Making Aches from Strips

bob_moody

Apprentice elf
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Oct 20, 2012
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Huntsville, TX
I am trying to put the finishing touches on planning for some new arches.
We want to use the WS2811 5m strips from Ray Wu ($32.00ea) that as I understand are similar to CCR's.

Question is can you build two arches from a single strip?
It seems that LOR SuperStar seems to think so, but at this point i'm more concerned with the mechanics than the programming.

I was thinking of inserting the strip into something like PEX tubing.
7' somthing piece, a 45 deg coupler, short straight, 45 deg coupler and the final piece of PEX to make the second arch.

Is this doable? can a single 5m strip been see as two?

Thanks for the help..

Bob
 

Gilrock

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Jan 4, 2013
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Tucson, AZ
That's exactly what I did this past season. I used 4 LOR CCR's and made 8 arches. I used the gray 3/4" electrical PVC and drove 18" pieces of rebar into the ground at an angle with about 90" between each rebar. I overlapped a foot or so in between each arch. I just tie wrapped the CCR to the PVC at about every 3rd spot where you see the copper joining the sections. Here's a video showing them:
Little Drummer Boy 2012
 

oldmanfathertime1000

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Lake Arthur, Louisiana
bob_moody,

You should be able to cut the strips in half & insert(solder) some wires in between them so as to have some slack.
You can still set them up as 1 strip of channels or you can set them up as 2 different strips of channels in your program....
 

Binkles

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Dec 11, 2012
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Baldivis
When making strip arches do you cable tie them on the top, or are they flexible sideways to put on the face?
 

Gilrock

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You can curve them across the face of the PVC. Look at my circle...it's about a 5 foot diameter and the CCR is tie wrapped facing outward so I actually bent a curve in the strip. As long as you don't try sharp bends it will work fine.
 

fyb2000

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Dec 8, 2012
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Here are the arches I made this year out of flex string:
ringArches
It takes a bit less than 10 minutes to build one. The bigger one are 75 LEDs, the smallest 15, but they do all end up 15 sections. Radial or circumferential effects are pretty straightforward. For the circumferential ones, just light the arch you want to light. For the radial ones, treat the whole thing as a 5x15 matrix, or if using LSP, generate 15 virtual controllers. The building steps are described on another forum. If interested, I'll post here too.
 

Gilrock

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fyb2000...I like that display element. I'm not sure I know what "flex strings" are. At first I thought you meant rgb pixels on a string but when you mentioned groups of 15 being a good point to seperate them I wasn't sure.
 

fyb2000

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Dec 8, 2012
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The 'flex string' I was mentioning are those:
http://www.aliexpress.com/store/product/4m-waterproof-LED-digital-strip-by-tube-DC12V-input-without-controller-10pcs-TM1809IC-m-30pcs-5050/701799_425556741.html
as I am using a DLA setup.
With the SSC (smart string controller) from DLA, there is way of 'grouping' LEDs on a string. You select how many LEDs form a group on your string, and from that point on, each RGB channels will control that many LEDs on your string. In the setup I have, I grouped the longer arch by 5 LEDs (15 sections * 5 LEDs = 75 LEDs or 2.5meters), the second arch by groups of 4 LEDs (60LEDs total, 2 meters), 3rd is group of 3 (45LEDs, 1.5 meters), 4th group of 2 (30LEDs, 1 meter) and the smallest arch is not grouping LEDs (15 LEDs, 0.5 meter).
Based on the specification of that particular 'flex string', you can work out the math and by spacing each arch about 16 centimeters from each other, they will align perfectly, and you will be able to get the radial effects quite easily (easiest is to define a 5x15 matrix and use your favorite effects on it).
The use of coroplast makes the whole building phase extremely straightforward, and let the light cast through, no matter what the viewing angle is.
The grouping feature allows a perfect alignment of each 'sector' from one arch to the other, and also reduces the number of channels you have to deal with (the whole structure uses 5(arches)*15(sectors)*3(RGB channels)=225 channels).
 

Gilrock

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Great info...thanks for the description. I'm surprised how nice the light shines through the coro with the strip facing up.
 

fyb2000

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Dec 8, 2012
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I started only with the bigger arches and pretty much only had those in my display this year. But when I saw how well the light was diffused (even in the 'inside' part of the arch, while the pixels are facing up) I worked on the 4 additional arches and included one full element in my display in the middle of the season. Of course, I almost didn't add any sequencing for it, except in a couple of places, but did that test sequence with a few effects to see what could be done with them. The sequencing of the effects literally took less than 1/2 hour.
Now that the display is down, I will spend quite some time pushing it for my 2013 display, as it is my belief, there is quite some potential in those.
 

Gilrock

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Yeah I was gathering materials to try to build some of eddy's coro canes. I might experiment with facing the modules up to see how it looks. That would make it look good from both sides if it works.
 
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