Next adventure...

[ICon]

Hi from Auckland NZ, about 7 years ago I used to put strings of lights and icicles from the the local hardware on the house. Various other activities got in the way and this stopped. Last year we had a neighbour decorate their house and something stirred.

This year I dragged out the strings we had and put them on the house, as well as buying a couple of led strips from AliExpress - not expecting to get them up this year.

I got them up - mounted on conduit giving a simple outline of the end of the house. Connected to a cheap controller from AliExpress in demo mode they flash, chase...

The adventure has continued with having a play with arduino control, finding the limits quite quickly. Building a small matrix (30x9) and playing with arduino, gladiator... reading, YouTube ....

The next step has been to play with xlights - the matrix is now attached to an ESP8266 with wled flashed to it and receiving sequences over wifi. (Already had arduino, ESP8266 from last obsessive project - building 3D printers)

Next year we will have a display of some sort up and running, big thanks to those that contributed to ACL101, it is a great resource.

It’s been less than two months since the first led strip purchase, and I think I am hooked.

 

[kevr]

Hi Icon, welcome to the group. There are a few Kiwis popping up now so help is not too far away, there are others in Auckland so some are nearby.

There is quite a bit of discussion about strip on the forum, I would have a read and see what others have to say before I ordered anymore if I was you. I used strip this year on my roof and was very happy with the look but I am starting to have failures already so it looks like I'll be going back to strings.

I recommend that you get into the software first, read plenty and then start spending later on (controllers, pixels, connectors etc) don't buy hardware first.

Cheers Kev

 

[ICon]

Thanks Kev,

I have been having a good read about strip, and it is clear that a number of people are having reliability issues. Do you know what has caused the failures you are seeing? I have always found the need to understand what has gone wrong and why, as that is how we improve the way we do things. I am not about to invest heavily in anything at the moment, and have actually got a couple of samples of pixel strings on the way.

I learn faster through buying some parts and learning as I go. There is way to much information to take in and my path is being mapped out as I experiment. Part of the challenge is to take the rest of the family along with me, and having something tangible does that.

Computer hardware/software is the easy bit for me, being fluent in Linux, arduino, raspberry pi, networking and programming means I can hack something together pretty quickly. Xlights is awesome though and there is little need to write code there. Still there are so many choices, protocols, voltages, pixels.... investing a little to understand fully what it’s about works for me. If it was just a simple step by-step then it would not hold my interest.

Cheers