G'day from Brisbane

C

camduncan

New elf
Joined
Oct 23, 2012
Messages
19
Location
Brisbane, Queensland
G'day all I'm Cameron from Brisbane. I'm fairly new to the world of Christmas lights as this is only my 2nd year of setting up a display with rope light, static displays and 1 or 2 inflatables. I look forward to reading the wealth of information, hints and tips on this site and hopefully contributing my own experiences in time. cheers.
 
Welcome Cameron
Great to see another Brisbane decorator join the community. This will be my 10th year, (8th with LOR), and will be my last doing a big display. Age is catching up & it's time I followed some other pursuits.

Where abouts in Brisbane are you? If you are coming in with LOR, there are many here with good ideas.
 
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Welcome to ACL, feel free to ask any questions and pop into the chat room to say hi or get some answers to some questions. The guys here are all very helpful
 
Thanks so much for the warm welcome everyone :) This site certainly is a wealth of information!
Geoff, I'm located in Coorparoo. I haven't broken into the LOR world yet, but am rapidly absorbing as much information from the board as I can. I'm starting to think I'll have to get a 16 channel starter kit for 2013 :D Until then I'll make do with the lights I've picked up from Bunnings and a few of our southside Christmas shops.
Out of interest, will I need to get special lights for the starter kit, or will some of my existing lighing work?
 
Cameron,

Welcome to ACL. This is my first year of 'controlled lighting' after several years of static displays. We had lots of Big W strings from previous years and decided to start small. We bought a 48 channel controller, power supply and a USB adaptor from David_AVD. He was most helpful. Our aim for this year is to just control the LED strings and leave the 240v rope light motif stuff as it is. We also bought an extra eight 20m strings from Big W. They've all been cut up, joined together and lengthened. The controller has been configured and is working nicely. We're now in the process of writing sequences in Vixen. We chose Vixen because a fault in the LSP website wouldn't allow us to buy it (this has since been fixed).

All up, we've spent just over $700 (not including existing lights). That gives us close to 300m of lights across 36 channels. We're in the process of cutting down a 30m K-Mart string into a waterfall type setup to hang across the garage door. We also have some other existing lights which we're looking at controlling and may add more once we put them up.

So with over 300m of LED strings, a number of rope light motifs, a snow machine, virtual Santa in the window and real Santa dropping by regularly, we hope to have quite a display this year. Best of luck with your display and don't be afraid to ask dumb questions. This lot seem pretty friendly. ;)

Marc
 
camduncan said:
Thanks so much for the warm welcome everyone :) This site certainly is a wealth of information!
Geoff, I'm located in Coorparoo. I haven't broken into the LOR world yet, but am rapidly absorbing as much information from the board as I can. I'm starting to think I'll have to get a 16 channel starter kit for 2013 :D Until then I'll make do with the lights I've picked up from Bunnings and a few of our southside Christmas shops.
Out of interest, will I need to get special lights for the starter kit, or will some of my existing lighing work?
Click to expand...

If you're planningon running a 240V AC controller, nearly any of the off the shelf lights will work - once you have done nasty things to any controller already on the string. Essentially you may need to nobble the control box that makes the lights shimmer, fade, twinkle, etc so that the lights go on when the power is on. There are instructions on the wiki and through the forum on how to do this.

The LOR starter kit is a 240V AC controller.

If you're planning on going the DC route you end up with more control over the lights and even less power usage, but may need to be a bit more selective on which strings you buy as you will need an appropriate power supply to run them.

Some people keep an AC controller around, even after they go to DC lighting, for things like rope lights without controllers.

The easiest entry to the game is to re-use your existing lights with something like the starter kit, then look at going to DC lighting a year or two down the track.....

Cheers!
 
Hi Cameron,

And welcome to ACL. This is a great place with loads of info and heaps of nice people willing to help you out with any problems you may come up with.

It's also great to see another Brisbane person getting into the spirit.

And don't forget to read Fasteddys 101 manual if you havent already.
http://auschristmaslighting.com/forums/index.php/topic,1889.0.html

Good luck with the CLAP.
 
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