Burnt out from 2023

Iain

Iain

Full time elf
Joined
Nov 13, 2018
Messages
246
Location
Darwin
Both me and the pixels...

By the end of 2023, the weather was stinking hot and humid, and I was sick of splicing and replacing dead pixels. I had spent so much time and energy on my first big show that I couldn't look at anything Christmas lights related. Water was obviously getting into most of the bullets.

Last year we went away for Christmas, and then I happened to see some lights on YouTube and thought I'd go back to editing mine. I was surprisingly happy to see them again, and they are much better than my recollection at the time! I remember on the day I had planned to film around sunset so you could see the garden and house, but by the time I had fixed all the problems, it was after dark, the mozzies were ferocious, and I was dripping with sweat. After I packed up the tripod I didn't touch them again until a few weeks ago! I didn't even film my whole set (don't know how I missed some songs).

So here they are. They're up on the site and YouTube:
I think I'll give it a crack this year, if finances permit, but this time:
  • taking down the shade sail and fixing lights at 6m on the apex is difficult, I need to find a better way to do this. Maybe less on the house, more in trees & fence
  • I didn't even get the top-left roof line done, as it's much steeper and harder to climb on
  • The trees cover a lot of the house. I like the spotlight effect so I might just get more of those to light up all the trees
  • I did a forward-and-rear facing roof outline. It works amazing - the rear LEDs give so much depth and colour to the wall. It's hard to capture on crap-camera, but have a look at the RHS roof line in Music for a Sushi Restaurant at 1:40 to see what I mean
  • I'd like a bigger matrix haha 😅
  • Some of the songs need a bit of touch-up, and I'd like to add more
  • I never got the sign up, so I don't know if people even heard the music
The highlight was one evening while I was out (before it rained lots and half the display died), my wife gave me a call from home. "There are lots of cars lining up in the street, and people watching the lights, what do I do?" I said "Smile and wave!"

So have a look, pick away at it, be brutal - you can't hurt my feelings! Suggestions welcome.
 
It's often been said that this is a hobby with very high highs and awfully low lows, it can get pretty overwhelming at times.

This Christmas was a saga for me with all sorts of issues but I just kept plodding along and got through it, the reality is the people that come to see our shows aren't as big a critics as we are on our self so we need to remember it is a hobby and not to get to stressed.

Your sequences look good with nice timing, I love the arches.

Well done and remember Rome wasn't built in a day.

Cheers Kev
 
I've had a couple of shocker years for the lights. I plan to keep on doing it as long as there's kids turning up and leaving happy. Last year was my 21st year of lights and 15 or so of computer control. I know people hear my music as I either have 1 or 2 speakers out there and they are up fairly loud (no close neighbours is excellent) and we hear the music coming out of cars as well. We know that they are enjoying it when the volume from the car exceeds our speaker volume. I had my first pixel failure in 2024. About 10 years of pixels with maybe 20,000 pixels now and a pixel that has been in use for 6+ years failed :(
 
I’ve been watching you for a while mate, those numbers inspire me! I met a guy in Darwin who excitedly told me about his regular visits to your place once he knew I was setting up the Blinky.

I have to ask, how have you had so few failures? Do you have existing stock of better quality than they make now? Or was the 2022/23 season just a terrible one for me?
 
Iain said:
I have to ask, how have you had so few failures? Do you have existing stock of better quality than they make now? Or was the 2022/23 season just a terrible one for me?
Click to expand...

It can be quite demoralizing if you get a bad batch of pixels. I am sorry to hear that this happened to you. One of the 3 main factories produced terrible pixels in 2022, with some failing in 2022, and the rest in 2023. It's a very widespread gripe in the hobby because so many people had a bad year... I was pretty sick and tire of repairs in 2023, but luckily I had a great experience with the things I put in in 2021, my first year, and that kept me going... if I'd have gotten a bad batch in my first year, I probably wouldn't have kept up with this.

Aside from the failed pixels, you got really good results with your show. So, imagine that you could make it as nice as it should have been, maybe a little better (you already have some good ideas), without all the hassle of repairing stuff. Here's the tough advice though, you have to get rid of all of the strings from those bad batches. (It might be outside the warranty window now, but some of us got some of our 2022 pixels replaced under warranty, which didn't save us from the hassle of doing all the replacements, but it did make us feel a bit better.) Purge them. They don't get better with age, they get worse. Take heart in the fact that with good batches, you might need to do 1 repair per 10,000 pixels per year... that was the rate I had with the 2021 pixels, and I think this year it was even less with them... as I identified one or two bad strings and yanked them. If you find that you're repairing the same prop more than once, and you hate doing repairs, the best fix is to replace the string.

See how the one string from 2021 has 3 repairs... if you want to stop doing repairs get rid of those strings...

20240824_095436.jpg

If you don't have parts to do all of the replacements, start with the ones that are the least fun to deal with. (Usually the ones highest up... You're right, the ones highest up fail the most, usually in the dark, in a light rain and/or when the mozzies are in full force.)

It's a little bit disheartening to see all the waste, but taking your vengeance out on the cause of all your problems is also a bit therapeutic. I might have taken the garden shears to some, mailed a few crates back to the home address of a vendor who ghosted me (using boxes received from his competitors), and put the manufacturer's flammability claims to the test 🤣.
20231027_174108.jpg20241031_093315.jpg20240104_134507.jpg

Anyway, I hope you give it another try, as it's clear from the videos that you're on the right track... with good pixel batches it can be fun again.
 
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Thanks Merry, I bought the bulk of mine in the early 23 pre buy, then another bunch in late 23 off Ali, which were probably leftover dud stock. It’s encouraging to hear that’s not going to happen again. Unfortunately I’d have to throw the whole lot and buy again. I don’t have the money for that at this stage. I’ll do some testing and see how bad it is.

At least I don’t have to remake the props! There’s no point if I don’t enjoy it, and for the most part of the year I did.
 
Iain said:
I’ve been watching you for a while mate, those numbers inspire me! I met a guy in Darwin who excitedly told me about his regular visits to your place once he knew I was setting up the Blinky.

I have to ask, how have you had so few failures? Do you have existing stock of better quality than they make now? Or was the 2022/23 season just a terrible one for me?
Click to expand...
All of my bullet nodes are from Scottled and are 5V. That's also all that I sell. My 1 failure also occurred after the prop it was on had a fair mechanical knock after it got launched during a huge windstorm. It had been working fine the night before so the fact it landed wires down on twigs, rocks and branches may have broken a wire or something. As far as I know of the 10's of thousands of 5V Scottled nodes that I've sold there have been none or very few failures as no-one has ever mentioned it to me.
 
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