Cosmic Color Pixel Tree

[BrianBruderer]

I made a tree from 12 strings of Cosmic Color Pixels. There are 24 bundles in the tree, each bundle is made from half of a CCP string.The CCP strings are inside of a transparent tube to help keep them oriented in a uniformly. There is also a sphere at the top which uses 2 Cosmic Color Pixel strings. I made a demo/test sequence to TSO's Christmas Eve Sarajevo 12/24 (Carol of the Bells). The youtube video is at:

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[thebaronn]

I made a tree from 12 strings of Cosmic Color Pixels. There are 24 bundles in the tree, each bundle is made from half of a CCP string.The CCP strings are inside of a transparent tube to help keep them oriented in a uniformly. There is also a sphere at the top which uses 2 Cosmic Color Pixel strings. I made a demo/test sequence to TSO's Christmas Eve Sarajevo 12/24 (Carol of the Bells). The youtube video is at:

Very nice! How many networks are you running (and type)? I had 10 CCpixels strings and was never able to get them to do exacty what I wanted.

[csimmon5]

I made a tree from 12 strings of Cosmic Color Pixels. There are 24 bundles in the tree, each bundle is made from half of a CCP string.The CCP strings are inside of a transparent tube to help keep them oriented in a uniformly. There is also a sphere at the top which uses 2 Cosmic Color Pixel strings. I made a demo/test sequence to TSO's Christmas Eve Sarajevo 12/24 (Carol of the Bells). The youtube video is at:

What tubing did you use?

[dgrant]

Very nice! I especially liked how you did the spiraling effect across the strings.

[tonyjr127]

Im a newbie on here and this is my first post but Ive been a long time reader of the forums. This is the most incredible tree Ive seen yet. Thanks for sharing.

[DownTown]

Wow, Brian, nice job... Want to provide more datails on the tree? Materials, construction techniques, etc...

Thanks.

D.T.

[BrianBruderer]

I am using 2 networks. 6 of the tree strings are on one network, and 6 of the tree strings plus the 2 sphere strings are on another network.

The "tubing" is the stuff they use to channel groups of wires with, they are called a "wire loom." It uses 300 ft of 1" diameter clear wire loom tubing. There is also a 1/8 inch thick rope that the tubing is zip tied to. The 1/8 inch polyester rope is big enough to zip tie to, but small enough you don't see it.

The sphere at the top has 4 rows of lights, each row has 24 pixels, plus there are 2 pixels at the top and 2 at the bottom for a total of 100. The controller for them is inside of the sphere. The sphere is made of two hemisphere's actually, and there is a clear plexiglass disc that is in the middle that both spheres attach to to give it strength. The mast is attached to the center plexiglass disc also.

[DownTown]

Thanks Brian - that's awesome!

[Ed Slonka Jr]

That's beyond awesome!

Now we need a "HOW TO" video Brian.

Thanks for sharing!

Ed

[thebaronn]

I am using 2 networks. 6 of the tree strings are on one network, and 6 of the tree strings plus the 2 sphere strings are on another network.

The "tubing" is the stuff they use to channel groups of wires with, they are called a "wire loom." It uses 300 ft of 1" diameter clear wire loom tubing. There is also a 1/8 inch thick rope that the tubing is zip tied to. The 1/8 inch polyester rope is big enough to zip tie to, but small enough you don't see it.

The sphere at the top has 4 rows of lights, each row has 24 pixels, plus there are 2 pixels at the top and 2 at the bottom for a total of 100. The controller for them is inside of the sphere. The sphere is made of two hemisphere's actually, and there is a clear plexiglass disc that is in the middle that both spheres attach to to give it strength. The mast is attached to the center plexiglass disc also.

2 networks? Are they regular USB LOR Networks? (not the superspeed or E1.31?? Wow, I am impressed! Are you using a lot of MACROS (I do not know how the SSE works really)

If I tweak a sequence to your nework specs (and you have time) could you run it an film it? It wonlt looks nearly the same sue to the difference in setup, but I would be able to see uniformity in the big transitions.

I am having issues and working with Dan (he has been busy though) and I am holding off on purchasing more until i get these problems (http://forums.lightorama.com/index.php?/topic/20956-ccp-santa-house/)resolved.

[BrianBruderer]

I skimmed through the topic you reference. You have quite the project going! Not many people have done such a dense matrix of RGB lights.

I am running 2 standard networks, they are not superspeed or E1.32. I am not using any MACROS. Everything is raw channel commands. However, realize that updating video requires more bandwidth than the sequences in the the test videos. The one place that is a stress test in my videos is in "Carol of the Bells" where it bursts into white, it is turning on every pixel to white. There is a small amount of lag but not much, but perhaps that is because it is turning on every pixel to the same color and I am told the LOR protocol does that better than turning every pixel to a different color.

It was interesting to watch your different test videos. The first one where you are running 700 pixels on one network shows a lot of lag. My tree and sphere have 700 pixels on 2 networks (300 pixels on one network, 400 on another). Make sure that in the LOR Sequence Editor that you have "Short range faster" selected for the network speed in the Netwok Preferences dialog box. If you already had "Short range faster" selected in that video, it is lagging more than I would expect.

[Aaron Maue]

Edit: Sorry. Posted in wrong thread. Need to stop multitasking.

Edited January 4, 2013 by Aaron Maue

[indi]

Brian,

Let me get this though my febal brain. To make a tree like yours, I need 7 controllers (Light O Rama). One controller for the ball and six controllers for the tree. Which means I need to upgrade my lic. to 24 CCR. Have I got this straight?

Thanks

[BrianBruderer]

Yes, to make a tree like mine, you need 7 controllers (Light O Rama). One controller for the ball and six controllers for the tree. Which means you need to upgrade my lic. to 24 CCR.

[indi]

Thanks Brian, I guess I will update soon. I think after I get one of these supersatar sequence loaded into my LOR sequence editor, I think I'll be able to go from there. One other question. Each contoller has two strands of 50 ea rgb's. Does that mean it acts like two controllers? One controller per strand? And do you asign each string of lights a chanel like in LOR? I've worked on two songs so far and am pretty happy with the result, but, I haven't done anything but save them in the Super Star softeware. I built mine on you samples. This is really pretty cool software.

Thanks again for you help.

[BrianBruderer]

Yes, each CCP or CCB controller acts like two controllers and will control two strings of 50 pixels or bulbs each.

When you configure them in "Dual Normal" mode, you only set one Unit ID, but internally it uses that Unit ID for the first string and it uses the unit ID after that for the second string. So for example, if you had 3 controllers and 6 strings, you could assign the controllers unit Ids like:

08

0A

0C

The unit Ids used for the 6 strings would be:

08

09

0A

0B

0C

0D

[indi]

Thanks again so much Brian. I know later on that I will have more questions.

[indi]

Brian:

 

After watching your video of the pixel tree you did, I set up a patice tree. I only have two CB100D's nt the moment and only one is working. I attached my strings to a 1/4 nylon rope about every 2 feet and then put the wire loom over them. I attached the rope to some short bungee cords and left slack from the controller and where I attached my first zip tie on the rope. I zip tied the wire loom about every 4 feet. Seemed to work pretty well. However, I think I might change the rope to cottom, as I don't think cottom will streatch as far as the nylon rope. And I might do away with the bungee as well. I think I will also have some conduit rolled into a circle for the bottom of the tree to attach everything to.

 

Any thoughts on my idea?

 

Thanks

[BrianBruderer]

I think you have improved on what I did. I put the CCPs inside of the wire loom and then zip tied the wire loom to 1/8 inch nylon rope. The problem I had was that the lights slide around inside of the wire loom and in some places it was hard to get the pixels lined up right. By attaching the CCPs to the rope first you can move them up and down on the rope to get them aligned.

 

I used 1/8 inch nylon rope because I did not want the rope to be visible. You used 1/4 inch nylon rope, are you able to see it in the dark when the lights are on?

 

As for using cotton rope, realize that cotton rope stretches more than nylon rope. The advantage of cotton rope is that it is less "slippery" so the anything zip tied to cotton rope stays put better.

[-klb-]

If you are worried about stretch, 1/16 galvanized vinyl coated aircraft cable works well, and does not visibly impact light output. And gets a good marks for not slipping.