HolidayCoro House Outline in RGB Lights / Pixels - 132 Feet Coverage

I would price it out with rays site, for comparison. You've got to factor shipping from china, too. Also weigh the ease factor, of returns, if need be. I wonder how much the shipping from holidaycoro would be? That's alot of stuff.
 
There is another key difference that is in that package that Ray doesn't offer - it is assembled and we'll support it if you have problems with setup. Returns - we pay for them - no sending back to china, then waiting a few weeks.


Shipping costs, usually in the US, are about $15 to $20 depending on location. For an exact quote, including international, you can select the country, state and postal code and get an instant quote.
 
Hi,

Ray Wu will cut all the lights to the size you are looking for & put pigtails on them for as little as $1 per length. (including the pigtails)

What sort of lights are you looking at using?
Strips, strings, pixels, RGB?
What Voltage 12v or 5v?

No matter where you buy from always get a couple of spare rolls of the lights in your order. This way you will have spares that came out of the same batch. With ordering things at separate times you can end up with some lights having different orientation with the RGB being BGR instead.

Power supplies you get what you pay for sometimes & the cheap ones we don't recommend pushing the 80% mark.

There are a lot of great controllers around on the market now & most vendors have a thread on the main page of this forum.

Have a read of the 101 Manual as it's bound to help with a lot of these decisions.

Doug
 
If you are looking for a single stop vendor with great prices, fully assembled and tested solutions and someone you can call when you run into problems, let us know.

Thanks,
David
HolidayCoro.com
 
Where are you based (as I could not quite tell).

If in the US , then the shipping etc on US based products is quite good.

Not so , if you are in OZ and trying to get stuff from the US.
 
8) everthing what ben said I total agree with 100 percent here in Australia we co not like copy cats
 
The reality is that everything we use or have is a copy in some way or another. the saying that imitation is the best form of flattery is true because if someone thinks that something you do is good enough to either copy or use key design features then you have done something right. Remember that Ray Wu is the king of copying because thats how China operates.

I just wonder how long it will be before some of these RGB lighting importers/sellers get unstuck when Philips come knocking on their door wanting 5% back pay and then the legal fees needed to get on board the Philips patent program, because once you get big enough you will be on the radar and become a worthy case to persue
Minleon have gone through this process so we know its not a myth.
 
First off

Welcome.gif

to ACL genebrown2

As you can see you'll get several different answers.
One more thing to consider, your location.
If your in the USA, I would maybe suggest Holiday Coro. Less shipping, better response to questions, concerns, and issues.
If your down under, Ray may be your best bet. A lot of folks down under use Ray's products and can assist you if you have questions.

Most important, once you have made a decision as to store, ask lots of questions in chat or posts before your make final equipment purchase. This WILL save you a lot of time and $$.



PS .. I agree with Eddy
 
I have actually used both sources for stuff I buy and both have good results.


I think it all depends on what you are buying, how much, support expected, shipping, is it a kit, is it on sale, how fast is the turn around time of when you expect it to arrive, are you buying bulk... and a few other things.


Either way, do some research ahead of time to make sure it all fits your needs.


-blu
 
lizardking(adam) said:


Several issues here:
  • The items listed are not the same (5v vs 12v).
  • Our "standard" price is still going to be cheaper in most cases (for US customers) than Ray's price when you add in shipping from China.
  • Want it cheaper? No problem, get it in our PRE-SALE for $19.99: http://www.holidaycoro.com/product-p/700-ps.htm. Order over $1,000 - you get the cheap prices AND free shipping.
As to the posts about us "copying" - there is a reason that the posts are completely lacking of details - because the people levelling these statements don't have the details or what details they have are single sided. Let me provide the HolidayCoro side of the story:


Up until early 2014, Holidaycoro never sold an E1.31 controller - we considered doing a deal with SanDevices but determined that the support costs (setup, user induced damage, sequencer setup, etc) would make the product a break even or loss for us. So, we didn't sell a E1.31 controller and directed customers to the existing two other vendors for that item.


During 2014 on my annual trip to China, the vendor that developed the TinyPix controller for us asked what products we needed developed and I explained that we might consider an E1.31 controller if the pricing were right. Right around that same time, we were approached by Advatek about selling the Pixlite line of E1.31 controllers and after so negotiation, we decided to go ahead with selling them. During the 2014 year, we sold about $100k worth of Pixlite controllers (at wholesale). During this time the expectations for the support costs were exactly what we thought - people would damage them requiring costly replacement (labor, shipping, testing), customers required extensive PC side support (network issues, IP addressing, virus apps, conflicting programs, problems with sequencing applications, etc) - so this made us hyper aware of the issues that were of concern to us.


We raised these issues with Advatek and suggested changes based on our experience but it appears that Advatek wasn't experiencing the same issues (we support a large amount of beginner customers with likely different support issues) and the suggested changes didn't get made (this is around summer of 2014). Around the fall, maybe September 2014, the Chinese vendor contacted us again saying they were going to produce for their own use, an Artnet controller and that they would add in E1.31 for us. During that time we shared many of the same concerns we had shared with Advatek about the controller - mainly focused on support. Some of these concerns were cross-platform support (Mac, Linux) and PC issues (installation of a PC application), IP addressing visibility, default pixel protocol and most importantly, the ability to determine if a controller was functional at a hardware level WITHOUT the need to configure it on a PC first. It is this last reason why we asked them if they would add an LCD to the unit - so we could be 100% sure if the controller was functional without going through the PC configuration process first which is where most of our costs are with an E1.31 controller.


At that same time we provided them with web links to all the E1.31 controllers on the market - commercial and DIY solutions and provided additional suggestions that we though would make the board as easy as possible for the customer to use and to reduce or eliminate as many questions (which each cost money) from customers as possible. From that point forward we did not have any other involvement in the design, development or otherwise. We did NOT specify the physical dimensions, MCU chips, output chips, connectors (other than to say they had to be pluggable screw connectors) or other physical specifications. Then around the end of 2014, the vendor let us know they were going to be sending us prototypes of the controllers for evaluation and testing. We did not start even testing them for nearly 2 months because they arrived at the end of the busy time of the year and since we had the Pixlite already and it was pretty well embedded in our products, until the first part of 2015.


After testing them in 2015, we discovered that they were pretty good right off the bat and didn't require any hardware adjustments. So, at that time we committed to purchasing them and intended to offer our customers both controllers - the AlphaPix and the Pixlite controller. It made no difference to us which controller the customer purchased because we factored costs on both controllers based on wholesale cost, warranty cost and support costs. Since the wholesale cost of the AlphaPix was cheaper, it came in less expensive than the Pixlite since we could separate the hardware setup costs from the PC setup costs, which we could not do on the Pixlite (this is why there is an optional "end to end setup assurance" option for customers that want PC setup assistance also).


We really, really did not want to stop selling the Pixlite - we had built up a fair number of customers that we knew would want to purchase the Pixlite because of their prior experiences and comfort level and that a few dollars cheaper on a "new" controller wouldn't make a difference to them. Plus, we had a HUGE amount of built up videos, photos, documentation, product kits and other items that were focused around the Pixlite and to remove and replace them would cost us a few hundred hours of work.


It became clear after the release of the AlphaPix, that because of the belief that we had "copied" one of the two controllers was so strong that going forward the relationship would be strained beyond what we felt was going to be reasonable so we decided to end the relationship with Advatek.


I would like to stop here and say that Luke at Advatek has been good vendor to work with. They have serviced our warranty controllers without issue, they nearly always shipped products on the schedule they said they would and they solved technical issues when they arose. We were more than happy to seed the US market with nearly $100,000 (at cost) of Pixlite controllers in 2014 and lay the foundation for their acceptance in market today.


Let me also explain a few other factors surrounding these controllers - the first is that we believe that THE most important person is the customer. We believe that providing the customer the best price and most options is always best. We'd always rather have more options at more price points than other vendors providing each customer with the best options. Two E1.31 controllers would have always been our preference. This is why, when we learned, from a customer, that Advatek would be the provider of E1.31 controllers to Light-o-Rama back in the fall of 2014, we didn't have any problems with that - we felt we could, as we do now, compete with Light-o-Rama on service and price and with more options for E1.31 controllers than offered by LOR.


While there are references to copying the design of the controller - I dispute this. The design of any controller can be influenced by common sense factors including PCB panel sizes, fuses, obvious connectors, MCU's or chips. If the Alphapix 16 was such a copy of the Pixlite design, we wouldn't have put on the LCD interface or used the screw down RS485 outputs or copied the LOR/E1.11 jumper switches or put only 2 LEDs instead of 3, used a 4 layer board instead of a 2 layer. The truth of the matter is, E1.31 controllers are starting to all look the same because they are maturing and just like many cars in the market - products are starting to look very similar, with subtle product specific differences.


It has also been suggested that we copied the name "Pixlite" to form "AlphaPix" and this too is just not true. The first factor is - the word "Pix" is in just about ever vendor's product range from controllers to lights. The second is that we came out with the TinyPix, in late 2012 - heck, I didn't even know Advatek existed until early 2014. Additionally, the update to the TinyPix which was the EasyPix in 2013 was yet another reason why we maintained this xxxxxPix naming system.


As to Ray's pricing - HolidayCoro is nearly single handily the vendor responsible for pushing down his prices and the prices across the entire vendor space. There wouldn't be $20, 30/10 pixel strip without us pushing it down that low or $15 strings of pixel nodes - HolidayCoro and our PRE-SALE pricing is responsible for this and nothing could make us happier because you - the customer, even in AU where we don't really operate, benefits from this price competition. This has also applied to the Pixlite - upon introduction of the AlphaPix, the price on the Pixlite dropped to nearly match that of the AlphaPix and they have introduced new features such as native Mac applications, so again, a win for you - the customer with lower prices and more options.


As to Ray "support" - there will NEVER be any comparison. We help customers with incredibly complex problems, the vast majority (around 85%) of which are not even product related - they are customer induced. We know that Ray isn't able to provide this same level of native English support combined with our years of hands on experience - and we don't just provide simple, pat answers, we provide targeted and specific troubleshooting because we have just done so much of it. If you don't think this matters, ask the 150+ people that called and emailed the week of Thanksgiving with display problem that they couldn't solve and others, who were also busy with their own displays, didn't have time to help them resolve. We know service matters and we provide it and you don't really pay any more for it with a purchase from HolidayCoro.


Vendors are always going to have spats when money, market share and people's livelihoods are at stake and I completely understand that. We still believe that fair competition between vendors is good and that in the end there should always be one winner - the customer. When people post scare tactic and false information in an effort to steer traffic to a specific vendor based on false assumptions, you - the customer loose.
 
So, Advatek is advertising a differential Pixel board, are the copying J1sys? I think not, a good idea,
is a good idea.
 
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