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Light Parade float ideas?


AZDan

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Here is my story folks.

I bought 10 controllers (1 assembled and 9 CTB16PC Kits) and on top of sequencing a show for the house I want to do a float in our towns Christmas light parade. (Not to ambitious am I?)

I started working with the visualizer for the house display and am well on my way on that project but I need to get to work on the trailer. The wife runs a childcare and we want to make sure we go with a theme that will focus on children and Christmas.

We want to be able to put 10 or so children and a few parents on the float.

The rules for the parade are simple, No Santa (He rides on the fire truck) and no throwing candy from the float.

So far I have not put a ton of time into this project. I have thought of leaping arches for the side of the trailer attached to rails I want to put on to make it safer for the children. Another idea has been a Webber spiral tree around 9' high with 16-24 channels.

I am thinking that I need to limit the channels I use for the float since this is the first year we have done this and we also need to complete the house.

Any suggestions as far as number of channels, decorations, light effects, etc would be more than welcome.

We live in Apache Junction Arizona and is the home of the Superstition Mountains and the Lost Dutchman's Gold Mine(???) so maybe something from this legend thrown in would be fun. (not required)

I have 150,000+ incandescent lights available. I only have around 10,000 LED's at the moment and they are all set to go for the house display. It would be too much trouble to use them and then re-purpose them to the house display. The trailer is 16' long by 8' wide. The picture below does not have the side and rear rails yet, they will be around 2' high. It will be towed by a Ford Ranger so there will be room in the bed for the generator and controllers and any other decorations.

https://skydrive.liv...AON5p7tgL_416AQ

Not sure the link for the pic is working, let me know.

Dan

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  • AZDan

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  • Santas Helper

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  • rednosetbird

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I sure hope the prade is at night! I think your on track.How about some music? I like the idea of the mega tree.Maybe some fire sticks,I would use what iam using on my house to make it some what easy. Good luck it will be worth for the kids.Cant wait to see some pics.

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At night of course. Fire sticks are the vertical poles that chase to the top right?

Music will be piped through a couple of speakers from the laptop.

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Why not just put all the lights and controllers on the trailer then when the parade is done, just park the trailer in front of the house and poof your house is decorated. ;)

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Not a bad idea. Simple yet affective.Now where can I find a 150' trailer so I can at least have half of the front yard decorated???

smile003.gif

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Not a bad idea. Simple yet affective.Now where can I find a 150' trailer so I can at least have half of the front yard decorated???

smile003.gif

Maybe ask the other participants of the parade to donate their float to be a part of your display at your house and add them into your sequences. Then advertise the floats in the parade will be animated at your house while listing the names of the other float owners in their honor. I bet the other float owners would love to be a part of that.

The news and community would eat that up.

And there is your full yard all lit up. :)

Edited by Santas Helper
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Why not just put all the lights and controllers on the trailer then when the parade is done, just park the trailer in front of the house and poof your house is decorated. ;)

lmao Tom your killing me! lol
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I was' wondering if you have any props for your house built? I would try to use what you have for the house on the float,then take off from the float and reinstall on house project.If this is your 1st year doing all of this I would stick to maybe one thing."the house or the float" Last year was my first ambitious year.I'll give some advice like everyone gave me. do what you think you can do and plan for more time and then some more time. I think your going to be a little bit to ambitious. if this is in fact your first year,iam not tring to shoot you down,but it does take a lot of time to set up,build,all the trips to Home Depot,even when you think you have covered all the bases. good luck cant wait to see what your going to do!

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Already built:

Small Moose: https://skydrive.live.com/redir?resid=AB2B60F3BCC0F1D3!111&authkey=!ALqg39NRqJzlH6Y

Medium Reindeer body(head made but needs bolts to attach):https://skydrive.live.com/redir?resid=AB2B60F3BCC0F1D3!112&authkey=!AJ22Kbe9pCaV5UU

12 Driveway Arches 18'high by 16'wide:https://skydrive.live.com/redir?resid=AB2B60F3BCC0F1D3!115&authkey=!ABaxVk2ii3uLi6o

14 Walkway Arhes 8'high by 7'wide:https://skydrive.live.com/redir?resid=AB2B60F3BCC0F1D3!114&authkey=!ALRTWwl_eKUQ3Fk

30' Mega Tower and a small 10' Tower:https://skydrive.live.com/redir?resid=AB2B60F3BCC0F1D3!113&authkey=!AN0geOoCQTTb5kc

3 wood Talking Xmas Trees 4.5' tall

and 2 Holdman stars

So far

Maybe Getting everyone to link their floats with mine via wireless linkers???

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Lets not re-invent names for things. Yes you might have used a tower to support your MEGA TREE. But it is still a mega tree. Now if you had wrapped your tower in lights. Then yea I can see ya calling it a mega tower. But cause you are running lights off of it in the shape of a tree, then please call it a mega tree like everyone else.

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Lets not re-invent names for things. Yes you might have used a tower to support your MEGA TREE. But it is still a mega tree. Now if you had wrapped your tower in lights. Then yea I can see ya calling it a mega tower. But cause you are running lights off of it in the shape of a tree, then please call it a mega tree like everyone else.

Lol. That's funny what if I have an arch off of the top of my mega tree could I call it a MEGA ARCH TREE?

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Lol. That's funny what if I have an arch off of the top of my mega tree could I call it a MEGA ARCH TREE?

It depends. Are you using a tower?

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Run guy wires to the ends of the arches, attach mini baskets and parachutes, motorize and you have a parachute drop ride to keep the bunnies and squirrels that normally chew on light strings occupied.

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Apologies from this newbie, I have now stricken MegaT**er from my vocabulary.

These two features of my display are hereby rechristened “Mega Tower” and “Little Mega Tower”.

surrendering.gif

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Sup I will just calling my arches Light bows or Bent light poles that have fallen down. Its just hard to play nice with everyone re-inventing names for things and confusing half of the people here. I could just as easly start answering questions with new names for things and let everyone try to figure out what I am saying. We are not a community if we dont all use the same terms for things.

Just do not fully understand why I was informing one person of the common term. And Have 4 or so others jump in to my post, that was not directed to them. What is your dog in this race? What does it matter to you? I would like to hear back from others, other than AZDan

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Why is mega tower so stuck in my head???

Meant to say mega tree. Mega tree and mini mega tree. I am repeating mega tree over and over trying to get it to stick in the brain pan.

New mantra, proof read, proof read. :-)

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Ya, I kind of do that with people and their names sometimes. I suppose it is just a person looks like a Jeff or John even though their name might be Pete.

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