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New to Christmas lighting?
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AusChristmasLighting 101 Manual
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[QUOTE="merryoncherry, post: 125972, member: 37249"] First I want to say that the 101 manual is a great reference. But it is a "manual", not a "getting started guide". There is more than one way to get started. I think it depends on how much time you have, how much money you have, what your goal is, what style of lights look best to you, and what would make the hobby fun vs. frustrating for you. I'm going to lump people into categories, in a very unfair way: 1. People who love the technology, they build their own controllers, they choose the boards carefully, they got started with a small controller and flashing lights first. Or people who love their mechanical designs. This is a very "bottom up" approach, focusing on components and then putting a show on top. 2. People who love to micro-manage, plan, and are very detail-oriented. Much like gardeners who don't want any weeds, they are careful about which pixel spacing they use, know their exact voltages everywhere, mount things precisely and cleanly, like a work of art even in the light. 3. People who want to be pioneers, do things nobody else has done, like using water jets, or having fire in the show, or taking txt messages, push buttons, interactive animatronics, etc. 4. (This is the category I'm in) People who just want a show, we know roughly what we like and will do some work to get it done. We're very "top-down" people, we want everything to be as easy as it can be, want to make a lot of changes as we go to get closer to the goal. We don't know enough in advance, we'll just refine the stuff that annoys us the most, as we go along. We want kit that "just works", and some handy quick fixes (zip ties, data amps, power insertion tees, extra cables, garden stakes, etc.) for stuff that doesn't just work. If any of the first 3 sound like you, ask someone else for advice, not me. So if you "just want a show that looks good to you", I think the first major decision is whether you like the look and simplicity of A/C stuff (Bunnings lights will do) that blink to the music, or want to do the whole pixel thing. Pixels definitely involve more work and learning, they tend to have a bright/harsh look about them compared to A/Cs (especially incandescent). If you haven't already, watch the [URL='http://xlightsaroundtheworld.com/']xLights around the world videos[/URL]. These will give you plenty of inspiration, maybe you'll see some ideas you definitely want to incorporate in your setup. Download [URL='https://xlights.org/']xLights[/URL] for free, play around with it, and see if you can get used to it, because if you choose pixels, it's a good way to run them. You can, if you choose, mock up your whole display, sequence it, tweak it, etc., get a pretty good idea of what it looks like, without spending any money... and you'll know a lot about whether you'll enjoy this or get frustrated. If you go pixels... [USER=29098]@Mark_M[/USER] put a good list of suppliers in the last "hello" post [URL='https://auschristmaslighting.com/threads/hello.14674/']here.[/URL] One final thing that I know now but didn't believe (or want to believe) before I started, is that I put 10-20 seconds and $1USD into each pixel, on average. This covers the pixel, the mounting, the wiring, the controller, and purchased sequences. If you do more yourself, you might save money, less yourself and it'll cost more. If you have OCD, you'll spend a lot more time per pixel, probably more money too. [/QUOTE]
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The title of our introductory lighting manual contains a three digit number. What is that number? Clue: Display basics forum
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