Hey from canberra

stiffman

New elf
Joined
Nov 3, 2011
Messages
11
hey all, My name is Matt.
I'm from Canberra. This is the first time in the last few years I've lived in a house with any kind of front yard.
I've gotten my wife a bit excited about putting up christmas lights.

This year we are making a start with about 1200 LEDs so far by my rough calculations. We've only got one set put up in our windows so far, but i guess we'll start putting up more in a week or two once we get uni for the semester out of the way. We'll also buy some more lights between now and christmas, so hopefully we'll end up with a nice, but fairly basic display.

This year, there will be no controlled lights, but maybe in the future, I'll try to get a controller happening. I've played around with Vixen a very little bi, and will try to get at least a basic paralell port controller running on a computer soon, once I work out the best and cheapest way of doing that (the computer I'm wanting to use is a old laptop running XP, and only supplys 3v on the parallel outputs).
It might change in the future, but I'm not a huge fan of mega controlling everything, making it flash to music in some abstract way. I mean, its cool and flashy, But if i get in to this in any serious way, I'm hoping to bring something else to the mix. Maybe some kind of narative, I'm not sure

My first custom set of lights will be a star I'm almost finished making. I'm using a cheap net light I bought on ebay a few years ago, but have never been game enough to use, as its construction seemed to suggest that it ran 240v thru the whole thing, and all thru very skinny wires. I've chopped it up & almost finished wiring it back together. I'll post some pics when I get a chance
 

fasteddy

I have C.L.A.P
Global moderator
Joined
Apr 26, 2010
Messages
6,648
Location
Albion Park NSW
Welcome to ACL Matt. I hope you find this forum to be helpful, dont be afraid to ask questions or come into the chat room and chat to one of our members, the guys are a very helpful. bunch.
As far as creating a display, there are no rules here on what way you want to create your display, Its all about being creative and putting smiles on peoples faces that come to see the displays. But be warned many a person has said similar words and have become infected with CLAP (Christmas Lighting Addiction Problem) :D as its a very rewarding hobby that can require many different skills.
 

stiffman

New elf
Joined
Nov 3, 2011
Messages
11
Cheers guys
this place is very informative, and I'm already learning!

I'm hoping in the coming years I'll be able to build up quite a nice display.
 
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