RGB Lawn Stakes Using Rainbow Spotlights

[ryebred]

Here is a new item I built for my 2011 display. I call them RGB Lawn Stakes and they are powered by Seasonal Entertainment's Rainbow Spotlights. I have four sets of these lawn stakes and each set is three RGB channels.

Here is a video of these in action.

Attached files

[Surfing4Dough]

Look very cool! Any daytime photos, and details on what the outer "bulb" is?

[Guest guest]

Very cool..it will make the CCBs jealous..

[james campbell]

those are nice can you post a materials list,where you got the bulb sand lenses and such,thanks

[ryebred]

Here is a picture of them during the day. The 5 piece lawn stake set you can get at various places but the cheapest I found was at ChristmasCentral.

http://shop.christmascentral.com/Items/vickerman%20x106435?&caSKU=vickerman%20x106435&caTitle=C9%20Shape%20Extra%20Large%20Lighted%20LED%20Christmas%20Pathway%20Markers%20Lawn%20Stakes%20-%20Clear

If you open up the lawn stake faceted bulb and remove the LED's inside them then the Rainbow Spotlight fits perfectly in the base. I used 22/4 security wire to wire them all together and a LOR CMB-16D-QC controller to control them.

Attached files

[KenL_MCSE]

Very nice!

Next year you will be putting 3 channels per lamp - lol

[kzaas]

Very cool and original idea!

[Ponddude]

What a great use of our lights! Very good work Ryan...very innovative and creative!

[Rick Childers]

Awesome, I Like it!

[james campbell]

I wonder if you could judst buy the faceted bulb and stake alone,add a c-9 socket and put a strobe in it. wow that would look amazing

[Greg]

very cool, A+ for originality....

[paulanator]

Ryan,
really cool idea, and I love the security wire too.

Paul

[LORi P]

ryebred wrote:

I have four sets of these lawn stakes and each set is three RGB channels.

Here is a video of these in action.

I love 'em!

I hope you are prepared for an avalanch of (probably really stupid) questions.

Let me start off by saying that I know NOTHING about RGB lights but was hoping to take the plunge with some CCB's this year.

With In CCB's each bulb can be addressed individually, but you have set yours up to have each "string" of your ground stakes just 3 RGB channels. That is all I really want to do with my CCB's..... Have all the bulbs on all the strings be the same color at the same time. Now seeing the "strings" of ground stakes that are all treated the same channel-wise instead of each one being addressed individually, I wonder if there is a more economical way to get the result I want..... Have many strings of RGB lights, but not address each bulb individually... that all of the lights would be the same color at the same time.... It seems to me like that kind of configuration may be cheaper than CCBs. I am interested in either C9 or C7.

-Does such an item exist??
---If so:
-Are they cheaper than CCBs?
-Are they cheaper than CCBs? I guess you would have to consider the price of the RGBs and the required controller, combined.
-Where can you get them?
-Can you make them work with LOR? I assume so, since you are using an LOR CMB-16D-QC controller. But I'm not sure how compatible all the different RGB products are with LOR.

Any information would be much appreciated.

PS I would still use CCBs next year for a different element where I would want the flexibility of different bulbs being different colors, but for what I want to do this year, the 'more simple' solution of controlling all bulbs the same would work for me! Thanks!

[R Weiland]

Great Idea, Thanks for sharing it!

[ace_master]

I still can't get over how awesome these are... I just wish you could buy the bulbs without all the electronics that come with it.



LORi P wrote:

With In CCB's each bulb can be addressed individually, but you have set yours up to have each "string" of your ground stakes just 3 RGB channels. That is all I really want to do with my CCB's..... Have all the bulbs on all the strings be the same color at the same time. Now seeing the "strings" of ground stakes that are all treated the same channel-wise instead of each one being addressed individually, I wonder if there is a more economical way to get the result I want..... Have many strings of RGB lights, but not address each bulb individually... that all of the lights would be the same color at the same time.... It seems to me like that kind of configuration may be cheaper than CCBs. I am interested in either C9 or C7.

-Does such an item exist?
Any information would be much appreciated.

What I've done for my display is zip tied Red, Green, and Blue 100count C6 strings together (cluster each RGB set together with zip tie) and plug each color into a different channel on your basic LOR controller.

From up close you can see the different individual bulbs... but from 50 ft away, they look amazing.

[Surfing4Dough]

LORi P wrote:

ryebred wrote:

I have four sets of these lawn stakes and each set is three RGB channels.

Here is a video of these in action.

I love 'em!

I hope you are prepared for an avalanch of (probably really stupid) questions.

Let me start off by saying that I know NOTHING about RGB lights but was hoping to take the plunge with some CCB's this year.

With In CCB's each bulb can be addressed individually, but you have set yours up to have each "string" of your ground stakes just 3 RGB channels. That is all I really want to do with my CCB's..... Have all the bulbs on all the strings be the same color at the same time. Now seeing the "strings" of ground stakes that are all treated the same channel-wise instead of each one being addressed individually, I wonder if there is a more economical way to get the result I want..... Have many strings of RGB lights, but not address each bulb individually... that all of the lights would be the same color at the same time.... It seems to me like that kind of configuration may be cheaper than CCBs. I am interested in either C9 or C7.

-Does such an item exist??
---If so:
-Are they cheaper than CCBs?
-Are they cheaper than CCBs? I guess you would have to consider the price of the RGBs and the required controller, combined.
-Where can you get them?
-Can you make them work with LOR? I assume so, since you are using an LOR CMB-16D-QC controller. But I'm not sure how compatible all the different RGB products are with LOR.

Any information would be much appreciated.

PS I would still use CCBs next year for a different element where I would want the flexibility of different bulbs being different colors, but for what I want to do this year, the 'more simple' solution of controlling all bulbs the same would work for me! Thanks!

In a nutshell, these aren't RGB bulbs but are RGB spotlights that he put inside a C9 shaped fixture (but larger). He specifically used Rainbow Spots from http://seasonalentertainmentllc.com/

I use Rainbow Floods and Spots in my display for wall wash effects. Each RGB color runs off a DC channel (so 3 channels).

I am sure someone will expand on this, but figured that would give you somewhere to start.

[Paul Roberson]

Very nice. May have to look into some of these for replacement 'landscape' lighting during the Christmas season.

[Ponddude]

In a nut shell, realize that in the RGB world there are "smart" and "dumb" RGB lights. Smart RGB lights have an individually addressed bulb. In theory that is an incorrect way of saying "individually addressed," as they don't have a physical address, but I will say it to make explaining it easier. With Smart RGB lights, each bulb, pixel, light...whatever is on the string...can do something different than the bulb before or after it. This is what the CCBs do. (just and FYI, we have a pixel system coming out in 2012) Dumb RGB pixels do not have a built in micro controller and can not do something different than the bulb in front to of it, if wired that way. Let's take Ryan's example. He took our Rainbow Spotlights and wired them together. He than plugged that string into a controller of some sort (I am assuming an LOR controller, but the Rainbow Brain is also an option). That controller controls the intensity of the 3 colors (red, green and blue) which will produce the 16.7 million different colors that RGB lights can make. However, when the lights are dumb and wired to each other, the entire strand of lights will make the same color...hence why I call them dumb. If you want the first light purple, all the other lights in that strand are also going to be purple.

Don't take this to mean that Smart RGB lights can't all be the same color...they can. However, if you purchase a strand of pixels and you goal is to make that strand the same color all the time, try looking for pixel strings that are not smart.

Hope that helps a little more.

[LORi P]

Thanks ponddude. That is exactly was what I was talking about. I do not need 'smart' individually addressable rgb like CCBs. I only need 'dumb' rgb strings where each bulb is the same color as every other bulb on the rgb string.

So my question now is.....where can one purchase 'dumb' rgb strings?????

[ryebred]

LORi P wrote:

So my question now is.....where can one purchase 'dumb' rgb strings?????

Some people on the forums have had some success with RGB LED Strips. You can do a search on Google for that term to find examples of what they are. They are sold on Amazon and at various other places. Some come with controllers but if you already have a LOR DC controller or the Seasonal Entertainment Rainbow Brain then you can just purchase the LED Strips separately.

If you are building your own lights, like I did with the RGB Lawn Stakes, the amount of control you have is dependent on how many channels you want to devote to it. There was nothing stopping me from being able to control each light individually so they could each be a different color. In fact, in the 6th or so post, Ken alluded to this fact by saying next year I would have 3 channels per lamp. Since I have 4 sets of these for a total of 20 bulbs, to control each individually, I would need 60 channels. That is four LOR controllers just for this one feature in my display. I opted to do each set separately so the 4 sets only use 12 channels.

Most any DC RGB product can be made to work with a DC controller, the key is knowing how it is wired and which wire goes to which input on the DC board. This is easy if you are wiring them together yourself like I did with the lawn stakes. It becomes a bit harder when purchasing a product that may not have been originally intended for a LOR environment.