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New to Light-O-Rama, been doing lights for 30 years


6t8dart

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Hello all...

 

I have been doing static light displays since I was 13 years old on my parents house, now Im 44, and just became a parent late last year. Unfortunately my display suffered a bit last year beacuse of a newborn in this house (my sleep suffered also).

 

About 5 years ago I began transitioning to LED lights, 2 years ago I bought a Mr Christmas 6 channel music controller with pre-programmed songs, but I hated that it played out loud and didnt want to tick off my neighbors. After researching FM transmitters, I became enthralled with Light-o-Rama hardware.

 

My wife was awesome, she encouraged me to do it, so I took some of my hot rod money I had set aside the Dart and invested it in my displays. A week ago I took the plunge and ordered the RGB flood light 8 pack and a single 16 channel controller (I may pick up another before Christmas) at the Mad grab sale. I had my transaction done within 2 min, which was good, becuase when I went back, the 8 pack was sold out.  

 

My displays are generally landscape/house centric, no snowmen, Santa Clause, or Snoopys, although with a little boy, I may start adding them in the future. Last year I hit the mother load on after Christmas sales at Lowes, Home Depot, and Walmart and bought many boxes of LED lights, in addition to the ones from previous years. I am already thinking up songs and sequences for the upcoming year. I will probably be asking questions here about some problems that may pop up, but just reading through the forums has answered quite a few.

 

The one question I do have, I bought the 24 channel LOR controller with the 8 RGB floods, since my display only requires 4 channels, can I parallell two floods together then get some RGB dumb strips for the other 4 channels? I know with strips you can go in series, but not sure if you can do that with floods. Any ideas?

 

Mark

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Hello all...

 

I have been doing static light displays since I was 13 years old on my parents house, now Im 44, and just became a parent late last year. Unfortunately my display suffered a bit last year beacuse of a newborn in this house (my sleep suffered also).

 

About 5 years ago I began transitioning to LED lights, 2 years ago I bought a Mr Christmas 6 channel music controller with pre-programmed songs, but I hated that it played out loud and didnt want to tick off my neighbors. After researching FM transmitters, I became enthralled with Light-o-Rama hardware.

 

My wife was awesome, she encouraged me to do it, so I took some of my hot rod money I had set aside the Dart and invested it in my displays. A week ago I took the plunge and ordered the RGB flood light 8 pack and a single 16 channel controller (I may pick up another before Christmas) at the Mad grab sale. I had my transaction done within 2 min, which was good, becuase when I went back, the 8 pack was sold out.  

 

My displays are generally landscape/house centric, no snowmen, Santa Clause, or Snoopys, although with a little boy, I may start adding them in the future. Last year I hit the mother load on after Christmas sales at Lowes, Home Depot, and Walmart and bought many boxes of LED lights, in addition to the ones from previous years. I am already thinking up songs and sequences for the upcoming year. I will probably be asking questions here about some problems that may pop up, but just reading through the forums has answered quite a few.

 

The one question I do have, I bought the 24 channel LOR controller with the 8 RGB floods, since my display only requires 4 channels, can I parallell two floods together then get some RGB dumb strips for the other 4 channels? I know with strips you can go in series, but not sure if you can do that with floods. Any ideas?

 

Mark

From what I understand, it depends on the draw (amps,volts). I think I asked if I could connect two floods on the same channel and was told I could. By the way. Did you get the power supply for the 24 channel controller? If someone that knows more about this than I do doesn't answer, you can always put in the ticket with the help desk on LOR's site.

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Just a few thoughts for a new entrant into the hobby,

You will also need to install the 24 channel card and maybe the PS in an enclosure, I've found great success with the CG1500 made by cable guard for housing. I run both dumb strips and nodes along with floods with my dc controllers. Another consideration is how you will connect the dumb strips/nodes to the controller, LOR sells them already preassembled with connectors, but you may want to venture into the DIY area of the hobby and see what's available there. The Australian forum has a an "Introduction to RGB Lighting" presentation that is a pretty good read and very informative for a new entrant into the RGB world. You may need to join the forum, but here is the link in case your interested: http://auschristmaslighting.com/forums/index.php?topic=1141.0

 

Cheers

Daryl B.

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