Just getting excited after watching a vid on the Facebook, and want to know how much I need to spend to put on some sort of funky light dhow next Xmas?
G'day Dion and welcome to ACL. How much you spend depends on how much you want. We try and do things DIY here which is cheap but requires a bit of work. You can spend a couple of hundred dollars but I'd say at least $1000-$1500 to get out of the blocks. My first year with pixels I spent about $4000 and prob another $1500-$2000 this year.
your question is like how long is a piece of string. you could spend under a $1000 and have a show or you could spend over a $1000. really depends what you would like to do and what you already have.
but jump into chat and look around the site as from your post I think you have a few ideas of what you would like to do already
Welcome to ACL. Along with money spent, consider time. I only spent about $800 to do this (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uk-PWiLSAIA) but it was a couple hundred hours of time because for all the reading I did, there was still a lot of learning through trial when working with the actual lights. You've come to the right place. Best of luck.
First the disclaimer
Joining these forums and entering the chat room can give you CLAP!!!
Christmas Lighting Addiction Problem
If you haven't found it yet, the new revised 2nd addition AusChristmasLighting 101 manual is a great resource for all things RGB and more.
As to what it will cost YOU.
Time = money and money = time.
So first decision is ... what do you have more of ?? time or money ??
LOR is much faster to set up and program but you throw a lot of money at it.
DYI is much cheaper but requires a lot more time.
If you have lots of both time and money you can have an over the top display on your 1st year.
In addition to what the other have said , I think that it depends on whether you want to have a show running with the least effort or whether you chose to make this a hobby (CLAP). Much like model trains...
The more DIY you chose , the less you may end up spending , but the more work it is
Unless using some off the shelf capability {Minleon / LOR} (with higher costs) there is considerable time investment in learning a lot of new stuff in the first year.
Welcome to ACL, lots of great help and assistance here, but as Gerry said there are 2 main ways you can go, being DIY or plug and play, both have tradeoffs