My name is John and I’ve been contemplating getting into this hobby for a while. I designed my house to handle 160A so that when I did get into the hobby, I would have sufficient power to run 100k pixels or so at once. I’m ambitious. I also want to light both our house and our future guest house next door, to create a unified display. Why the grand scale ? Well, I’ve got a much larger space and buildings in mind that I would like to light up and this would give me some great experimentation, and may actually put me off my much more ambitious idea ! How much of this I will achieve remains to be seen as work demands are complex. I will start small and hope to have part of the project up this year and I’m very grateful for this amazing community, the manual and the idea of the mini. I need to get stuck into this quickly before the Sydney mini so I have good questions to ask. Without your support I would not have been brave enough to step off..
New Member from Canberra, Australia
- Thread starter JohnDe
- Start date
Welcome John, hope to see you at the mini.
Standard first thing to do is take a photo of your property from where most of your viewers will be.
Put that in xLights and start adding props to see what looks good and/or fits.
Then spend all your money and time
Standard first thing to do is take a photo of your property from where most of your viewers will be.
Put that in xLights and start adding props to see what looks good and/or fits.
Then spend all your money and time
Welcome to ACL.
Hopefully we convinced you in chat last night to go with Xlights. It's great, advanced, well supported and has become the chosen sequencer of the majority of the ACL and worldwide Xmas lighting community.
160A at 240V allows for a LOT of pixels. 38kW of available power. 5V pixels are about 0.3W each. 12V are about 0.66W each. Based on that you might run out of power when you power about 58000 12V pixels at 100% white. 126k 5V pixels at 100% white. The amount of lights from that many pixels would be blinding.
Hopefully we convinced you in chat last night to go with Xlights. It's great, advanced, well supported and has become the chosen sequencer of the majority of the ACL and worldwide Xmas lighting community.
160A at 240V allows for a LOT of pixels. 38kW of available power. 5V pixels are about 0.3W each. 12V are about 0.66W each. Based on that you might run out of power when you power about 58000 12V pixels at 100% white. 126k 5V pixels at 100% white. The amount of lights from that many pixels would be blinding.
Benslights
Dedicated elf
Hi John even post a pic of your house and what you have in mind as we are always happy to help with ideas and spending your money
Fing
Full time elf
Welcome to the mad house John,
the best idea is to plan and re-plan and plan again, then share your ideas with the other inmates and then plan again.....
there's lots of traps for the newbies..
cheers
Fing
the best idea is to plan and re-plan and plan again, then share your ideas with the other inmates and then plan again.....
there's lots of traps for the newbies..
cheers
Fing
Welcome John, good to see another Canberran getting into the spirit! Where abouts in Canberra are you?
Everyone on here are a great source of knowledge and experience, don't hesitate to ask any questions as someone will have the answer or have done it before!
Everyone on here are a great source of knowledge and experience, don't hesitate to ask any questions as someone will have the answer or have done it before!
videoman3857
Full time elf
Welcome John.
First of all, go to the Doctors and be immunised against this disease called a "hobby"
Make sure the ink is dry on your money before purchasing all your "stuff"
Be prepared to work 7 days a week/ 52 weeks working on props and sequencing your shows.
Be prepared to be called crazy.
First of all, go to the Doctors and be immunised against this disease called a "hobby"
Make sure the ink is dry on your money before purchasing all your "stuff"
Be prepared to work 7 days a week/ 52 weeks working on props and sequencing your shows.
Be prepared to be called crazy.
Welcome to ACL John.
- Thread starter
- #9
Thank you for the comments and suggestions. I understand its an expensive hobby but fortunately, is not an issue for me. Time is my issue and I will be looking to learn and see if I can hire contractors/help to do as much of the heavy lifting I can achieve. I have access to lots of Human Resources. I understand its a hobby but my life is complex and I use money to buy time. However I will be doing a deep dive to learn as much as possible. The plan for me is to work with others to create new creations. I want to experiment over time on animatronics and other areas as I can afford to experiment and try new things. I think that while its a hobby, I want to see what could be done as I have much bigger and more ambitious plans that my house and my yet to be built block next door (my guest house). While I appreciate the 24/7 that some of you put into your hobby (you are not mad, just love what you are doing) I cannot afford that time and passion but I can afford to hire private contractors to do some parts of the work for me, to some extent, as I also want to play around with the tech and innovate. I come from a background of innovation and experimentation. Technical concepts are easy. For me to digest and expand on, but I don’t have the personal time to actually do all the hard work. I have been thinking about this hobby and some other related areas for a number of years. I have not taken it up as I am aware that I need to focus my time and this hobby simply was too much to take on. Maybe its still too hard for me to take on now, but will see how it goes. I also not taken it up as I tend to go over the top with my projects and know the cost of time and money they take so I tread carefully.
I don’t have a house plan as its a combination of a house and an empty block of land which I.m considering what to do with it from a “light it up” point of view. Regarding power, I’m not really sure how much of the three phase 100A I can realistically devote to this as the load has to be balanced. I will be getting advice from an electrician/ electrical engineer on best use to each phase and its distribution. This is a later matter to worry about. Yes, I think Xlights is the way to go largely because there is a strong user base to draw knowledge from so I appreciate the comments and direction.
I’m based in Forde, Canberra. My background is a games programmer, so I know how to code ( but have let this drop) and I’m now more of a business guy running a complex family enterprise.I’m well position to try new things and experiment, and happy to share results/design to advance the community .
So hope this helps....
Regards
John
I don’t have a house plan as its a combination of a house and an empty block of land which I.m considering what to do with it from a “light it up” point of view. Regarding power, I’m not really sure how much of the three phase 100A I can realistically devote to this as the load has to be balanced. I will be getting advice from an electrician/ electrical engineer on best use to each phase and its distribution. This is a later matter to worry about. Yes, I think Xlights is the way to go largely because there is a strong user base to draw knowledge from so I appreciate the comments and direction.
I’m based in Forde, Canberra. My background is a games programmer, so I know how to code ( but have let this drop) and I’m now more of a business guy running a complex family enterprise.I’m well position to try new things and experiment, and happy to share results/design to advance the community .
So hope this helps....
Regards
John