkout Jdeation for getting a template for getting consistent result on multiple boxes. The online software is very easy to use and is quite accurate. Below shows the templates attached to the side of the Bud 23026 boxes

For cutting i used a 20mm stepped bit for the pixel cable glands, 22mm stepped bit for the JR45 connectors, dremel to increase the powerCON holes size, and finally a jigsaw for the air vents. Bit of sand paper/dremel to smooth any ruff edges, though very little sanding required.
Some of the holes look a little ruff, but the gaskets on air vents covered that fine.


Power Supplies and Mounting
When I first built my original receiver box, I mounted the power supplies and then connected it all up in the box, it was hard to work in the confined space and took way longer than anticipated to put together and connect all the cables. This time around I built everything outside the box on the bottom plates (thanks Extreme Lighting Displays), and the process was much smoother and went together quickly.

As I knew I was building 4 identical boxes, I really only needed to figure out the cabling once. I built one, disassembled it and made identical wiring on the other three. Assembling boxes 2-4 was about a ¼ of the time of the first one. Definitely recommend doing this if you need multiples.

Here is 3 of the 4 bottom plates all ready to go.



All wired up
Once the bottom plates were competed, getting them installed in the Bud boxes was easy as. Took about two hours or so to complete the 4 boxes and wire up the pigtails. When I got to the final box I realised I was short 6 pigtails! Quick email to Paul from Light it Up LED’s and picked up another 20 today and will get them in place tonight. Thanks again for the quick service, really handy having such a helpful local supplier.



Connections Used
240V connectors – powerCON Style
The connectors for the outside of the case was a tuff choice, I didn’t want to have a long 240v extension cable hanging out of the box, but didn’t want to pay the crazy money for Neutrik powerCON connectors that are the industry standard. I found a few different type of Aliexpress but very few were waterproof. I managed to find some that included both the in/out configuration that I was looking for.

With these connectors, I can daisy chain the receiver boxes together, or provide 240v power to some future location if needed. You need to be mindful of the total Amp draw, but the 20A limit is way more than Australia’s residential plugs can handle. (the photo shows three boxes daisy chained together, this was just for testing purposes only, with no pixels connected)



Quick Wire Connectors
These quick connectors aren’t really needed but using them let me build the full thing outside the box, and then only connecting up three wires to the 240v side. It also means I can just unplug those same three quick connect wires if I need to remove the whole thing. Super cheap at $1.50 for 5 shipped.
(no photo as a ran out of pictures i could post, below is the link if interested)

0.76AU $ 90% OFF|Mini Quick Wire Conductor Connector Universal | Compact Wire Conductor Connector - Connectors - Aliexpress

Smarter Shopping, Better Living! Aliexpress.com

www.aliexpress.com

Wifi relay – Shelly 1PM Plus
The Shelly range of devices was recommended to me on this forum (sorry forgot who said it!) but wow, what a cool product. Not only can you schedule the on/off as well as manually override anytime. It monitors the power draw as well! At the end of this year, I will share the data to show how much power was used and the overall running costs for the 13,000+ pixels in use. Very cool product.

Below is a screen shot from the Shelly app with 3 of the 4 boxes powered on. Very little power draw from the power supplies sitting idle. I will try it again with pixels connected, I’ve heard the power draw is quite a bit higher even when not lit up.

I also installed an override toggle switch in the control box as well. This way if the wifi ever goes down there is a way to manually turn them on. Good thing about the Shelly is the switch can be in either position and the app will still control it as normal.



That's it for this update, i now need to update the F48 control box with a Shelly and powerCON connectors to have a matching set but should be easy enough now i have it figured out.

Whats next
Next up is getting the mini trees sorted out. I have a bunch of wires to splice in, 96 solder joints in my future..........

 

[Skymaster]

Connections Used
240V connectors – powerCON Style
The connectors for the outside of the case was a tuff choice, I didn’t want to have a long 240v extension cable hanging out of the box, but didn’t want to pay the crazy money for Neutrik powerCON connectors that are the industry standard. I found a few different type of Aliexpress but very few were waterproof. I managed to find some that included both the in/out configuration that I was looking for.

Just on this - are these the same connector for both in and out? If so - that's a bit concerning.

PowerCon uses a blue panel connector for in, and a white for out. And you need a white to blue cable for daisy chaining. They have different keys so you can't connect one colour to the other.

The reason for this, is if you make an Aussie 3 pin plug to this connector, and it's the same on both in and out, you could easily end up with a suicide lead (two male Aussie plugs connected together)

With PowerCon, the Aussie plug must go to a blue PowerConplug, and a white PowerConplug would go to an Aussie extension cord socket, thereby preventing a dangerous situation.

 

[scamper]

Just on this - are these the same connector for both in and out? If so - that's a bit concerning.

PowerCon uses a blue panel connector for in, and a white for out. And you need a white to blue cable for daisy chaining. They have different keys so you can't connect one colour to the other.

The reason for this, is if you make an Aussie 3 pin plug to this connector, and it's the same on both in and out, you could easily end up with a suicide lead (two male Aussie plugs connected together)

With PowerCon, the Aussie plug must go to a blue PowerConplug, and a white PowerConplug would go to an Aussie extension cord socket, thereby preventing a dangerous situation.

My guess by looking at the drawings he has got male and female as the hole sizes for the 2 connecters are different.
And by his OCD nature from the rest of this post, that is not something he would have omitted

Nice work by the way, this is teaching a few of us oldies how it can be when you have a plan and the patience.

 

[Skymaster]

My guess by looking at the drawings he has got male and female as the hole sizes for the 2 connecters are different.

Yep on closer look they do appear to be different.
I will keep the above up there though for others perusing the thread so that they are aware of the potential hazard of using the same connector.

 

[Johnnyboy]

I think lots of smallish snowflakes is a great idea - you'll get both individual effects and the whole-house lightup thing going... Makes me rethink a bit!

I'm curious about the conduit - I was thinking of cutting a slit in the back of mine instead of a second row of holes. That way I could keep the wire inside the conduit and get the whole thing closer to the wall. How are you mounting it to the wall with the wires out the back?

thanks!

I thought about slitting the conduit to protect the wires/make it more compact. It would be pretty easy to do if you had a table saw, but might be a pain if you didn't. You might need to go to a slightly larger size conduits to fit the cables in, looking at the 25mm electrical conduits i've used, it wouldn't quite fit. Using 25mm pressure PCV pipe would work though.

I'm not sure how he is planning to attach the pvc to his house but I used these types of mounts to great success!

Store

Our store is loaded with great 3D printed products for all uses.

sfl-designs.com

I printed them out in various sizes depending on my needs. They ended up having a secondary purpose of forming a cable channel along my garage which helped a lot.

I've yet to make up my mind about mounting, i've got some ideas but still not sold on any of them

I think 3D printing is the way to go, i've got a local 3D printing company (ShapeNerd) who i have used for a few things, but will likely end up getting my own at some stage. The Bamboo Labs printers looks amazing!

Just on this - are these the same connector for both in and out? If so - that's a bit concerning.

PowerCon uses a blue panel connector for in, and a white for out. And you need a white to blue cable for daisy chaining. They have different keys so you can't connect one colour to the other.

The reason for this, is if you make an Aussie 3 pin plug to this connector, and it's the same on both in and out, you could easily end up with a suicide lead (two male Aussie plugs connected together)

With PowerCon, the Aussie plug must go to a blue PowerConplug, and a white PowerConplug would go to an Aussie extension cord socket, thereby preventing a dangerous situation.

My guess by looking at the drawings he has got male and female as the hole sizes for the 2 connecters are different.
And by his OCD nature from the rest of this post, that is not something he would have omitted

Nice work by the way, this is teaching a few of us oldies how it can be when you have a plan and the patience.

Yep on closer look they do appear to be different.
I will keep the above up there though for others perusing the thread so that they are aware of the potential hazard of using the same connector.

Really good points! This could catch someone out if your not careful and agree anyone looking at this style of setup should be aware of. The standard 'in' style connectors are much cheaper so i can see someone trying to save some $$ just using the one type. I was very mindful of this and made sure both in/out styles are used. It seems most people don't wire the in/out configuration and just use in only but good to be aware of some pitfalls.

Here is a close up of the two types of sockets and cable connectors for each box

 

[Skymaster]

Here is a close up of the two types of sockets and cable connectors for each box

Ahh, that makes it much more obvious. Good work!
They look like half decent connectors. Be curious to know how well they stand up in the weather.

 

[bert-nc]

My guess by looking at the drawings he has got male and female as the hole sizes for the 2 connecters are different.
And by his OCD nature from the rest of this post, that is not something he would have omitted

Nice work by the way, this is teaching a few of us oldies how it can be when you have a plan and the patience.

Patience and a plan?
What is that?

 

[Johnnyboy]

Mini Trees!
After what was a pretty good run with getting custom length pixel stings made, the mini trees were where I messed up......Kinda. The 105pixel strings were perfect and I even specified 1500mm pigtails on the input/output LOVE LOVE LOVE this part, I just didn't realise that the prop requires a pixel gap longer than the standard 4inchs every 34th pixel......

The Problem
The gaps at the bottom of the tree are just that little bit too far to stretch standard spacing pixels and i ordered the pixels before my props were delivered. Woops! I have no doubt LightitupLED's would been able to supply pixels with perfect spacing and even this weird custom length spacing every 34th pixels if I requested it. Lesson for next time.



Soldering and more Soldering
I may have gone slightly overboard on the number of mini trees with 8 for the first year, but for the regular readers of my journey I haven't done anything by halves. With that said, 8 trees, 2 splices per tree, 6 solders per splice and 2 wires to tin per wire. So that 192 wires to strip and tin, and 96 joints

I found my little 3D printed pixel strip block and an offcut of pixel strip really helpful for keeping everything together nicely. Before this process i was pretty rubbish at soldering and particularly bad at tinning the wires. Not sure why it never clicked before, but after about 20 wires I finally got the knack of it and was tinning/soldering like a pro, well not a pro, but someone who didn't continually burn themselves and melt the wires kind of pro.

Once again having some decent tools makes the job much easier. Wire strippers are incredible, I've never owned a set until I started this hobby this year and boy, they make the task much more enjoyable. How i survived my whole life without them I'll never know.
And here we have the setup for tinning and one soldered set of soldered wires just before getting the heat shrink put in place ready for testing. Like I said, it's not pretty but will do the job.

Fun Fact, I had a bunch of standard 3 core + sheath wire, but no standard 3core cable used on the pixels. As I had so much extra length on the tree pigtails, I sacrificed 2 lengths to the splice gods. winning! These were from the two trees that will go at the end of the line so nothing needing the extra pigtail length.


I only counted wrong once, 37 is close to 34 right? Just a little more choppy chop and joiny join and good to go.

The Star and xLights
This bit might be common knowledge, but I thought it was awesome and saved me from making even more joints. When I finished pushing the pixels in the tree part, i got to the wiring diagram for the starts and found that it was at the middle in the bottom of the star and just wouldn't reach. Jumped onto xLights and the developers have thought of it, simple option for starting location and could finish up the star.


Testing time
After using a metric tonne of cable ties to fix the backs into place it was time to connect them all up along with the canes and run a sequence to see them shine. Not sure who was more excited me or the kids (definitely me!)
8 x 105pix for the trees
7 x 99pix for the canes. All running from 3 ports. Running at 30% brightness with no power injection for the test. I will be running PI every 300 pix or so.

Little one insisted she get a photo next to the trees and canes

Out the Front
After all the fun playing with lights inside the house, I have never placed any props outside to get an idea of scale and how it will all look. Well that all changed with the trees and I dragged them out the front and put them in position. Oh wow! even without lights going I felt extra festive. Can't wait to put them up for real! Is August too soon?


Custom Strings - Extra Long Pigtails
If you're still not sold on custom strings, check this out. With the extra-long pigtails on the canes and trees I don't need any extension cables to connect the props up. I've done this for my stars as well so they can connect up to each other on the roof with no extension cables. And if you're wondering if the custom pixels and custom pigtail length cost much extra, give Paul an email you will be surprised.


Next on the To Do List
I don't have too many more pixels to push, just 4 arches and 2 singing faces that I ordered a few weeks ago in a moment of weakness with the July sales from ExtremeLightingDisplays. Next task is either going to be the arches or I might get the conduit roof mounting system for the stars sorted. I recently picked up close to 200 PVC Tee's and elbows along with 15lengths of PVC pipe. By the end of it I will likely be half stoned by all the PVC glue!
Stay tuned!

 

[paullyxmas76]

Gotta love the custom strings...they really make a big difference....I'm sure we could of made the wire longer for the mini trees at the 34th pixel next time ...great write up again and glad we could be a part of your first year of Holiday lighting! Amazing work!!