Tory Street Lights (NZ)
New elf
- Joined
- Jun 23, 2010
- Messages
- 27
Tory Street Lights – New Zealand
Hi, I have been registered here for a few years, so I thought it was time to introduce myself
My name is Terry Sutton, I’m 75 yrs young, and I live in Nelson, at the Northern end of the South Island of New Zealand with my wife of 50yrs, and I must admit that I have the “CLAP” a “Christmas Lighting Addiction Problem” J We have two adult children, a married Son who is the Assistant Computer Network Systems Manager for a very large secondary school, and a married Daughter, who trained for 3yrs in the US in French Mime, stage direction and performance, she delivered us twin grandchildren six years ago. I have always been involved in Electronics in one form or the other. My career started as a Radio Studio Panel Operator, then Maintenance, and studio installation. This morphed into 25 odd years in Television Transmission, rising to Snr Technical Officer level, helping maintain some 80 + sites of TV and radio transmitting stations, big and miniscule, as well as some Microwave links as a first line callout. After the TV employment ended I was employed as a seasonal “Service Engineer”, maintaining labelling machines in the fruit industry for 15 years. To keep my hand in I currently help maintain the local access Radio station and it’s network of studios. I have been involved in Church musical groups since I was a teenager, playing music, constructing instrument and PA amplifiers, as well as some instruments themselves. We also got involved in building and racing Model Powerboats, constructing the control gear myself, then, after a back injury, I revived my interest in Model Railways, now “Christmas Lights” as well.
We have lived in our 119 yr old house for 40+ years and have always had Christmas lights up in one form or another. The bow window in the front lounge of the house has had a Christmas tree in it as long as we have been here. I built a pair of random timed Triac switches that have run the lights on the tree for 35 yrs or so which added some animation to the tree along with the store bought flashing strings. One year when we were late in putting the tree up, a neighbour asked “Where is the Tree??, we are waiting to see it”
I discussed the possibility of computer animation of Christmas lights with a friend that had a large static display, he was keen to add it to their display, but his business was too all consuming, and we never followed it up. When I finally retired I browsed across several Computer Animation of Christmas lighting sites on the ‘net. While recovering from a dose of the ‘flu in late 2009 I found DIYC (Do It Yourself Christmas), Christmas lighting Forum based in the US, and the fount of knowledge available there was amazing. I then rapidly built 120 Channels of a “Hill 320” controller from junk box stuff that I had lying around, also discovering that I already had sufficient Opto-couplers and Triac’s to construct the Solid State Relays/Switches required to control the lights. A modified MP3 Player with a RF booster amp provided the radio link and we were away. I went the “Hill 320” path because I had already built a Model Railway controller interface using an almost identical circuit some years before.
I now have available over 1,200 Channels of “Renard 64” fully dimmable controllers housed in three old computer cases. With my background in Radio studio’s and Television Transmitter/translator installations etc, I operate my gear completely differently to the US “Norm” in that I have all my controllers, switches and power supplies relatively centrally located. The Solid State Relays are all constructed on strip board, and mounted in plastic lunch/freezer boxes inside modified surplus plastic Battery Electric Drill cases, they are set up as 8, 16, 24, 32, or 40 Channels per box, as required. These are then run out to the display items in heavy duty multicables in multiples of Eight, with appropriate professional heavy duty plugs and sockets for each cable run. Setting up is "relatively" “Simple”, for example two eight channel arches run out in one 18 conductor cable, with 16 conductors carrying the power feeds from the Solid State Relays to the light strings, and the return running back through the two spares plus the very heavy shield. Naturally this is only for the low voltage items, which is most of the display. The few mains strings I use have long tails attached and they are run from 2 x four socket, modified “Multiboxes”, connected to 230Volt Solid State Relays, also mounted in plastic lunch/freezer containers for safety, as well as being inside a modified old plastic Battery Electric drill cases. The Solid State Relays are connected to the Renard 64’s with 9 pin “D” range extension cables (8 Channels + Common return), of which I now have a large box full .
This is a very expensive method of setup if one had to buy all the cabling hardware, thankfully I had access to the necessarys for free as it became available when the business was closed, and we were made redundant. Otherwise it would all have been residing in a very large skip, or have been converted into “Beer Money” !!
I am heavily indebted to the local recycling centre as the source of the “unwanted” plastic Battery Electric Drill cases, many, many, hundreds of metres of power cable, “old” UPS Transformers, armfulls of “Gazebo Frame” tubing plus their fittings, many strings of “Old” Christmas lights, and “old” mains fuse carriers, that work perfectly in my application. I have been able to purchase these items for relatively small money, and put them into “service” in my setup, keeping them out of landfill for now. J
Only in the last few years have I been able to purchase LED strings, at reasonable prices, in individual colours. These have been modified for my application, with extra resistors for current protection, and bridge rectifiers installed to operate on my AC switches.
I have now replaced some of the LED strings with Pixels, around 5,000 of them, currently run out of the xLights sequencer via WiFi to 23 x ESP8266 Pixelstick modules. I am going to replace the WiFi link with hard wired cables and a Falcon controller next year due to interference in the WiFi band creating hassles this year.
I plan the channel layout on a 2,500+ line spreadsheet which has gone through a number of iterations. This is a huge help prior to setting up Vixen 2.1x, the sequencing program that I use, and then import into xLights, ensuring that I plan the individual strings of lights in the correct order for the display demultiplexer, or controller, and the switches from the start.
I built a two panel “Ledtrix” a 16 x 96 “LED” matrix display a few years ago. The panel is 2.4m long by 500mm high, has 1,536 LED’s in it, which are all hand wired, and run with a “PixC” interface. They are driven by “LTC”, a command line utility triggered by the sequencing playout program. This allows me to “talk” to the assembled viewers without “saying” anything!!, by informing them of the name of the current song playing, and other information. We also have a pair of small commercial LED display panels out on the front fence to reinforce the FM Transmitter frequency to the viewing public.
As a novelty I created two 600mm diameter supersized "Christmas Balls" that have animatronic faces with eyes/eyelids/eyebrows and mouths that "sing" a song within a sequence, all animated using 8 model control servos inside. They have proved to be a real hit with the public.
A small Chinese manufactured FM stereo transmitter now provides the RF FM Transmission to the cars using a Low Power FM frequency. The transmitter has a pair of professional studio quality audio peak limiters in front of it to keep the peak audio levels under control. The audio input rack also houses a couple of power amplifiers, (Ex a discarded car radio), which allowed me to place speakers in the front garden, operating “very quietly”, so that those “passers by” that do not have a radio with them can hear the music.
The complete system operates on two 10amp power cables. Each cable passes through an earth-leakage controlled circuit breaker, mounted in a portable “switchboard” case. This also houses a pair of miniature clamp meters inside to monitor the current on each cable. After the Earth Leakage Circuit breakers are a pair of 25 amp commercial heavy duty solid state switches, ex Photocopiers, which allow automation of the power to the display. To do this I derive 9V DC from a Plugpack, plugged into a mechanical time switch, set to turn on ½ an hour before the “show” and off ½ an hour after the “show”, this turns the power to the display on and off respectively. I discovered that the biggest waste of power has been transformer core losses, both in the mains isolation transformers, for the mains strings, and the step down transformers to run the low voltage, (12 Volt, and 24 Volt) AC items. Selecting the “Best” combination of transformers to do the job saved me a huge amount of power and the “LED’s” this year reduced the power consumption even more.
The Pixels are powered by a pair of 200 amp 5 volt supplies and a pair of 75 Amp 5 Volt supplies situated close to the appropriate banks/groups of Pixels, all recycled from various sources
From my meagre beginnings in 2009 with 120 channels, this year we have now climbed up to around 750 Channels of Renard control, of individual strings/lights, plus 15,000 channels of Pixels or around 47,000 lights. The neighbours are thankfully very supportive, and we have been selected as “prize winners” in a local radio station run “Christmas Lighting Competition” in three of the 10 years. The 2018 season produced a vehicle count around the 1600 + cars as well as about half that number of folk walking past to watch, with lots of very positive comment. Considering the local population is only around the 46,000 mark we feel very honoured, and humbled, to see the number of cars we do, considering we are one of only two “Computer Animated” displays in the district.
Cheers,
Terry
Hi, I have been registered here for a few years, so I thought it was time to introduce myself
My name is Terry Sutton, I’m 75 yrs young, and I live in Nelson, at the Northern end of the South Island of New Zealand with my wife of 50yrs, and I must admit that I have the “CLAP” a “Christmas Lighting Addiction Problem” J We have two adult children, a married Son who is the Assistant Computer Network Systems Manager for a very large secondary school, and a married Daughter, who trained for 3yrs in the US in French Mime, stage direction and performance, she delivered us twin grandchildren six years ago. I have always been involved in Electronics in one form or the other. My career started as a Radio Studio Panel Operator, then Maintenance, and studio installation. This morphed into 25 odd years in Television Transmission, rising to Snr Technical Officer level, helping maintain some 80 + sites of TV and radio transmitting stations, big and miniscule, as well as some Microwave links as a first line callout. After the TV employment ended I was employed as a seasonal “Service Engineer”, maintaining labelling machines in the fruit industry for 15 years. To keep my hand in I currently help maintain the local access Radio station and it’s network of studios. I have been involved in Church musical groups since I was a teenager, playing music, constructing instrument and PA amplifiers, as well as some instruments themselves. We also got involved in building and racing Model Powerboats, constructing the control gear myself, then, after a back injury, I revived my interest in Model Railways, now “Christmas Lights” as well.
We have lived in our 119 yr old house for 40+ years and have always had Christmas lights up in one form or another. The bow window in the front lounge of the house has had a Christmas tree in it as long as we have been here. I built a pair of random timed Triac switches that have run the lights on the tree for 35 yrs or so which added some animation to the tree along with the store bought flashing strings. One year when we were late in putting the tree up, a neighbour asked “Where is the Tree??, we are waiting to see it”
I discussed the possibility of computer animation of Christmas lights with a friend that had a large static display, he was keen to add it to their display, but his business was too all consuming, and we never followed it up. When I finally retired I browsed across several Computer Animation of Christmas lighting sites on the ‘net. While recovering from a dose of the ‘flu in late 2009 I found DIYC (Do It Yourself Christmas), Christmas lighting Forum based in the US, and the fount of knowledge available there was amazing. I then rapidly built 120 Channels of a “Hill 320” controller from junk box stuff that I had lying around, also discovering that I already had sufficient Opto-couplers and Triac’s to construct the Solid State Relays/Switches required to control the lights. A modified MP3 Player with a RF booster amp provided the radio link and we were away. I went the “Hill 320” path because I had already built a Model Railway controller interface using an almost identical circuit some years before.
I now have available over 1,200 Channels of “Renard 64” fully dimmable controllers housed in three old computer cases. With my background in Radio studio’s and Television Transmitter/translator installations etc, I operate my gear completely differently to the US “Norm” in that I have all my controllers, switches and power supplies relatively centrally located. The Solid State Relays are all constructed on strip board, and mounted in plastic lunch/freezer boxes inside modified surplus plastic Battery Electric Drill cases, they are set up as 8, 16, 24, 32, or 40 Channels per box, as required. These are then run out to the display items in heavy duty multicables in multiples of Eight, with appropriate professional heavy duty plugs and sockets for each cable run. Setting up is "relatively" “Simple”, for example two eight channel arches run out in one 18 conductor cable, with 16 conductors carrying the power feeds from the Solid State Relays to the light strings, and the return running back through the two spares plus the very heavy shield. Naturally this is only for the low voltage items, which is most of the display. The few mains strings I use have long tails attached and they are run from 2 x four socket, modified “Multiboxes”, connected to 230Volt Solid State Relays, also mounted in plastic lunch/freezer containers for safety, as well as being inside a modified old plastic Battery Electric drill cases. The Solid State Relays are connected to the Renard 64’s with 9 pin “D” range extension cables (8 Channels + Common return), of which I now have a large box full .
This is a very expensive method of setup if one had to buy all the cabling hardware, thankfully I had access to the necessarys for free as it became available when the business was closed, and we were made redundant. Otherwise it would all have been residing in a very large skip, or have been converted into “Beer Money” !!
I am heavily indebted to the local recycling centre as the source of the “unwanted” plastic Battery Electric Drill cases, many, many, hundreds of metres of power cable, “old” UPS Transformers, armfulls of “Gazebo Frame” tubing plus their fittings, many strings of “Old” Christmas lights, and “old” mains fuse carriers, that work perfectly in my application. I have been able to purchase these items for relatively small money, and put them into “service” in my setup, keeping them out of landfill for now. J
Only in the last few years have I been able to purchase LED strings, at reasonable prices, in individual colours. These have been modified for my application, with extra resistors for current protection, and bridge rectifiers installed to operate on my AC switches.
I have now replaced some of the LED strings with Pixels, around 5,000 of them, currently run out of the xLights sequencer via WiFi to 23 x ESP8266 Pixelstick modules. I am going to replace the WiFi link with hard wired cables and a Falcon controller next year due to interference in the WiFi band creating hassles this year.
I plan the channel layout on a 2,500+ line spreadsheet which has gone through a number of iterations. This is a huge help prior to setting up Vixen 2.1x, the sequencing program that I use, and then import into xLights, ensuring that I plan the individual strings of lights in the correct order for the display demultiplexer, or controller, and the switches from the start.
I built a two panel “Ledtrix” a 16 x 96 “LED” matrix display a few years ago. The panel is 2.4m long by 500mm high, has 1,536 LED’s in it, which are all hand wired, and run with a “PixC” interface. They are driven by “LTC”, a command line utility triggered by the sequencing playout program. This allows me to “talk” to the assembled viewers without “saying” anything!!, by informing them of the name of the current song playing, and other information. We also have a pair of small commercial LED display panels out on the front fence to reinforce the FM Transmitter frequency to the viewing public.
As a novelty I created two 600mm diameter supersized "Christmas Balls" that have animatronic faces with eyes/eyelids/eyebrows and mouths that "sing" a song within a sequence, all animated using 8 model control servos inside. They have proved to be a real hit with the public.
A small Chinese manufactured FM stereo transmitter now provides the RF FM Transmission to the cars using a Low Power FM frequency. The transmitter has a pair of professional studio quality audio peak limiters in front of it to keep the peak audio levels under control. The audio input rack also houses a couple of power amplifiers, (Ex a discarded car radio), which allowed me to place speakers in the front garden, operating “very quietly”, so that those “passers by” that do not have a radio with them can hear the music.
The complete system operates on two 10amp power cables. Each cable passes through an earth-leakage controlled circuit breaker, mounted in a portable “switchboard” case. This also houses a pair of miniature clamp meters inside to monitor the current on each cable. After the Earth Leakage Circuit breakers are a pair of 25 amp commercial heavy duty solid state switches, ex Photocopiers, which allow automation of the power to the display. To do this I derive 9V DC from a Plugpack, plugged into a mechanical time switch, set to turn on ½ an hour before the “show” and off ½ an hour after the “show”, this turns the power to the display on and off respectively. I discovered that the biggest waste of power has been transformer core losses, both in the mains isolation transformers, for the mains strings, and the step down transformers to run the low voltage, (12 Volt, and 24 Volt) AC items. Selecting the “Best” combination of transformers to do the job saved me a huge amount of power and the “LED’s” this year reduced the power consumption even more.
The Pixels are powered by a pair of 200 amp 5 volt supplies and a pair of 75 Amp 5 Volt supplies situated close to the appropriate banks/groups of Pixels, all recycled from various sources
From my meagre beginnings in 2009 with 120 channels, this year we have now climbed up to around 750 Channels of Renard control, of individual strings/lights, plus 15,000 channels of Pixels or around 47,000 lights. The neighbours are thankfully very supportive, and we have been selected as “prize winners” in a local radio station run “Christmas Lighting Competition” in three of the 10 years. The 2018 season produced a vehicle count around the 1600 + cars as well as about half that number of folk walking past to watch, with lots of very positive comment. Considering the local population is only around the 46,000 mark we feel very honoured, and humbled, to see the number of cars we do, considering we are one of only two “Computer Animated” displays in the district.
Cheers,
Terry
