Hi From Port Macquarie

[PeterC]

I have never used a forum before so I hope this works.

All

I am not exactly sure what to say so I am just going to ramble on (as I usually do)!

I have been retired now for over 15 years and I now live in Port Macquarie, NSW.

In 2013 I sold my house in Melbourne as it was too difficult for me to maintain after an "incident" I had some two years previously. For those couple of years and the years I have now spent in Port Macquarie I really haven't been able to pick up Christmas lights as even climbing a ladder is a real problem.

Prior to the "incident" I had started to learn electronics and built an antique (by today’s standards) timer based relay driven "display" using standard 240V LED light strings (many of them being the old bulb types [no LEDs]) that were just flashed / dimmed by relay contacts. The "patterns" displayed were just hard wired sequences using an old patch board that drove an array of 10 relays that turned the lights on and off or in my old "non-led strings" would just insert a resistor into the string to fade them down so the bulbs were not de-powered thereby significantly increasing there life. By the way: Yes I know [today] that this was legally questionable!

When I sold the house, I couldn't bring any of the Christmas Light stuff with me, which, with my medical situation, didn't give me much incentive to start again.

I have been looking at lots of the material on this site and my old set up was very primitive indeed but my "love for the lights" was rekindled.

Now for the complicating issue. My past incident created a situation where climbing up ladders etc is a real concern. So preferably everything should be done from the ground plus I certainly am not as fit as I was so it has to be able to be done fairly quickly and without too much weight.

As for the working from the ground issue this year, or should I say last, I did a little experiment and I worked out that, (by getting help to permanently mount some eye-bolt brackets), and by using a pulley approach I could get my lights up to gutter level on my own from the ground. So to get a more complex lighting display up may be possible depending on weight. What was also interesting was just how quick the simple display went up. It took a lot less time then putting gutter clips up and then stringing the lights between them with the many climbs up and down ladders involved.

Now that is what I have done and now how about what I would like to do! I have a small villa with only a 10 metre wide and 3 metre deep street frontage so my plan will have to be very compact by most of your standards. To complicate it 4 of those 10 metres is covered by the driveway and garage (which I use everyday - so it can not be blocked).

I also do not know anything about the new computer based tools to set up these displays so I have a huge learning curve ahead of me which is why I have started so soon after Christmas. By the way, this also helps me financially as I am on a pension and can spread out the costs over almost a full year or years.

I think I have rambled too much and have certainly run out of concepts etc to tell you; so I will sign off for now!

Regards Peter

 

[QLDKing(Brad)]

Welcome to ACL @PeterC

 

[burto51]

Hello PeterC, I am down at wingham, in the second year of lights and learning lots, plenty of help and advice here, got me out of lots of trouble.
Burto51

 

[PeterC]

Hello PeterC, I am down at wingham, in the second year of lights and learning lots, plenty of help and advice here, got me out of lots of trouble.
Burto51

Burto51
Many thanks for your feedback. It is greatly appreciated to hear from someone who effectively has also just started. The learning curve is significant but even by just reading posts I have learned lots and got confused a little. A lot more reading and watching videos is needed before I even think about starting anything.

I certainly think my idea of starting early may pay off.
Take care regards peter

 

[QLDKing(Brad)]

Start to come up with an idea of what you want. You can even use one of the sequencing software to see how it will look on your house (xLights, Vixen etc). List what you are thinking about doing on here for some opinions (be prepared for lots). Ultimately, it's what you want to see. Lots of things you can do at ground level - arches, mini trees, mega tree (possibly a flat one to make it easy to install). Take a look at all the show videos going into the media section and talk to the person that uploaded for tips. You have plenty of time to have a display ready for 1 December (or earlier if you want to do a halloween one - for testing purposes ).

 

[PeterC]

Start to come up with an idea of what you want. You can even use one of the sequencing software to see how it will look on your house (xLights, Vixen etc). List what you are thinking about doing on here for some opinions (be prepared for lots). Ultimately, it's what you want to see. Lots of things you can do at ground level - arches, mini trees, mega tree (possibly a flat one to make it easy to install). Take a look at all the show videos going into the media section and talk to the person that uploaded for tips. You have plenty of time to have a display ready for 1 December (or earlier if you want to do a halloween one - for testing purposes ).

NTKing(Brad)

Many thanks for all your great advice, I must be honest I am getting a little overwhelmed and really didn't know where to start. So I started to design the hardware elements based on my site and personal limitations.

The key to my partial design is the size of my front yard. From my research (to date) this is a key differentiator as nearly all the videos I have seen have huge display areas and/or use lots of vertical height both of which I do not have or can not do. To overcome this my present thoughts are to use a layered approach and to use optical illusion type effects to make it look larger then it is. I did want a mega tree but I dismissed it as it would take up to much space however I love your idea of a flat mega tree which means that this is back in the mix and it is something that I can install from the ground. I assume that if you can have a flat mega tree then you could also have flat mini trees. Another bonus in my optical illusion effect. I have also been thinking of arches as a pseudo fence but scaled down to the ones I have seen on this site.

At this time my issue is the garage and how to integrate it into the display. My first thought was to use two huge "candy cane" type structures to bridge the garage but nothing is fixed at this time as I have a small bout of analysis paralysis right now. As for sequencing etc well the basic design of the elements is were I am right now. Sequencing and all the complexity associated with it will certainly come soon enough but are a little bit beyond me at this time.

Once again thank you for your help and input it is really greatly appreciated.

with the kindest regards peter

 

[QLDKing(Brad)]

I always see concentrate on your build rather then sequencing - without props there is nothing to show the sequences on. If you decide on xLights, you can get sequences from the google share drive as well and import to your display (not sure if Vixen has something similar). Takes a little bit of time but way quicker then starting a sequence from scratch. If you upload a photo of your house, others can offer suggestions.

 

[djgra79]

Welcome to ACL Peter!

There's no rule that says you need to fill a display in 1 year either. Many of us have been adding new elements each year, so to emphasize a point made above, pick some key elements you definitely would like to see in your display and go about building those first. If you can knock them over early enough in the year then set your sights on other elements as time/budget allows.