adski
Dave Brown
A month or so ago, James Hohensee (james70818 on DIYC) came up with a new design for mounting 12mm bullet-style pixels on a plastic (HDPE) strip to simplify the construction of a pixel mega tree. The development thread is at http://doityourselfchristmas.com/forums/showthread.php?33355-New-Pixel-Mega-Tree-Mounting-Strips
Well I couldn't resist. A few of us banded together to minimise the international postage, and they should be on their way here soon.
But then, the question was what to do about pixels. I had some injection moulded square pixels from a couple of years ago, but wasn't keen to prove what others had told me .... they're not very waterproof! It always seems to rain here in December, so my minimum requirement was epoxy resin filling.
5V or 12V? The plan is for strings of 96 pixel, so even though the power efficiency of 5V pixels is normally better, the voltage drop over almost 10 metres of thin cable would have required some unwieldy power injection - so it had to be 12V.
After lots of procrastination I finally got around to asking Ray Wu for a quote, and guess what - no stock of 12V pixels of any variety!!! He expected to have more in "2 weeks" - I've seen "2 week" predictions previously, but at this time of year, I figured it probably meant more like a month or two, so my mega tree project looked like being a 2015 exercise.
However, by chance that evening, Ben Brown dropped into chat. Now, Ben is a representative of Scott LED in China and I'd seen him promoting his company's products in the past, but given the tendency to stick with the tried and proven, I hadn't taken much notice.
But now, I saw an outside chance that I would have a mega tree for 2014 - should I take the risk? - it's not exactly a small outlay to fit out a decent size tree!
Anyway, long story short (oops - too late for that :
), Ben assured me that he could supply the 12V resin filled pixels that I wanted in a timely fashion, so I went ahead and ordered on the evening of Monday,September 15th. They weren't actually in stock <insert mild panic attack here> but they were manufactured by Friday and I had a tracking number by Monday. They landed in Adelaide on Wednesday and arrived today - Thursday, 25th September - 10 days from order to delivery.
Now I know that a few people have been hanging out for a quality report, so here it is so far:
So far, so good. We won't know the full story until they've been running in anger for a few weeks, but it looks fine at the moment.
Dave
Oh, I guess you want some pictures ....
[attachimg=1]
[attachimg=2]
[attachimg=3]
[attachimg=4]
Well I couldn't resist. A few of us banded together to minimise the international postage, and they should be on their way here soon.
But then, the question was what to do about pixels. I had some injection moulded square pixels from a couple of years ago, but wasn't keen to prove what others had told me .... they're not very waterproof! It always seems to rain here in December, so my minimum requirement was epoxy resin filling.
5V or 12V? The plan is for strings of 96 pixel, so even though the power efficiency of 5V pixels is normally better, the voltage drop over almost 10 metres of thin cable would have required some unwieldy power injection - so it had to be 12V.
After lots of procrastination I finally got around to asking Ray Wu for a quote, and guess what - no stock of 12V pixels of any variety!!! He expected to have more in "2 weeks" - I've seen "2 week" predictions previously, but at this time of year, I figured it probably meant more like a month or two, so my mega tree project looked like being a 2015 exercise.
However, by chance that evening, Ben Brown dropped into chat. Now, Ben is a representative of Scott LED in China and I'd seen him promoting his company's products in the past, but given the tendency to stick with the tried and proven, I hadn't taken much notice.
But now, I saw an outside chance that I would have a mega tree for 2014 - should I take the risk? - it's not exactly a small outlay to fit out a decent size tree!
Anyway, long story short (oops - too late for that :
), Ben assured me that he could supply the 12V resin filled pixels that I wanted in a timely fashion, so I went ahead and ordered on the evening of Monday,September 15th. They weren't actually in stock <insert mild panic attack here> but they were manufactured by Friday and I had a tracking number by Monday. They landed in Adelaide on Wednesday and arrived today - Thursday, 25th September - 10 days from order to delivery.Now I know that a few people have been hanging out for a quality report, so here it is so far:
- they look typical of what I would expect from Ray Wu
- the soldering looks neat
- the resin filling looks good - I've only spotted a few bubbles in 2000 pixels
- the pricing is in the same ball park as Ray Wu - actually a few cents cheaper per pixel
So far, so good. We won't know the full story until they've been running in anger for a few weeks, but it looks fine at the moment.
Dave
Oh, I guess you want some pictures ....
[attachimg=1]
[attachimg=2]
[attachimg=3]
[attachimg=4]
