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whyintheworld

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So I had been for about a year on whether or not I'd try to animate our lights.  At the last minute I decided to do it for this year.  When I say last minute, I didn't have a single thing planned, built.  I didn't even place the order for the controllers until the week before Thanksgiving. It was the week of Thanksgiving that I realized that I would have to make all of the mini trees, arches, and figure out the mega tree to run the lights on.  Of course, I had no idea how to go about building all of these items, so this and a few other forums became my best friend for 2-3 days.  Knowing that I was short on time, I did take a shortcut and went with Wowlights package so that I would have at least a few animations that I'd be able to throw a show together right away.  I also decided I probably wouldn't figure out the RGB or pixels in time, so I went strictly AC for the first year.

In just 2 days I made all the mini trees, on the third day we figured out and made the arches, and on the fourth and fifth days we got the mega tree up and the LOR boxes came.  I finished decorating the house and had the wowlight animations up and running by the end of the seventh day.  One of the things that kept me from deciding on whether to do it or not originally, was simply the "Can I do it?" and "will it work" type hesitations that I have.  But even a non-techie like me had no problem getting everything figured out and running.  Now the RGB/Pixels...  that I'm still not as sure about for next year.  That is the one thing that Wowlights has going for them is the "works right out of the box" factor.

All that to say... Thanks to everyone on these forums (and others).  People like myself may not post much but we lurk and learn from everything you guys do.

 

Here is my light setup for this year which is 48 channels with about 9000 lights total.  The Santa face came with the package, everything else we just put together while we waited for the LOR controllers to come.  (Hmmm... video displays full width on here and I can't figure out how to make it smaller.  It was only shot with an iPhone)

 

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I don't do facebook so I can't see the video, but I do like the can do spirit. :D I also lurked for many years and got a lot of information. Welcome and don't be a stranger.

Alan...

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I've say, I'm impressed with the speed that you put that together.  It will be interesting to see what you can do with 10 months of planning in 2017!

 

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7 days???!!! That's impressive! I know people who've been doing this for years and don't have a display that good. Nice work! I know what you mean about the forums being very useful, I never would have gotten as far as I have without so many peoples help...They know who they are and I want to say thank you all again.

Don't be a stranger or just a lurker, There are no dumb questions here.:D 

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Wow - that's an amazing amount of work you did in just one week's time!  

That's awesome.  I agree with k6ccc - it'll be great to see what 12 months of planning will do for your already great display!

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Nice work.  We too made the plunge on Black Friday purchasing 48 channels of controllers and awaiting their delivery as well as 6 mini trees.  Everything else is done, and just need to add the trees, controllers, and cords.  My daughter has been like the mad hacker on the computer with approximately 20hrs in so far with the SE. Of course each day she gets better with it as Friday was her first day using it.

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3 hours ago, JPat said:

Nice work.  We too made the plunge on Black Friday purchasing 48 channels of controllers and awaiting their delivery as well as 6 mini trees.  Everything else is done, and just need to add the trees, controllers, and cords.  My daughter has been like the mad hacker on the computer with approximately 20hrs in so far with the SE. Of course each day she gets better with it as Friday was her first day using it.

The sequencing is going to be a challenge for me. I'm often a bit too... Linear.  I told my wife and kids they each had to pick a song and they would have 11 months to sequence it.  That way we might find someone in the family that enjoys and is good at it  

We are thinking about what our "must" add items will be for next year. The vertical posts with shooting stars at the top is one. The other is two snowmen that throw snowballs at each other (just animated, not sequenced).   One of the other effects I'd like to add next year is chases along the Eve's. Right now that is solely 1 channel each, the multicolor and the white icycles. If I did 8 channels of each I think the chase would still be too segmented?  

That is where I wonder if pixels/rgb would be better?  From a cost perspective which is more efficient, adding more AC channels or figuring out and going with either pixels, or other rgb? (I'm not even sure what to ask because I've always been solely AC).

I'm also leaning towards making some singing trees or faces for across the garage.  But the sequencing for the singing???

It's a small front yard (we live towards the end of a court so the front is smaller) so that is why I need to go up as opposed to more spread. But I don't know which make the better impact overall. How would you guys rank the priorities for next year?

1) Exploding stars on posts

2) snowmen throwing snowballs

3) chasing Eve's

4) singing trees/faces on garage

5) candycane pinwheel

6) spiral trees

 

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1 hour ago, whyintheworld said:

 

That is where I wonder if pixels/rgb would be better?  From a cost perspective which is more efficient, adding more AC channels or figuring out and going with either pixels, or other rgb? (I'm not even sure what to ask because I've always been solely AC).

 

Well lets say this, I'm new to RGB this year and I'm sorry I didn't get into it sooner. The price of the controllers is relatively the same. The cost of the pixels is where the savings are at....one string of pixels is about time and a half the price of a set of equal length quality leds. If you want to run RGBW strings on AC channels, it gets pricey quick. (I know, I have about 150 of them) You can make one string of pixels into any color, any node, anytime that you want. So one pixel string can turn any color. The only downfall is that you can't turn on more than one color at a time or it gives you the multi color look.( thats something I can get over pretty quick) They chase amazing, if thats what you want is a good chase, then RGB is the way to go...I'm going to try to get a vid up soon (weather permitting) and I can show you what RGB pixels can do as a 4 string RGBW LED replacement. 

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2 hours ago, Need more lights said:

Well lets say this, I'm new to RGB this year and I'm sorry I didn't get into it sooner. The price of the controllers is relatively the same. The cost of the pixels is where the savings are at....one string of pixels is about time and a half the price of a set of equal length quality leds. If you want to run RGBW strings on AC channels, it gets pricey quick. (I know, I have about 150 of them) You can make one string of pixels into any color, any node, anytime that you want. So one pixel string can turn any color. The only downfall is that you can't turn on more than one color at a time or it gives you the multi color look.( thats something I can get over pretty quick) They chase amazing, if thats what you want is a good chase, then RGB is the way to go...I'm going to try to get a vid up soon (weather permitting) and I can show you what RGB pixels can do as a 4 string RGBW LED replacement. 

I also agree with the lower cost of pixels versus AC controllers using multiple RGBW led light strings.  Especially if you purchase pixels during the pre-sales that are offered by multiple vendors during the first part of the year.  There are just so many options with pixels.  Be it the amount of colors they can produce, the different types (nodes/strips/modules/squares and even bulbs) and the effects you can generate with them.  IMO they're hard to beat in a side by side comparison versus traditional lights and AC controllers.

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Wow, we just got a call from the local news.  They want to come out and do a short segment for the morning news tomorrow.  It seems to be a big hit so far!

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Danger, Danger Will Robinson!

Be prepared for blatenly wrong reporting and far larger crowds. Can you handle a large increase in attendance? I know I can't handle a large increase in attendance.

Sent from my Droid Turbo via Tapatalk, so blame any typos or spelling errors on Android

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To be honest I don't know. This was supposed to be my first venture into the display to figure it out with thoughts of expanding it next year.

Turns out they will be featuring a display every Friday and we just happened to have been selected for the very first Friday. They expect 3 segments to air each about 2 minutes in length. But all 3 will be before 7 am so I'm not really sure how much interest it will really generate.  I don't expect it to make any evening segments.

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This is good stuff! I agree with default...love, love, love the can do attitude. We could use a lot more of that these days. Nice work whyintheworld. A big thumbs up for you!

Gary 

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I finally figured out how to insert the video file other than Facebook...

 

But here is a short clip of the reporter that did the interviews today as she shot this without us for a filler piece.

 

 

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