Hi everyone!

B

BlueMan

New elf
Joined
Dec 26, 2014
Messages
2
Location
Saint John, Indiana
Hi there!

New to these forums. Just started putting lights up this year on the house. Used LOR for halloween and didn't get time to go that route for Christmas. Would love to do RGB throughout but it seems the cost is SOO expensive. Plus, I'm not an electrician by any means so if I can't just plug it in, I'm having problems comprehending all this information. I want to do huge displays with lights. I've always loved lots of lights just didn't know which way to go. I've already seen most of the "biggies" go with LSP. I've already invested into 4 16-channel LOR boxes but I like hearing that I can still use those. Everything else is a blur to me at this point. I just know this year that If I want to have a big next year, I've got to start now. ha!

Anyways, I just wanted to say HI and tell you in advance that I'm about at dumb as they come when it comes to this. Lots to research but please don't be offended if I bug you with questions. I'm from Saint John, Indiana USA BTW! Hello everyone!!
 
You've come to the right place. Lots of Aussies here. Aussies are born knowing everything, about everything!

Quit joking. I'm an Electrical Engineer and can solder to military specs. The electrical stuff is very simple. There have been some glitches getting all of the hardware to talk to each other. Get into chat to fix all that.

The hardest thing is to visualise what you want your lights to do to music.

Welcome aboard. R
 
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Welcome to ACL, with some commitment and effort and asking questions then the pieces will start to fall into place, but its a bit overwhelming at first
 
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to ACL BlueMan

You already have a start since you did Halloween
Christmas is the same thing, usually a bit larger display, running for a longer period of time, with more songs.
Looks like one of your foremost concerns will be building your light elements to withstand wind & snow. ;)
 
Thanks everyone for your nice replies! I'm willing to learn anything I can. Your right about the wind and snow!!

One thing I know I want to do is a mega tree. I would love to do it in a RGB style so I can control the colors but I think that might be out of my early budget at this time. I've seen a RGB ball on top of a mega tree but I researched that and saw that using LOR equipment, it would cost almost $500! Surely RGB stuff is cheaper than that.

Anyways, time to soak myself in the glory of the information posted here! Cheers!
 
I think a mega tree is a great investment and I would go rgb pixel.

A 2d Ray tree might be a cheaper option or a smaller pixel tree maybe 2.5m. LOR is generally the easier option but can be pricey.
 
Hi Blue, I'm not sure you can do much with 500 bucks.

I set (OK, my wife agreed to) a budget at 1000 bucks when the Aussie was at parity, I spent about 1500 bucks when I added spares in case the display stopped due to psu failures, etc. You can certainly buy a JS1 P12S, a 5V PSU and many 5V pixels, plus some cables within your 500 bucks and then add as much as you like the next year.

I will speak for myself and let you draw any conclusions that fit your circumstances. I feel that my lights are an investment. This year's expenditure will be used for many years. I invested in pixels and pixel controllers this year, I spent some funds on dimmer boards to control my legacy lamps, and the PSUs and cabling. I will add hundreds of pixels next year without any funds for controllers and extra PSUs. I did buy some cheap Chinese controllers, which work well, and are good for testing but I would not trust for my display.

My display was not the kick-HoHoHo, jaw-dropping, traffic control Police nightmare of other members. Some of the guys spend much more that me on annual repairs and maintenance, and raise big bucks for charity.

If you want a pixel mega tree then design what you want, build what you can afford. That will inform you for future years. A few years ago I spent a day building a 2ch sign that said 'happy christmas'. It's still in my display and the kids love it. I wanted to replace it with an array which could put any text I chose. I've got that, but I have not much to say. My array does awesome other stuff, but I kept my 2ch message.

I would say the most important thing is doing something personal with your lights. R
 
Welcome to ACL, lots of great help and members to help you on your way, there are no such thing as a dumb question except the one you dont ask, we all started somehwere and we all were not blessed with this knowledge without putting in the effort to learn
 
Hello Blueman and welcome to ACL

I cant help you with if you are using LOR controllers to drive the lights, but there are quite a few on the forum who have.
The cost for the first year is relatively high , because all the infrastructure 9eg (PSUs , controllers , software, consumables) with sufficient spares has to be bought, but in my case they were under utilised and as such for the next year , I need to mainly invest in the lights..

You can get a nice display by using a combination of 'Big W' lights and some Pixels .. and you could consider using software that is free (eg Vixen/ or Nutcracker etc) and perhaps sell off the LOR controllers (unless these can be used in a mix and match config - I am not sure).
 
Welcome to ACL. I think you will find most of what is recommended here (low voltage) is far cheaper than the LOR route. I did the whole display in this video for $800 as an example (all Ray Wu and home improvement store stuff). My suggestion is to plan on paper first (and include everything whether cable for power injection or bolts or whatever) then execute a little bit at a time. I got my first pole, working, then 4 poles working, then the rest to make all 32 work. You've come to the right place. Best of luck.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uk-PWiLSAIA
 
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