Mega Tree Just what is one

AussiePhil

AussiePhil

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Canberra, ACT, Australia
Anyone who spends a few hours on various forums will run across the term "Mega Tree". I remember the first time i read that and thought what are they talking about.

To put it simply, it's a bunch of light strings hanging down from a center pole and evenly spaced so that when the light up they look like a tree.

Our friends in the USA will claim that it can't be a Mega Tree unless it's at least 20" (6.1m) high and going up to 60+ feet. Most Australians would likely need planning permissions for really big trees and even a 6m tree will look out of place in front a the typical single story house.
My Tree this year will be a bit over 5m high and that's going to be high enough.

More modest trees from 3.3m (10 foot) to 4.5m would be the most common and usually easiest to construct in Australia. These probably should be called mini-Mega Trees.

I will continue to add some information here and some photo's about design and construction ideas.

Cheers
Phil
 
Hi,

As my house have 2 floors and 7 meters high and face to the main road of my village, the situation for the
show is perfect... Impossible to run without facing my house ...

My idea is to build an exotic megatree....

It will be half megatree begining from the top of the roof to the ground.
Half circle structure fixed to the wall, from top to down.
I need to think something we can mount and dismount easily for the quite period of the year...

I just received my 60 units led strings ( cheapest ones for China $5 unit/10 meters long/ transparent wire and leds/ 100 leds per string).
Ok, each string is mono color, but they come each one with internal low quality controller 8 steps, and string divided in 4 parts.

So for moment, i have 15 units of each color (R+G+B+W)

My first problematic to solve will be the power: basically the strings have a main power plug is 220v (Europe), and my surprise comes when i made the reverse engineering on the strip : From 220v AC, the voltage is converted to 220 DC ( Diode Bridge, with 4 diodes 1N4004, then goes to mysterious chip embedded with black resin powered by this high voltage, then 4 outputs per string though some king of transistors (small ones like 2N2222 case ( not ref printed on them). But at least, + 220v commun and - switched through these small exotic transistors???

I'm thinking to replace the resistors on string and keep off the controllers, to use them on low voltage ( 25 led per channel, as the string was divided by 4 parts).... hummm, i need to make some try, but for $5 i don't want to spend too much time on it... May be i will use them like that and use SSR modules, as i have a FreeStyle board too just build...

for moment, i'm testing these strings since one week 24h/24h, half time on ambient temperature 20°C, the other time in the fridge... I will make a crazy test too, put one in the freezer to check the resistance on low temp... Here some times, we goes down around -20°C easily on winter...

This is where i am... Waiting my 1500 RGB leds and covers too, to get more fresh ideas and imagine something great too.

i will place some pictures asap ...

Cheers, Henri
 
Henri, do you have more details about what you're using for RGB LED's and covers?

Thanks,
John
 
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