TonyD Posted September 30, 2014 Share Posted September 30, 2014 (edited) I am curious what the smallest spiral mini tree anyone has done (and liked the way the spiral effects looked). Not pixels but "traditional" mini lights. I have 42" tomato cages and in addition to covering with RGBW strings i would wind one color (white or maybe blue) for a spiral effect. It would have to be a pretty short string, maybe 35 ct wrapped up and back. I would think 4 - 6 channels would be the max. Thanks for your thoughts. Tony Edited September 30, 2014 by TonyD 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jerrymac Posted September 30, 2014 Share Posted September 30, 2014 Why not just sequence the RGB to do the spirals (then you can go in any direction and any color)? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TonyD Posted October 1, 2014 Author Share Posted October 1, 2014 Let me clarify - i don't have "RGB" pixels, i will have 4 strings of solid color 5mm lights (red, green, blue, white) and then i want to wrap one color in a spiral pattern. My question really is what the shortest tree i could have and still get a nice spiral effect? Is 4 ft too short? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JeffF Posted October 1, 2014 Share Posted October 1, 2014 I am curious what the smallest spiral mini tree anyone has done (and liked the way the spiral effects looked). Not pixels but "traditional" mini lights. I have 42" tomato cages and in addition to covering with RGBW strings i would wind one color (white or maybe blue) for a spiral effect. It would have to be a pretty short string, maybe 35 ct wrapped up and back. I would think 4 - 6 channels would be the max. Thanks for your thoughts. TonyI'm curious about this too. I'd like to add 42"-54" spirals myself but I haven't had time to mess around yet. Hopefully someone who's done it will chime in for you/us. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JeffF Posted October 3, 2014 Share Posted October 3, 2014 Going to do a couple test wraps this weekend on the 54" cages I picked up yesterday. I did do a wrap last night using four 50 light strands but I didn't have time to test sequence it. My first impression was that I needed to double up the strands since the tree looked a little thin. I'm hopeful I can get this to look good because I'd like to add half a dozen of them to the display this year. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JeffF Posted October 4, 2014 Share Posted October 4, 2014 Tried getting a video but the darn autofocus on the phone was going crazy. I wasn't thrilled with the 4 channel spiral effect so I'm going to wrap another tree with 5 channels and then maybe one more with 6. Will get the real video camera out once those are done... which will hopefully be tomorrow. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JeffF Posted October 4, 2014 Share Posted October 4, 2014 (edited) Here's an almost decent quality video... (NOTE: If the video is in the wrong aspect ratio, just click on the HD button once or twice WHILE THE VIDEO IS PLAYING... for some reason it comes up wrong half the time???)The tree on the left has four 50 light strands wrapped around the tree 4 or 5 times.The tree on the right has six 50 light strands that have been folded in half(thus doubling the amount of lights per strands) and since they were shorter they were only wrapped around the tree 2 times.As you can see from the video, the tree on the right gives a much better spiral illusion. Between the doubling of the lights per strand and adding two more strands(which equal two more controller channels) we like it much better. So much so we are going to wrap 4 or 5 more to add to the 2014 display. BTW, these are the 54" tomato cages from Lowe's. Our Lowe's still had like 50 of them as of Thursday so you may still be able to get them. Edited October 4, 2014 by JeffF 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Uncle Al Posted October 4, 2014 Share Posted October 4, 2014 Jeff, Those look great! Thanks for sharing some video of them. Now I might have to add some mini spirals.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JeffF Posted October 4, 2014 Share Posted October 4, 2014 Thanks! And here are a couple pictures of how I added a bit of wire to make sure the trees kept their round shape once wrapped. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TonyD Posted October 4, 2014 Author Share Posted October 4, 2014 Thanks Jeff! The one on the right is the look I was hoping to get. Thanks for testing it out and posting the video. The cages I have are a little shorter so i hope it still looks as good. The cages were pretty cheap so I bought double the number and then will use 2 cages per "tree", offsetting them a bit to get better wire coverage. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JeffF Posted October 4, 2014 Share Posted October 4, 2014 You shouldn't have a problem with the shorter cage. There is 6" or 7" free at the bottom of ours. And I cheaped out with doubling up the cages on these since the 54" cages are $5 each. I did do that with 9 other trees I wrapped but those had 1,400 to 1,500 lights so I wanted them to be sturdy.Fun project. And the wifey and kiddos love how they look so I think others will too. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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