Build guide Boydaw Road Lights First Mega Tree Build

[brando]

Boydaw Rd Lights | Gold Coast QLD

Boydaw Rd Lights, Ormeau. 889 likes. Community

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First year show this year, have got my first mega tree up.

4m plus topper - 40NB steel pole, was 6.5m length cut into 4m & 2.5m (also building a smaller 22 * 100 tree)
24 * 150 @ 1" - 3,600 total plus 150 for star
5V bullets
Running off 5 ports of a He123Mk2 (4 for tree, 1 for star)
Power injection every strip
Portable hole
3 guy wires to a guy wire ring just below topper (not here to debate correct/best location) - these connect to heavy duty temporary fencing bases with eye bolts
Base in a mini trampoline with j bolts, nut to tension
Sand bags all over the place for the extra weight
Boscoyo 36" 6 ring star (only using 3 rings this year) - I have a 15mm galv flange on the spigot bolt, 15mm galv threaded pipe - I have my star with 2 guy wires to the topper to stop it spinning

It's essentially just been thrown up this weekend for testing, not completely tensioned or in eventual location.

I was actually really intimidated by this but am pretty happy with how it's turned out.

My takeaway - I should have / will do, use a winch system. The put up and down, I didn't find the weight was too much of an issue, as much as keeping the strings from getting all messed up
Running off 4 ports. With strings of 900 each, the obvious concern is one dead pixel taking out a quarter of my tree. I intend on changing this to run off 25 ports by using a He123Mk2 with expansions, one string per port plus one for star.

It's a complete mess, but as I said, it's up, tested, works well and pretty happy with it.

Summary takeaway - unless you can get to the top of your tree on a ladder or similar, use a pulley or tilt up option.
Power injection - I don't find it difficult at all, it's pretty straight forward, I just find it to be a pain and extra time when the alternative provides more positives imo.

 

[djgra79]

Summary takeaway - unless you can get to the top of your tree on a ladder or similar, use a pulley or tilt up option.

Thanks for the write up, looks great! I too am a firm believer of the above statement. My tree was a single pole and is an absolute PITA for getting into place and taking down. I'm going the tilt winch option for this year and moving from 3in to 2in spacing.

 

[Skymaster]

Looks great!!

Make sure you're sequencing at 20fps instead of 40. You won't be able to push that many pixels per port at 40fps. (on any controller, including Bbb./FPP based ones)
Maximum is about 760-800, due to the timing requirements of the WS2811 protocol.

 

[brando]

Looks great!!

Make sure you're sequencing at 20fps instead of 40. You won't be able to push that many pixels per port at 40fps. (on any controller, including Bbb./FPP based ones)
Maximum is about 760-800, due to the timing requirements of the WS2811 protocol.

Good info. The sequences I’ve tested are running at 40fps and have worked without issue? Alan’s data says 800.
I’ll change my sequences and upload them again, but curious why they’d be working?

 

[Skymaster]

Yeah the 800 is basically the max the protocol can support based on its operating frequency and required reset timing etc. That's essentially what FPP puts out.

What will happen is you'll get what's known as frame tearing. The display will still work, it may just look funny. It might also be completely unnoticeable that it's not an issue.

Imagine everying was one colour, say blue. And you change it to red. When the first red frame arrives, the pixel clock is still pushing out data for the remaining pixels that it hadnt finished yet. So after the 'max pixel limit', the remaining pixels will start showing the new colour, meaning the string will be say 800 pixels blue and 100 pixels red.

A few frames later it changes to green. Now because it hasn't caught up, that change may occur mid string, say 300 pixels in.

With a video playing, you may find you get a horizontal line across the image where it looks like it's torn, which may move up and down the image. That's what happens when the data is arriving faster than the pixels can output it.

 

[brando]

Ok cool. Thanks. Hence why I may not have noticed when just testing a few bits and pieces. Have just got through changing them to 20fps and pushing them again.

 

[Skymaster]

If you're a PC gamer, the same thing occurs when you're graphics card puts out more (or less) frames per second than the refresh rate of the monitor.
That's why there is the option of V-Sync Enabled inside games. That holds the next rendered frame until the corresponding monitor refresh cycle, in other words, forcing 60fps if you have a 60Hz monitor.
Newer GPUs and monitors support the ability for the graphics card to directly change the sync speed of the monitor - known as AMD Freesync, or nVidia G-Sync - this then allows higher framerates without tearing.

 

[tooms]

I have a similar sized tree, just a bit higher, all I've done is brace it to the roof of the house with 3 braces, the base of the pole I just sit on a piece of timber to stop it sinking in. After that I can use a small extension ladder off the roof of the house to reach the top of the tree. Has been like this for about 5 years and hasn't blown over yet, and we've had some good summer storms / tail end of cyclones come through.