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400 pixels wrapped around a 9 ft Christmas Tree - Sample Sequence


BrianBruderer

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Here is a video showing samples of effects using 400 CCPs wrapped around a 9 ft Christmas tree. Give SuperStar the height of your tree, the diameter of the base, and how many pixels you have to wrap around the tree and SuperStar calculates where to place each wrap and automatically generates a visualization of the CCPs on the tree. What I did was put a zip tie to mark where the end of each wrap is, then you wrap the tree and adjust the wraps so that all the zip ties line up on the tree. The innovation is that you no longer need to have parallell vertical strings of lights going up the tree, you can now wrapped the lights which gives a more "natural" look and spreads the lights more uniformly on the tree.

 

I will make a video on how I wrapped the tree within the next few days.

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It is not released yet. The ability to do this only exists on my computer right now. It will be in the next release, not sure when the next release will be.

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Every time I think I've bought enough pixels, you come up with something new that is really cool. I guess I'll have to stop viewing this forum. NOT!!! Let me think ! More pixels or go on vacation!!! Well, I guess when I retire, it will be a vacation. More pixels I guess. :D

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Brian, maybe you could give some thought to creating a half tree function. It seems all those expensive pixels on the back of the tree are wasted.

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Its definitely possible to just do the front half of the tree. The spiral effects wouldn't look as good, but it is half the cost!

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I have several trees I plan on using this year, this will be perfect.

 

What does your wife think of a tree in the front room in April, or is she used to it?

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My wife is used to it. I must say I was reluctant to haul the tree out of storage after putting it up just 4 months ago.

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Brian: You never cease to amaze me........Really, really cool.....NOW, if I can only talk my wife into doing it.  She seems to have this strange idea that the tree lights in the house should be static.

Edited by gmac
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Looking forward to how the tree was wrapped. Now you have me thinking I should do this in the house too. :D

 

What Pixels did you use and which controller?

 

Kip

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It is wrapped with Light-O-Rama Cosmic Color Pixels. Cosmic Color Bulbs might look better since they are bigger and look more like the old style christmas lights. I don't have any Cosmic Color Bulbs so I have not been able to see what it looks like using them.

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Brian - when this reaches the release stage, I'm hoping the size of the tree will be a controllable variable, as well as the number of lights. And if you add the half-tree option, I'd suggest including the choice of either a horizontal or vertical zig-zag light stringing pattern.

I had 6.5' trees last year on which I used CCPs or CCBs. The trees with CCP's were wrapped spirally like yours, with 100 pixels per tree. The trees with CCBs were front half only, strung using a horizontal ziz-zag pattern, and 50 CCBs per tree.

For that size tree, those pixel counts worked very well, and would be a lot more affordable to a lot more people than is 300. This year I'll have about 16 of those trees and having those options available would definitely give me reason to learn SS.

I'm not sure I'd do much comparing of CCBs to old-style fixed-color incans though. Kind of hard to confuse the two...

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The size of the tree is indeed variable. Currently I have it so you input 4 things:

diameter of the tree

diagonal height of the tree

spacing of the lights

number of lights

 

SuperStar then generates a visualization based on those parameters. It also generates where to "mark" the end of each wrap of the strings of lights. When you wrap the lights you adjust them so the marks all line up vertically as you go up the tree.

 

So you can do a small tree, and you can do smaller numbers of pixels also.

 

To support front half only I need to modify the program, but it is doable.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Just when I have convinced myself that SS is too expensive you seem to come up with more stuff that I want to do. I am planning a 64 x16 mega tree and am not getting the effects I want from Nutcracker. I am using pixel net and DIY hardware but use LOR for sequencing.  DMX dumb stuff was not very hard to do, but smart lights have been a pain in the rear. I have about 6k channels. Are there any plans to open up the channel or pixel count the are DIY people that are in the 30 and 40 k range and some new equipment will let you control over 100k channels. Seems like LOR would want to capture a share of that market.    

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Currently the highest license level for SuperStar is 40 CCRs. One CCR has 150 channels so 40 CCRs translates to 6000 channels. One RGB pixel uses 3 channels, so 6000 channels translates to 2000 pixels. We hope to have an 80 CCR license later this year which would double all those figures. Testing needs to be done to make sure SuperStar and the Sequence Editor will properly support that many channels. One challenge for SuperStar is that the design phylosophy has been to keep everything on one screen to make sequencing easier. When the channel count gets that high there isn't enough room on one screen for the sequencing grid and the visual representation of the light display. I need to come up with a different approach to be able to handle very large displays.

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Global Warming is nothing compared to what RGB pixels is going to do to the planet. :huh:

 

It's obvious that even a "small venue" hobbyist like myself can easily hit 10000 channels using smart pixels. Sure hope something shows up soon that will make it easier to handle.

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Brian,

Here is a video I took in my garage before I put these trees out last year for Christmas. They are  6.5ft tall, but only have 200 CCB's. I do think the CCBs look better because of the size. I don't think I could do text on these tree's, but I think there is plenty of light from the 200 CCB's.

I'm building a 10ft 300 CCB tree this year, I'm looking forward to your new features.

The sequences for the trees were done with SuperStar.

 

http://youtu.be/VmBsFc-6N-o

Edited by Frank Farmer
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