Starting 2023 Hopefully - Perth

Gilrock said:
FWIW....Several years ago when I tested WS2811 30 leds/m in 2" HDPE I thought it looked too choppy when an effect was moving across the arch so I went with 60 leds/m. It sounds like those GS8208's are individually controllable so 30/m individual should be fairly close to 60/m in groups of 3.
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In running 5V 30/m which are individually controllable. Looks great in 1" ID sure seeder tube. I wouldn't go any more coarse than that. If I was using fatter tube I'd be looking at the 60/m individual 5V ones, to give the higher density.
 
30m of air seeder tube picked up from Hoseco which is almost walking distance from my house seemed a decent price at $132 for the roll.

35m of 30/m GS8208
5m of 60/m GS8208
2x Meanwell LRS350
2x QuinLED quads and 2x signal boosters
and a bunch of ali channel to put them in ordered

So it begins.

Need to figure out pigtails and cable and the multitude of things I dont know about yet. Looks like my new pinecil will be getting a bit of a work out next year.
 
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The camera is doing some of that smoothing -- but I'm really happy with how they turned out. I also don't see any need to go beyond 30 for the roofline -- at the distance it is from the road - it doesn't seem to need it. only really noticeable when I walked up close.
 
Arches are nice but I think of them as a really low density prop these days, they get washed out fairly quickly when you've got other props around them, for a new display I'd look into a singing face and some other type of high dense prop, simple pixel string along your straight lines of the house
 
When starting out last year, 12V resistor & regulator pixels didn't appeal to me due to their inherent limitations. I decided to go with 5V for some icicles that are now in their second year and working well. The good thing about icicles is that as the power (at least on mine) runs across the top and doesn't need to travel down through the total length of wire to all nodes, I could get away with power injection at the start and end of a 5.5m run of 7 drop icicles (across the front of the garage in the photo).

Anyway, this year I came across the GS8208 and will be using them exclusively going forward. See the following thread for my testing comparing the 5V 2811 to GS8208:
auschristmaslighting.com

A comparison between WS2811 5v and GS8208 12v

I became quite interested in the GS8202 after having been originally motivated by this thread. Now that it's really becoming urgent to get my pixel order in for 2022, I made the time to compare the sample GS8208 purchased earlier this year from Shenzhen Shiji Lighting with the 5V WS2811...
auschristmaslighting.com auschristmaslighting.com

Importing from China, you're looking at $0.20 to $0.25 per pixel (USD + shipping), so not too much of a premium with the benefit of being able to have a failed pixel not take out an entire prop. I've not had an pixels in a batch this year of ~5000 completely die, but I have had ~3 develop a fault where instead of turning off, they glow a dim blue, yet still show the correct colour when driven. The 8 to 12 bit gamma mapping does IMO give better colours at lower brightness, however I don't think in reality anyone would pick the difference with out comparing them side by side next to a typical WS2811.

I currently can't think of any reason other than potentially price or availability to use anything other than GS8208 (although perhaps someone can enlighten me of one).

For my arches, I opted for 60l/m individually controllable GS8208 IP67 strip and very impressed with the quality of the product and performance.
In the photo below (1), I feed power and data in the left, and inject power at the end. Each tree has 50 GS8208 bullet nodes, each star 20, each arch 120. When I didn't have power injection on the right, last 20% of the last arch and far right tree were a bit glitchy, but 210 bullet nodes + 240 strip nodes from a single feed is pretty good.

I ordered the strip cut to length with 15cm tails on each end. Very glad I did this, saved a lot of time. These came to $17.60 each (USD + sipping).

Also for the roof lines (2) I was prepared to have to add power injection at the end, but found I didn't need it, so left it out. That made of 351 GS8208 square nodes (114 + 108 + 129).

* NOTE * - I'm running my display at 40% brightness, which is IMO easily bright enough, even with the street light for the pedestrian crossing just out of shot to the right.

kr2022.png
 
tooms said:
Arches are nice but I think of them as a really low density prop these days, they get washed out fairly quickly when you've got other props around them, for a new display I'd look into a singing face and some other type of high dense prop, simple pixel string along your straight lines of the house
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My 3 year old is obsessed with the arches so the arches are the one thing that is 100% happening. I do like the singing faces. Plan at the moment is to sort the eaves and the arches and then have a look at where we go from there. Will be keeping it relatively simple to start with at least. If/when we move house to somewhere more suitable we will probably ramp it up.

Kent said:
Importing from China, you're looking at $0.20 to $0.25 per pixel (USD + shipping)
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Do you happen to have a link to that seller? I have been looking on AliExpress and they do seem far less available than ws2801/11. I have got some strips coming and once they are here and up will start looking at if we go to pixels and what we do in that regard.

Kent said:
For my arches, I opted for 60l/m individually controllable GS8208 IP67 strip and very impressed with the quality of the product and performance.
In the photo below (1), I feed power and data in the left, and inject power at the end. Each tree has 50 GS8208 bullet nodes, each star 20, each arch 120. When I didn't have power injection on the right, last 20% of the last arch and far right tree were a bit glitchy, but 210 bullet nodes + 240 strip nodes from a single feed is pretty good.
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Awesome info. Looking at your display its got all the elements we are looking to implement over the first couple of years at least. You have also raised my confidence that GS8208 is the way to go. As you say pending availability.
 
Just be aware with AliExpress, that the shipping calculator can be pretty crap at times. Often it's better if you get in direct contact with the seller and negotiate a sale externally, and they can aggregate the shipping into something more reasonable.

Ordering earlier in the year means you can afford time wise to take the option of sea freight rather than air, which will save you a good lot of money on shipping.

The dollar figure of my order last year was 75% product, 25% shipping. Unfortunately I wasn't aware of the area freight option so ended up paying the premium
 
Yes, 100% what Sky said. My typical process is to come up with a simple spreadsheet listing how many of what I need with what connectors, etc.
I then chat to the supplier on WeChat and have them provide a proforma invoice and usually there is a item or two that needs to be adjusted.

The supplier I (and @ryanschristmaslights) used is https://www.shiji-led.com/ The contact I spoke with there is Sophie. I'm not saying they are any better or worse than other suppliers, however they had the GS8202 readily available in bullet nodes, square nodes, and strip. The transaction was super smooth and I've been particularly happy with the quality from this one order.

I'm in the lucky position to usually be able to squeeze my pixel orders through with some other items purchased through work. No promises, but reach out to me before you place your order in the case there are any opportunities.
 
Arches are a great prop that really shows off movement in a display with lights "leaping or dancing" from side to side. Given the speed at which we usually sequence this, I'd argue it's not worth having double the density strip in diffused tubing to achieve this. If the design was exposed nodes however, then perhaps more may be smoother.
 
Whilst we all can see the difference in leaping arches with 60/m and 30/m, I actually went a different way and drilled holes in the back of it, and poked bullet pixels in to mine, and the non-paying public didn't notice it at all.

Granted, the leaping arches are 6m away from them.

Each to their own, but for discussion purposes I thought I'd mention it. :)
 
FWIW, I prefer the neater look with the strip vs pixels push in. As for the 60/m and 30/m - I agree that 30/m is plenty fine. Whilst I haven't seen them side by side, comparing mine (60/m) vs @Skymaster (30/m), I couldn't notice any appreciable difference up close, let alone from a typical viewing distance. I went for 60/m over 30/m as it was only an extra $2/m, so only $30 in total for the 15m I purchased for the arches. The biggest benefit was that it let me add bonus 1350 to my channel count 😜

What I would do 100% again is stick with getting pre-terminated strip made to length with the IP67 ("silicone tube and full glue injection" according to the description on my PI). You can then cut the air seeder tube to match the string length.
 
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