My North Pole Sign.......

[mangoat]

Hey people,

Just wanna talk about my North Pole sign project for 2018.
I have a 30cm "solar light" soon to be loaded with 9 or 11 pixel nodes....... sitting on top of 1.5m of 4" pvc with a stormwater coupler.

a little advice, recommendation if someone could please.

painting the pvc pipe...... easy? hard? what to do to make if durable?
or do i just wrap it in white vinyl?

now the red strip around it.......would you recommend a twin row red led strip?

ill put some pics up of the post and ball soon..... but i just want a little bit of advice before i ruin it before i start

cheers
goat

 

[Goliath]

What I did for a north pole was this:-
1. Drove a plastic stake into the garden.
2. Wrapped 5m of pixel strip around some 32mm PVC
3. Placed the pvc over the plastic stake.
4. Placed tint tube over the led-wrapped pvc, as a difuser. The plastic ends that came with the tint tube were used as spacers to keep the PVC in the middle of the tint-tube diffuser.
5. 30 cm solar ball on top, with 12 pixel nodes inside. 20 might have been better, but 12 is good enough.

I run mostly "candy cane" type effects on the North Pole. Hot spots do show through the tube, but only us pedantic fools notice or care. The tint tube can be obtained free from just about any window tinting company - it is literally rubbish to them. I used a tube cut from a 1.25 litre soft drink bottle as a heat shrink joiner for two pieces of tint tube to get the desired height.

 

[scamper]

These are 100mm pvc pipe I had lying around, I don't think I even undercoated them, I just used a half decent spray paint. first layer white, then I wrapped in masking take and painted the red. It was my very first prop and I wasn't that particular, I just wanted them done
They have been out in the yard for 2 months every year and look as good as the day I made them. Except one of the strips is starting to stay on red. But I think that is the controller that is built into it starting to corrode I made 4 of them.
I did start making some new pixel poles 2 years ago, but I drilled holes in the pvc and pushed the pixels in, very time consuming, then I accidently hit it with 12v, they were 5v pixels, and blew the whole string, so threw it in the corner and it is still there.

 

[mangoat]

that looks pretty nice. thanks. i think ill get some dual row led strip and run down it and do a test.

 

[Benslights]

any pics yet @mangoat

 

[mangoat]

not yet still working on the sign, and ive gotta get some pixels to put inside the balls, fried the last i had here

plent of time ill put up some pics once i sort out my sign/lightbox

 

[mangoat]

video of the ball illuminated with 8x ws2811 nodes inside. gotta get some 30led/m strip to test out the pole layout ....

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1UYfs0Ij32RyL84hVLjgl1UPSb12X-vYb