My new Miditree idea

[lithgowlights]

After the close and packup of the 2012 show I decided that I really needed to work on a better minitree design. My existing trees have 100 RGB LED's over a black mesh and do look quite good and neat for what they are, and considering they are 6 seasons old, they have done quite well over the years

While looking for snow machines on eBay, I found 8 120cm white Christmas Trees for $132, delivered, so a week later they arrived. 150 5V RGB LED's cable tied to the tree, with power injection each 50 LED's and we have the following comparison video....

http://youtu.be/maxYVPrOrzA

 

[Benslights]

out done yourself again ll

 

[harrisonk]

Are they dumb RGB nodes, if not how did you power inject on them?

 

[lithgowlights]

Yes dumb. Power injection can be done on smart strings, or dumb ones like this. It's explained, with diagrams, in the 101 manual, but basically I have a 4 wire cable run to each end, and every join between 50 pixels. This cable comes back to the one point where the connection to the controller is located.

 

[magii]

RGB DMX Mini Trees

I did these back in february, swapping them out from dumb to pixels for next year.

 

[CDN_Diesel]

very cool. more lights on the original would look just like your new white trees. Love the light reflection of the white trees. Great job!

 

[magii]

Do you have a link to the eBay listing for the trees?

 

[Benslights]

i think it was a Australian ebay store so the freight would be a killer to the usa

 

[tuppetsdad]

They look much more stylish Dave.. very upmarket

 

[bovonic]

If you use 5A a tree, do you have to only run 2 at a time to stay below 10A on the circuit (assuming you're running power from a standard 10A power point which you're probably not! )

 

[lithgowlights]

What? That's 5A at 5 volts - 25 watts, not at 240V (Which would be 1200 watts!!!!!).

I don't do 240V lights at all now.

 

[bovonic]

Sorry! Really need to get my head around non 240V lighting - no idea how to calculate what load you can have on a house circuit when it's not 240V...

 

[Chicken Little]

You need to understand Ohms Law. It doesn't matter whether you convert AC to DC (Rectifier) or DC to AC (Inverter), power consumption is equal on both sides (ignoring losses - primarily heat).
Also voltage and current are inversely proportional to each other so if voltage increases, current decreases by the same proportion (& visa versa).
Therefore, 5 Amps at 5 Volts (DC) is 25 Watts = ?? Amps at 240V (AC) (also 25 Watts). Since 240V is 48 times greater than 5V we have to reduce (divide) 5A by 48 to find the current at 240V = 0.1 Amps (well within the 10A limit of a 240V AC circuit).

Chicken.

 

[baldylox]

those look really good. i saw a few for 25$ on ebay usa, but not too many

 

[bovonic]

Thanks Chicken Litle. I did some reading up and now don't feel quite as stupid