What are you changing this year? Elements you are building or installing for 2023

I've made some decent progress on new controllers. These ones are just missing a few things, some printed parts, vent holes and liquid nail. I use cheep kmart tubs as they do the trick, keep costs down and stack neatly.

2 * DMX2-24 + 31v power supply
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He123 differential receiver (12v)
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He123 with a BBB
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Skymaster said:
Looks like you've labelled the differential output ports wrong, they groups of four should be in increasing order left-right across the expansion board.
The silkscreen on the PCB shows the 1-16, so add either 16 for the right, or 32 for the left board.
Click to expand...
Right right, now I know what I've done wrong... I'll fix it. Thinking about it might have been the same reason some things didn't work for me last year... Thanks mate!
 
This week for me since I’m adding outlines to the house. Some remote boxes. Next week rebuild the main box.
 

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I’ve been working on putting 2 arch’s together with a Rosa (my first ever HD prop!) in the middle.
still a few things to work out to stabilise the arch’s but I’m happy with progress.
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IKEA A$100 MiniTree.

Three years ago I built 4 of these trees, and apart from the odd pixel dying here and there, they have been going very strong. (Last year I added the Snowflakes on top) These mini-trees have withstand the harsh Brisbane Sun, and can be taken apart for easy storage.
1_Resized.jpg
The Parts:
  • The base is an IKEA Gladom serving tray, made from steel, and already painted. $25.00
  • The top is an IKEA Forenlig Plant Pot 9cm diameter. $2.50
  • 15mm X 900mm Galvanised steep pipe. $12.35 (Bunnings)
  • Two Galvanised 15mm Flanges. $9.60 (Bunnings)
  • 4 6mm Short Bolts and nuts (I had plenty of these laying around on previous builds)
  • Plastic Strip to mount the Pixels (850mm / length, I went with 6 legs) (I worked this out to be about $11.00 worth of mounting strip assuming you pay $110 for 50 meters - available here)
  • Pixels (I went with 15 pixels per leg, = 90 in total) About $50 for the pixels.
All in all, abut $100 to $110 per tree, depending on your pixel costs.

The Build:
  • I began by getting the centre point of the tray, and traced the flange's 4 holes.
Gladom_reszed.jpg
  • Next I drilled 8mm holes, and fastened the flange with 6mm short bolts and nuts (I had a ton of these, so didn't include them in the price)
  • I fitted the pipe to the base flange, and added the top flange.
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  • I poped the top plant pot on the top flange (this is a nice snug fit, and gives the whole tree a good stable feel.
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  • I placed the mounting strip on the top Plant Pot, and eyebolled where the first leg would go, and drilled a hole, and fitted the strip with a cable tie. I repeated this 5 more times, and the end result was that 50% of the pot diameter was used for the 6 legs.
  • The base diameter is 45cm, and that gives you a circumference of about 141cm. I rounded that down to 70cm (as I am only building a 180 minitree), and divided it by 6 giving me a total space of 11.66cm. In my original build, I worked with 11.5cm spacing, but for the 4 new trees, I am going to go down to 10cm. This will give the two side legs more of a front view.
  • Once all the measurements was done, I drilled the 6 holes and fitted the mounting strip to the bottom with cable ties.
  • Finally I fitted the pixels.
4 More "STRONG" mini trees.
 
christmasdave said:
I’ve been working on putting 2 arch’s together with a Rosa (my first ever HD prop!) in the middle.
still a few things to work out to stabilise the arch’s but I’m happy with progress.
img_4485-jpeg.23493
Click to expand...
That's very creative to configure them that way. How are you going to model it? I can think of many variations for models and sub-models.
 
Indigogyre said:
That's very creative to configure them that way. How are you going to model it? I can think of many variations for models and sub-models.
Click to expand...
I’ve actually probably been a bit lazy with the modelling 😝 just 2 arch’s with the bottom one flipped and treating as 2 seperate.
It started as more a ‘I wonder if this will work’. It looks good in xLights and even though I’m sequencing as seperate, they look like one model, which is nice. If I do get more time I’ll model them properly, which as you say will definitely allow for more customisation.
 
Today's work:

Built four mini spiral trees, 50 bullets wrapped on some tomato cages that my Mrs picked up from ALDI for 8 bucks each this week.

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An unexpected addition, no idea where I'll put them yet, probably ask the neighbour if I can put them on his side of the fence between our driveways. He has a about half a metre garden there which is just weeds 🤣
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The other part of the morning was trying out two different mounts for my solar panel seed matrix. One uses a full 2m length of 100mm mesh, the other just uses a single square with the seeds supporting themselves.
The latter seems to be the best option so that there's no metal sitting on the panels directly. Looks better from the street too during the day.

The second and fifth panels here have the test matrixes on. 11x18 for a total of 198 pixels each.
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This is the wire mesh mounting
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And this is the pixel wire only method
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In both cases, a square of mesh is wrapped around the panel to provide the attachment. Excuse the bird skeleton, let's just say that's my only Halloween decoration for the year 🤣
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someoneAUS said:
Any noticable output drop on the panels doing that?
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Hard to say so far - those 6 are east facing and get the morning sun only. I'll need to compare a couple of similar days data on it.
I'm not too fussed though, the less they do during the day, the other array can pick up the slack (being 22 north facing panels)
 
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