piper_chuck
New elf
- Joined
- Sep 13, 2020
- Messages
- 3
Thanks for letting me in on the madne$$.
I'm an aging father of two teenage daughters. I've played with electronics since the 70's, built a few Heathkit projects back in the days. Have flown radio control airplanes since the early 80's and have raced R/C cars and boats. Woodworking is one of my other interests. I do most of the maintenance and repairs on my cars, including rebuilding two engines while in college. My career since 1982 has been devoted to IBM mainframe programming. And finally, the piper in my handle comes from my love of bagpipes, which I currently do not play due to a wife who is doesn't like them and spending much of my time working and raising the girls. I've recently reflected on all of the different things I've dabbled with over the years and concluded I must have ADD.
My reason for landing here is that my Christmas displays have been evolving to the point where I decided to add pixels and synchronize them to music and several of the Youtubers pointed to this forum as a great resource. I did a tiny bit last year by using an Arduino nano to control relays so I could turn strings of dumb LEDs on and off on a large magnolia in the front yard. There was no music.
This year my plans include outlining most of the roof line of the house, outlining the windows, building a couple wreaths, and some small (around 2.5 foot radius) leaping arches to line the front walkway. I hope to setup some basic synchronization to music.
My work so far has been to decide how to control the lights and begin testing. After much research, including hours of youtube videos, I decided to use xLights and NodeMCUs (ESP8266s) to drive the display. I chose the ESP8266s because they fit into my desire to automate some of the things in my home (there's more of that ADD) and they're way less initial investment than a dedicated controller board. I bought some ESP8266s and a string of pixels. I flashed WLED on one of the ESP8266s and got it to drive the string of pixels. When I showed this to the girls, they both want them for their bedrooms. I then installed xLights, got it talking to the ESP8266, drew most of the layout for the house, and got xLights to drive my string of pixels as part of the house prototype.
Now that I know I can make it work, I'm finalizing my parts list for pixel strips, power supplies, and misc parts such as connectors. According to my calculations, I'm going to need around 30 strips this year (ouch goes the wallet), and probably a couple strings for the girls, so I'm researching vendor choices to determine the best combination of price and quality. Since I can't permanently mount the strips on the house, I'm leaning toward ziptying the strips to 1/2 inch white PVC pipe which I can install during the holiday lighting season. The strips will be exposed, so I'll probably go with IP67 and then use IP65 inside 1 inch HDPE tubes for the leaping arches. My layout will allow me to position power supplies reasonably close and the conduit will allow me to hide power injection wires as needed, so I decided to go with 5V WS2812B 30/M strips rather than a 12V option.
That's all for now, probably too much information, looking forward to learning here...
I'm an aging father of two teenage daughters. I've played with electronics since the 70's, built a few Heathkit projects back in the days. Have flown radio control airplanes since the early 80's and have raced R/C cars and boats. Woodworking is one of my other interests. I do most of the maintenance and repairs on my cars, including rebuilding two engines while in college. My career since 1982 has been devoted to IBM mainframe programming. And finally, the piper in my handle comes from my love of bagpipes, which I currently do not play due to a wife who is doesn't like them and spending much of my time working and raising the girls. I've recently reflected on all of the different things I've dabbled with over the years and concluded I must have ADD.
My reason for landing here is that my Christmas displays have been evolving to the point where I decided to add pixels and synchronize them to music and several of the Youtubers pointed to this forum as a great resource. I did a tiny bit last year by using an Arduino nano to control relays so I could turn strings of dumb LEDs on and off on a large magnolia in the front yard. There was no music.
This year my plans include outlining most of the roof line of the house, outlining the windows, building a couple wreaths, and some small (around 2.5 foot radius) leaping arches to line the front walkway. I hope to setup some basic synchronization to music.
My work so far has been to decide how to control the lights and begin testing. After much research, including hours of youtube videos, I decided to use xLights and NodeMCUs (ESP8266s) to drive the display. I chose the ESP8266s because they fit into my desire to automate some of the things in my home (there's more of that ADD) and they're way less initial investment than a dedicated controller board. I bought some ESP8266s and a string of pixels. I flashed WLED on one of the ESP8266s and got it to drive the string of pixels. When I showed this to the girls, they both want them for their bedrooms. I then installed xLights, got it talking to the ESP8266, drew most of the layout for the house, and got xLights to drive my string of pixels as part of the house prototype.
Now that I know I can make it work, I'm finalizing my parts list for pixel strips, power supplies, and misc parts such as connectors. According to my calculations, I'm going to need around 30 strips this year (ouch goes the wallet), and probably a couple strings for the girls, so I'm researching vendor choices to determine the best combination of price and quality. Since I can't permanently mount the strips on the house, I'm leaning toward ziptying the strips to 1/2 inch white PVC pipe which I can install during the holiday lighting season. The strips will be exposed, so I'll probably go with IP67 and then use IP65 inside 1 inch HDPE tubes for the leaping arches. My layout will allow me to position power supplies reasonably close and the conduit will allow me to hide power injection wires as needed, so I decided to go with 5V WS2812B 30/M strips rather than a 12V option.
That's all for now, probably too much information, looking forward to learning here...
