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

All my pixels are now pushed for 2023. Only adding 3 more column matrices, but this year is all about upgrades for me. Had to take 5,800 pixels out and 9,600 back in. Mega tree is now 24 x 100 at 1 inch (was 24 x 75 at 1.5 inch) and the garage matrix is now 1.5 inch spacing (was 2 inch) and 50% more pixels. next year I will add some fan archers in at the front of the lawn.
 
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someoneAUS said:
Any noticable output drop on the panels doing that?
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So some finger in the air comparisons - I grabbed the midnight to 10:40am data for four days, here are the results.
The output is what the panels was doing as at 10:40am, so comparing the exact same point in time.
I note that the matrix went on the panels at about 9am, so both 18 and 17 have it installed, and have a higher output.

Code: 
Date       Output     Generated
================================
18 Sep     7.01kW     15.4kWh
17 Sep     7.03kW     15.4kWh
16 Sep     6.93kW     14.9kWh
15 Sep     6.54kW     13.9kWh

All days have been full sun for the most part.
So far it's looking like there is no impact to the panel output. But I'll keep an eye on it.
 
Skymaster said:
So far it's looking like there is no impact to the panel output. But I'll keep an eye on it.
Click to expand...
Thanks thats interesting to know. My panels dont face the street so unlikely to get lights on them in the near future but I had thought about doing similar.
 
Few projects for me this year
- Redoing the gutter pixels =- using square pixels and Trunking with Magnets
- Adding top of roof pixels
- adding 6 mini trees from Lasabelle
- 6 Leaping arches (25mm Seeder and 20mm conduit)
- 2 More Chroma Canes
- 2 Singing faces
- 3 x 3 P5 Outdoor Tune To - Built
- 4 x 4 Matrix - Semi built

Feeling on top of it so far
 
Johnnyboy said:
I dug a hole and filled it with concrete!
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Better than it filling with water!

On topic though, I got the rest of my solar matrix built throughout the week and mounted it this afternoon.
Still have to make up some cables to do a roof test.
PXL_20230924_062519604.jpgPXL_20230924_062522955.jpgPXL_20230924_062834506.jpg

The other thing I did was use my terrible welding skills to make a frame that'll sit on the roof peak/apex right in the middle. This will be held with sand/ rock bags, and will end up having the Bethlehem star mounted to it.
The Star currently has a conduit in the back where it used to clip into the house, that'll sit parallel with the orange HD and be cable tied together.
I need to run a test with it too, and give it a paint to stop it rusting up there
1000039774.jpg
 
Nice to see/read about all of your progress for 2023! 😀

As for me, so far I've pushed pixels into a new Mega Tree star from ELD (replacing an old 4-tier ropelight star) and also in the middle of changing my mega tree topper so that the new star can be raised/lowered with the rest of the mega tree lights instead of needing to bring down the entire pole to get to it. Downside to this is needing to set the star slightly forward of the pole, which I'm not sure I will like when viewed from the side.

I've also partially built (drilled holes in) an enclosure for an Advatek PixLite 16 MKII. Have yet to install intake fan, power cable or output pigtails. It'll be powered from a passively cooled IP65 power supply external to the enclosure. As this PSU only has one output cable, I'll split that into two inside the enclosure in order to supply power to both controller banks (1-8 and 9-16).
xmas23---enclosure-with-holes-drilled-and-controller-placed-for-demo.jpg
 
Well, today marks the second anniversary of the day I put in my first orders for blinky. (Let it be said that September 26 is not an ideal day to start a same-season project, but I had it all running by Dec 19...)

I plan to start running my second Halloween show on Oct 1. I didn't have a lot of time this year due to new job and "too much life", but since I can reuse (almost) everything from the year before, the show is slightly bigger and a little more refined/garish than ever.

Here's what's new / replaced:
  1. Cats and Ghosts - didn't have any, but a lot of people sequence them, so I got a few
  2. Front window 3" matrix got replaced with MOAW; some BOAWs got added in other windows
  3. SpinReel Max 36" got replaced with a Rosa Wreath 36"
  4. Steampunk spinner got moved to the back of the house, and a Rosa Wreath takes its place
  5. Diamondtip flakes on the driveway arch got swapped out for Showstopper Spinners
  6. PixelTrim w/ tombs/pumpkins for the porch railing
  7. DMX wireless wands
  8. Fobbles (manual control)
  9. I tightened up the matrix over the bedroom window from 2" to 1.25", so that it is 50 across and suitable for superstar matrix sequences.
  10. I cut the varieties of tombstones in the primary group of 8 from 4 kinds to just two, both 3-layer tomb warps.
  11. I am deploying things like cubes, tree tubes, and selfie wings that had been in the Christmas show but not the Halloween show in the past.
  12. The megatree frame will no longer involve structural zip ties.
And, maybe I will have free time to switch from peace poles to insane poles, or corocanes to insane canes. There are also a few other things in the attic like a pixel forest that never made it out yet, so we shall see...

Deleted:
  1. Mini Tombstones
  2. Any ambition to use all the LoR controllers I got back in 2021
There have been a lot of additions to the show software:
  1. Probably twice as much Halloween sequence material as last year.
  2. I managed to improve the submodels and groups a bit, but the mapping is not perfect and I will continue to refine it in future years.
  3. Last, but not least, an updated xLights with better stability and a few new effects.
 
This year's vision is finally starting to materialise. I finished pushing this matrix panel weeks ago and I have another 2 to go to cover the right fence panel and then cut in half to do both bottom halves.
Also testing out the gutter matrix. I was a little worried it might hang down to low but there's plenty of clearance.
This now means I can continue pushing pixels over my leave.
 

Attachments

  • 2023-10-01 12.41.51.jpg
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Today's project was to put the new topper on the mega tree pole so that I could see where the star will sit on it (to give enough clearance between the pole and star cables while the topper is raised/lowered). Still to be done is to add supports for the star to be fixed back on to (today the star was just resting against the main mega tree pole).

xmas23---mega-tree-new-topper-with-star-on-top.jpg

The topper has been sized to fit either 16 strings (inner circle) or 24 strings (outer circle) for a 180 degree pixel tree + a bit more. For this year I'm not sure whether my old single colour LED dumb strings (from 2007-2009) will see out one more season or if I will swap them to pixels to match the star upgrade. If it happens this year then it'll just be a 16 string tree (for now?).


So who else made progress this weekend?
 
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