Year Round Flood Lights

[Entropy]

Greetings,
As if Christmas and Halloween wasn't enough, I'm now considering putting up some RGB flood lights or perhaps pixel strips for landscaping illumination that will be on year-round.
I'd like to run a warm-white most of the time but I want to be able to change colors, pink in Valentines day, green on St. Patricks Day, red, white & blue on Independence day, Red and Gold should the A's ever show signs of life again. etc. A simple method to change the colors would be nice, perhaps plugging in the laptop or as a bonus, scheduling the color changes by calendar would be awesome and lastly, an astronomical scheduler or photocell to turn on and off. 

I haven't got into it at all yet but my preliminary questions that I hope that you fine folks might have answers to are:

1. I'll need durable floods that can sit outside for years. I live in a moderate climate, no snow, no scalding temps. Who makes them? 
2. I'll need a reliable controller, possibly an e1.31 or similar?
3. I'll need a computer to run it. Raspberry Pi?

Any ideas?

Thanks,
Mickey Morgan
 

[k6ccc]

Well, I should be able to help here since I originally got into LOR for landscape lighting and had no intention of doing a Christmas show (that changed).  Start out by taking a look at my website:

http://newburghlights.org/Landscaping.html

I am using a lot of interactive sequences, so I am running the show from a computer.  I have a combination of LOR (mostly dumb RGB) controlled by CMB16D cards (the CMB24D had not been invented when I started), and some E1.31.  All the LOR stuff is on an Enhanced LOR network except the one InputPup which is on a second non-enhanced network (you can't run inputs on an enhanced LOR network).  At this time, the evening show is started from a trigger when it gets dark, and ends at 2200 during the week and 2300 on the weekends.  When the evening show ends, the overnight show starts.  Except for the interactives, it is all static.  The overnight show ends when it gets light in the morning (yes I had to employ a trick to shutting down the show from an interactive trigger - but it works).  At this time, the only interactives, are to ramp up the lights when someone approaches the front porch steps.  When I finish the landscape project, there will be a 55 foot walkway that  that will have lights along the sides that also will ramp up when someone approaches the walkway from either end.

I should be able to answer specific question quite easily.

 

[Entropy]

Wow, sweet. That's deluxe.
Since I asked the question, I've discovered a whole world of off-the-shelf-LED landscape lighting. I'll see if any of those are suitable first. I don't want to reinvent the wheel here.

[Mega Arch]

Mickey,

I think you can't go wrong using LOR 50 floods. They are higher than the ones you probably find in your search, but are well worth it. I use mine year round in my courtyard. They easily change colors for seasons. They are great with animated lighting right outta the box. LOR has built the controls into the floods so can use standalone or in the light show.