Roosta's Display Build Thread

[Roosta]

Hey All,

Ok so here goes..

Apologies the updates in this thread died.. Unfortunately due to undertaking some pretty full on renovations mid to late alast year, my blinky plans (aside from actually buying and collecting all the gear) got pushed aside until early November, and then as I am sure you can all appreciate, every waking moment was pretty much focused on getting the lights happening.. Honestly it was one hell of a year, but November really was mental..

Any ways, I thought my experiences along with a buttload of pics may assist some like minded enthusiasts with getting their heads around the planning and time allowances and general constructions that they have ahead of them..

I didn't quite achieve everything I wanted but was still happy with the outcome anyways, and gave me something to work on for 2017..

Ok so where to re-start.. I think I had pretty much gone through my plans and some basics I had been playing with, along with the gear I was collecting along the way..

So this is what my original plan was to try to achieve:

As things with the display progressed, and I saw more and more of others setups, this is what we ended up with:

I made a plan/ guide wiring diagrams, which eventually became a white board as I got sick of making changes and having to reprint things..

 

[Roosta]

To start with I converted the 10x kmart stars to pixel nodes.. I used Ray Wu 15mm connectors, along with the required lead in cable, using 1mm 2C+E mains cable.. 5x stars had 4m lead in cables, 1x star had a 7m lead in cable, and 4x stars had a 2m lead in cable.. 10 nodes per star.. Brackets were made for the stars, some were simple little right angle brackets for installing on bricks, and others were a little more complicated, designed to claw onto a roof tile, while holding the star mostly upright, aimed at the viewing area..

Then I measured all of the LED Strip runs and cut, soldered and resealed with silicon and heatshrink all of the led strips for all elements.. I used Ray Wu 15mm black connectors. This took a very large amount of time, I was averaging 15-20 min per strip section.. However I was doing this at night in the lead up to November..

Then I started on construction of the matrix using some non-structural timber and 25mm conduit and conduit clips. In the design of the matrix I allowed for the matrix to lay flat on the roof, and have the strips pointing forward, thus tightening them up. A template (Cardboard with electrical tape on it) was used initially to work out what vertical spacing was required, end result was about 110mm between strips..

Matrix is 4m long, 1.2m tall and contains 12x strips of 30led/10pixel per metre. Strips are attached to the conduit with a little bead of silicon, and lots of zip ties.. I opted to paint the matrix frame black to assist with it disappearing into the dark at night, in hindsight it was probably unnecessary.. Some brackets were made up to attach the matrix frame to the roof trusses underneath the roof tiles..

Next I outlined the house roofline, sides, arches and front garden bed, pretty much anywhere LED strip was going, with 25mm grey conduit, with some home made brackets to suit the varying landscapes of the install.. Strips were then attached to the conduit with a little bead of silicon and lots of zip ties..

House roofline is 2x 7.5m strips, 2x 6m strips, 1x 7m strip. House sides and arches are 2x 2.4m Strip, 5x 6m Strip.. Garden bed is 1x 6m Strip..

 

[Roosta]

Next came the Mega Tree.. Originally planned to be a 5m flat tree, this was changed to a 4m 180deg.. I bought a heap of 6m lengths of 25mm x 25mm x 3mm Galvanised steel square section from a local steel supplier, and after a bit of mucking around with pythagorus theorum (i know right, i never expected to need that again after high school), the better half and I worked out a plan and some dimensions and we went to town, cutting and welding up a steel frame for the 25mm conduit to attach too.. We opted to make 3X 'Superman' shaped pentagons, each 30% smaller than the last, and then used 4m lengths of steel to join the 3 pentagons together with nuts and bolts.. We made up a frame topper to make a star pattern on, and gave it a lick of paint, before attaching some flat steel and bending it around in an arch, to give a nice round 180deg curve.. We then attached the conduit clips to the flat section and installed all of the conduit and Strips.. Total overall dimensions are 4.5m tall x 1.8m wide at the base, 0.6m wide at the top.. 20x Strips of 30led/10pixel per metre strip cut to 4m per strip, and 20x nodes for the star topper..

Next up came the North Pole.. Originally planned to be 4m tall, we halved its height due to install issues.. It is made up of 2m of 300mm wide pipe, with a large plastic ball on top.. Both thes items were pickups from garage sales.. The Ball contains 10x Nodes on a bracket to hold them centrally.. The Pole has 6x 2m strips..

Lucky last from a element point of view came the Mini Trees, Candy Canes, and 'Tune To' Sign..

Mini Trees are pretty standard, Used the taller, solider, more expensive tomato planters from bunnings, 4x 5m strips..

Candy canes, used 1m of 25mm conduit, and 2x 90deg elbows to create the shape, then attached the strip with silicon and zip ties.. 4x 1m strips..

'Tune To' sign was a little tricker.. Used some 30mm x 30mm steel to make up a frame, cut down a backing board out of some steel coated plastic I had hoarded from a garage sale, and then for the front, cut down some frosted perspex i had again gotten from a garage sale.. Printed off the TUNE TO lettering, traced the letters onto some clear contact, stuck that onto the perpex then painted the whole thing black.. Once it dried, gently cut around the letters and peeled the contact off and voila.. Then fitted nodes aroung the internal frame of the sign and job was done.. 34x Nodes..

 

[Roosta]

Then came time to get some wiring happening, I had an ex-store display stand which I had previously used for my christmas lights power distribution.. I opted to re-use this and go down the centrally located equipment route, ie, housing all of my power supplies , controllers, etc, in a single central location.. This location is just behind the left hand roller door, on the left wall, kind of shown by the orange box.. The plan was to feed the Roofline, Stars, Matrix and House Side+Arches up via the roof space, and the rest of the elements, North Pole, Tune to Sign, Candy Canes, Mini Trees, and Megatrees plus power injection for the Arches, to run out under the garage door to the yard..

From a cabling perspective, I ran cat5e data cable for the pixel data only, and I ran a 4mm2 2C DC Solar cable for the power.. In most cases, this power cable had splits and T junctions for power injection points along its run.. I ran all of the feeds via conduits and junctions boxes, which made things rather neat, less likelyhood of tripping and a lot easier to maintain the lawns around..

Then I finished up the control board.. I opted to not run any pixel power through the Falcon F16V2-R, instead just terminated the cat5 with a single conductor (Solid green) for data, and all of the broken/white conductors to negative.. I fed the Positive of each of the 4mm2 2C cables via a distribution block that had a individual input and output with a 20A fuse.. I tied all of the negatives (power supplies and 4mm2 2c feeds) together via a couple of busbars..

I powered the falcon with a 12v feed from one of the power supplies, and also used the 5v out on the falcon to power my fm tansmitter (bodgey hack job from a previous life ahahaha).. Then I installed the Rasberry Pi2 and a wifi router i had lying around, connected to Pi and the Falcon to the router, switched it on and started configurations.. It all went pretty smoothly..

Unfortunately due to running out of time, I was unable to make any of my own sequences from scratch and thu relied of the generousity of a few members who had shared their sequences.. I spent a couple of days converting and tweaking, and bam we had showtime!


Final sequence was:

Intro

Let It Snow / Baby It's Cold Outside

PPAP Pen Pineapple Apple Pen

Pokemon

Carol of the Bells

September

Star Wars Funk

FULL SEQUENCE VIDEO:

https://www.youtube.com/embed/bE3D8X4jQlE

After a few nights of promoting the show via Facebook we went into full show mode and saw much larger numbers of visitors than we had anticipated and it just kept growing until christmas day..

I found that while the lights were impressive after all of the hard work, what I truely enjoyed most was sitting across the road at my neighbours house, enjoying drinks and watching people enjoy the show.. It really did make all of the late (sometimes sleepless) nights and work involved totally worth it..

Anyways while that is probably quite the read and lots of info and pics, that is really only a brief overview of my journey in setting up for my first year with a pixel light show..

And in true CLAP style, I cant wait to do it all over again!

Cheers,

Nik

 

[djgra79]

Nik what an awesomely (yes that's a word now) detailed post, well done and thank you! Great looking display which I'm sure will grow every year!

 

[David_AVD]

Great effort. I like the use of the metal straps in quite a few places.

 

[fasteddy]

Very nice write up, you definitely have put some effort into this

 

[Binkles]

Enjoyed hearing your journey, and seeing the photos!


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

[Emersonlights]

Very nice thanks for the detailed write up. Only question i have is what are the connectors you have used to join the wires they don't look like normal scotch locks or terminal block ?

 

[Roosta]

Thanks for the comments guys.. Hopefully everyone who takes the time to read, takes away some ideas for their own display..


David_avd, yes i used a bucket load of the 'make-a-bracket' metal strip from bunnings.. It tends to be my go to product quite regularly.. Bend it, cut it, snap it, twist it.. Its great stuff!
https://www.bunnings.com.au/carinya-20-x-600-x-1mm-flat-make-a-bracket_p3975874





Emersonlights, hahaha wondered if anyone might pick up on those, they are Wago 221 lock nuts, basically a heavy duty scotch lock used quite a lot in europe in electrical installations.. They sure made connecting and disconnecting feeds very easy... I used them for all field Junction Box connections, Power and Data, they also made splitting the power feed out to the power injection points very easy..
http://www.wago.com/media/221/downloads_2/221_series_overview_ext.pdf


Cheers

 

[David_AVD]

I used a bunch of wago style connectors in my Halloween display last year. Just search eBay for "wago connector" and you'll see them in various sizes (2, 3 & 5 way mostly).

Each position on the connector has a little cam lever. You open the lever, push the (stipped) wire into it then close the lever to lock it into place.

They're not weatherproof, but I used them to hook up a bunch of 12V RGB lights in a garden before Christmas and they're still working well despite being rained on a fair bit.

I'm not sure if they will be usable a second time (due to corrosion), but they are quite cheap so can be considered disposable.

 

[Emersonlights]

Thank you they look very nice to use. Did you import them or do electrical wholesalers carry them ?


The matrix strip is that 2811 30/10 strip or is it a different type ?


EDIT Thanks David will have a look

 

[cdjazman]

Roosta,

That is awesome. I am looking at having central setup like that.

Couple of questions:

1. Do you run the display from that one central location...... Falcon F16V2-R and 10 power supplies?

2. If yes does that mean that you have run all the power from those p/s via fuse protection and only data from Falcon F16V2-R ?

3. Does that mean you have large distance from controller to each elements first pixel?

 

[OzAz]

good write up
like the idea of the pvc pipe for cable runs

 

[Roosta]

Emersonlights, i got mine from L&H Elec wholesaler (cos i work for them), I have heaps spare so if you would like me to send you a couple of samples let me know..


All of my strip is 12v 30led/10pixel per m, WS2811..
Nodes are 12v WS2811..


My whole setup is 12V, and will be staying that way at the moment


Cdjazman, 1- Yep all gear is located in one spot..
2- Yes All power goes straight from power supply through a fuse (and negative busbar) out to the field to power the elements.. Falcon is purely data out (and negative)
3- Yes but I guess it depends what you call large distances.. The furtherest data run is from the falcon in garage to the tune to sign, which is approx 25m from falcon to first pixel..