Reminder: This is a hobby

djgra79

djgra79

My name is Graham & I love flashing lights!
Global moderator
Joined
Dec 27, 2011
Messages
2,199
Location
Cranbourne West
I've seen a few posts over the past few days where members have had issues, be they minor, constant, niggling little things, to massive failures of pixels & megatree infrastrucutre.

Just a reminder: this is a hobby.

Don't go beating yourself up that things are not working out. Tomorrow is another day and the issues could potentially be resolved by clearing your head, doing some further research or asking for assistance from the ACL community.
Take a breather. Watch some <insert TV service here>. Go for a walk. Spend some quality time with your kids/family/friends. Sleep on it.
It's a hobby. It's supposed to be a bit of fun, not just the end result but the learning journey aswell.

Maybe you've been a bit time-poor this year and you don't have as much tested or installed as yet (/me raises his hand.)
There's no laws or rules that say your display MUST be fully operationaly by Dec 1st.

I'd be willing to bet that over 90% of visitors to your display would not know that a certain prop is missing or not working correctly. The fact that you have a few hundred/thousand blinking lights to music will be more than enough to fill your visitors with amazement and joy both young & old.
We are our own worst critics, remember who is your target audience and will they enjoy it regardless of your expectations?

As always, the ACL chatroom always has someone around from one side of the globe to assist where they can. Same goes for the Zoom Room, the Unofficial ACL Facebook Page and the various xLights pages. Reach out if you need assistance with an issue or just want to have a little grumble and pass some time to cool off. Whilst I'm a little biased as a Mod for both the ACL forum and FB pages, personaly this is by far the friendliest most helpfull online community I have ever been a part of, we're all mates here.
 
Last edited:
Well said Graham - I think sometimes things are compounded because you might be the only person in your environment invested in this and you don't always get appreciation / understanding of the effort that is put into a display. That's where having a couple of people like those that participate on ACL to lean in is a great asset. Merry Christmas everyone and I'm happy to help where I can
 
Last edited:
djgra79 said:
The fact that you have a few hundred/thousand blinking lights to music will be more than enough to fill your visitors with amazement and joy both young & old.
Click to expand...

Agreed. I have a small amount switched on as a pre-show. Just the arches and canes. Car stopped by and was admiring them tellimg me it was the best thing since sliced bread.
So, I gave them a sneak peek, powered up the other controllers and they saw a bunch of extra stuff. Blown away. They were so happy even before I switched it on - with only 20% of the show running a butterfly and twinkle!
 
Well said! It can be very frustrating when things don’t go to pain! Most won’t notice things not working 100% and the kids will love it not matter the issues 😁
 
Totally agree, due to a little thing called life, I didn't get mine up and going last year until the 17th December, I didn't hear one complaint. But heaps of compliments! 😁
 
I wanted my show to be on for Thanksgiving and well, life happened , and it's not. My next goal is Dec 1 and if I miss that my next goal will be a few days later until I can get it up. My real goal now is to Get Most things up on my house and start turning lights on and slowly start adding the rest of the things to the show and slowly expand it to where everything is out.

Rumor is there is a little girl down the block who liked to see my Halloween lights and asked her Mom to bring her down multiple times. At least now each time there is going to be a little something new for her to see. :)

Last year was my first show and did not get out until the 19th of Dec and no one said anything about it being out late. Heck, I think it shocked people when it turned on. :)

I keep reminding myself it's a hobby and I'm the only one stressing out about things and no one else will notice or care.
 
Skymaster said:
Agreed. I have a small amount switched on as a pre-show. Just the arches and canes. Car stopped by and was admiring them tellimg me it was the best thing since sliced bread.
So, I gave them a sneak peek, powered up the other controllers and they saw a bunch of extra stuff. Blown away. They were so happy even before I switched it on - with only 20% of the show running a butterfly and twinkle!
Click to expand...

Spot on. What we do is so unique and something the average person just doesn't see as you can't buy any of this stuff off the shelf. Sometimes I just wish it didn't take so long ;-)
 
Held a neighbourhood preview for my street on Friday night before we had our "public launch". Later on when it was just a few of us sitting on the street drinking beers, I noticed one of my mini trees that lines our driveway had a branch from a shrub covering literally one pixel. I walked up the driveway and broke the branch off. Neighbour goes "how the hell did you even notice that"? My only problem is once I've seen it, I can't unsee it. Just like the single pixel that's popped out of my conduit roof line right at the very top peak, meaning the two lines currently do not meet. Thankfully I'm unwell enough with covid that I just don't have the energy to get on the roof to fix it because noone else notices or cares.
 
merryoncherry said:
I had a pixel die leaving a half string locked on purple, and my wife couldn't notice it, but she noticed the one pixel in the matrix with a leaf in front of it... go figure.

Also, get well soon.
Click to expand...
I did have one of my trees lose half, the tree so obvious and replaced those pixels in the drizzle last night. Had one of my roof flakes lose half, went to replace pixel this morning and it was all running well, go figure.

Thanks, I'll survive. Saves me having to go to the office and work from home instead. So there's a win there.
 
brando said:
Had one of my roof flakes lose half, went to replace pixel this morning and it was all running well, go figure.
Click to expand...
My front door wreath did that the other day. The inner circle (bar 2 leds) dropped out. Barely noticable. Went to replace the next day, it all worked. Then last night, same thing again, pulled the pixel out and it came good. Guessing there's a very minor loose strand or something.
 
Today I've worked out a lot of my stuff is just old and has been baked in the sun a bit too much ..

My only singing face looks like it's having a major epileptic fit with most movements, the mega tree has at least 20 dead pixels or failing pixels on it, the roof strips outlining the roof are pretty much fried, 2 strips I use to light up the verandah posts only the first 3-4 pixels are lighting up, and to top it all off my main mega wreath thing of around 600 pixels that I replaced all the pixels in earlier this year due to a bad batch from Ray-Wu in 2021 has died within hours of turning it on, I replaced all the lights in it around October, seemed to work on the living room floor for 3-4 hours, thought it was good, fired it up last weekend after hanging it up outside, 2 hours in and had problems, had 2 spare 100ct strings so just replaced the entire strings as was easier, then a few hours later another string in it died, so that's been ripped out of the display already .. I guess next year I'll be replacing a lot of stuff, whats weird though is the ray-wu pixels from 5-6 years ago seem to be going strong, the more recent stuff is what seems to die quicker
 
Well my setup is 98% completed, tested and working, but MY GOD I've had my fair share of issues this season! Some of them are my own doing, hardware or configuration issues. but the issues that really grind my gears are things that go wrong that I had nothing to do with, primarily circuit board faults. Also these faulty pixels.... I keep telling myself "I'm testing now to weed out the faulty ones" But so far, for the last week, at least one faulty pixel daily.....

It'll all be worth it I'm sure!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top