10W LOR flood light placement

[jrock_at_rons]

Quick question... I'm planning on getting the 8 pack of 10W floods from LOR this year.  As i'm setting up my channels to sequence... what is the ideal distance to set them away from the wall you want to 'wash'?  I'm trying to figure out where to place them in the visualizer.
 
If it helps, here's a pic of my house.  Right now I'm thinking of mounting 3 across the top (from the eaves), 3 across the bottom and 2 on the garage (from the eaves).  The garage is 25' across and the house is 45'.  
 
Thanks in advance.

 

 

[75redman]

I placed mine 8ft away from the house.  Just sat them on the ground.

Also did a 4ft and 8ft test in the garage.

[Mega Arch]

Awesome show. Loved the spirals on top.

On your flood use, is that just the 8 that were in the test on the house? Or did you have more? They really light your house up well.

[75redman]

Awesome show. Loved the spirals on top.

On your flood use, is that just the 8 that were in the test on the house? Or did you have more? They really light your house up well.

Thanks Mega. Only using 8 floods.

[indi]

I also put mine on the ground. My house is red brick and a white soffit. Looked pretty good. With a white house I think it will look great.

[Ron Boyd]

 

I also put mine on the ground. My house is red brick and a white soffit. Looked pretty good. With a white house I think it will look great.

Red brick and white soffit, mine too. Do you have any pics? I haven't tested mine against the house yet.

 

Didn't mean to hijack your thread, but there has been a lot of talk over the last few years about darker brick and how the floods illuminate it. Thought it might help others too.

Edited February 11, 2015 by Ron Boyd

[jrock_at_rons]

Thanks redman.  Looking at the comparison video and your house, I'm see I was over-thinking things (mounting them to the eaves).  I think I'll point two at the garage, one at the side of the garage (where it juts out from the house) and then 5 across the front. 

 

Being in Wisconsin putting them on the ground isn't a possibility, but its easy enough to mount them to a steel stake and get them off the ground.

 

Getting said stake into the concrete driveway is a problem for another day. 

 

Another quick question... with the LOR 10W 8 pack, how long are the wires to connect them back to the controller?  Will I need to purchase/fabricate longer extensions for the 4 wire?

[larryk5]

LOR makes extensions for the floods, I added 2 of them to one of the flood and had no problems at all. You may want to get the LOR one's for the LOR floods. The ends are not the same!

[75redman]

Thanks redman.  Looking at the comparison video and your house, I'm see I was over-thinking things (mounting them to the eaves).  I think I'll point two at the garage, one at the side of the garage (where it juts out from the house) and then 5 across the front. 

 

Being in Wisconsin putting them on the ground isn't a possibility, but its easy enough to mount them to a steel stake and get them off the ground.

 

Getting said stake into the concrete driveway is a problem for another day. 

 

Another quick question... with the LOR 10W 8 pack, how long are the wires to connect them back to the controller?  Will I need to purchase/fabricate longer extensions for the 4 wire?

I bought 10 of the LOR extensions.  My longest run is about 40ft.  I used all 10 of the extensions and with a 200 watt power supply I didn't have any power issues.

[indi]

No pictures. Although I did outline my window frames with RGB's and they dominated, but when they would go off, the floods looked pretty good. But, I guess that's in the eye of the beholder. My house sets about 30' from the road and is elevated about 8 feet higher than the road, so the white soffit and gutter picked up the floods pretty good. 

[Ron Boyd]

As far as mounting, Here is a solution I did last year for my coro stars out front. I plan on doing this for my floods this coming year. It may not be the best solution, but it beats driving stakes into the driveway concrete.

 

https://www.dropbox.com/s/1f3frnwhq9d4bxg/Flood%20Mount.pdf?dl=0

 

Please excuse the crude drawing. I can't do a 3D. This is a view from the side. I'll whip up another quick drawing for an overhead look.

Edited February 11, 2015 by Ron Boyd

[Mega Arch]

If the floods are mounted under the eave, so as to use year round as landscape / security lighting, do you think they will flood the house well enough for a wash effect during the show? Or do they just have to be stood off to do a good job?

& nice drawing Ron.....

Edited February 11, 2015 by Mega Arch

[jrock_at_rons]

Thanks for the idea Ron.  I don't think it will fly with the wife though... one caveat of the show is that she can get her van into and out of the garage so she doesn't have to scrape/chisel ice in the morning (or move an RGB flood out of her way. 

 

As for the eaves, I was thinking of using hangar bolts to mount 2x2s with the RGB flood on the end (maybe 2' long) from under the eave so it would be a bit away from the siding itself.  However, everything I'm reading says they should be bright enough to mount on the ground/stake and wash the house from there).  I won't be using them year round (at least not yet).

[75redman]

Quick question... I'm planning on getting the 8 pack of 10W floods from LOR this year.  As i'm setting up my channels to sequence... what is the ideal distance to set them away from the wall you want to 'wash'?  I'm trying to figure out where to place them in the visualizer.

 

If it helps, here's a pic of my house.  Right now I'm thinking of mounting 3 across the top (from the eaves), 3 across the bottom and 2 on the garage (from the eaves).  The garage is 25' across and the house is 45'.  

 

Thanks in advance.

Where do you plan on mounting the controller?  The cables are small enough you can run in in the one of the grooves across the driveway.  That is what I did with mine.  I just put a few strips of duct tape over the groove where the car drove over.  Worked like a champ.

[jrock_at_rons]

I was planning to mount the controller in a central location for all of them (probably in the garden to the right of the garage). 

 

I'm not as worried about the cables in the cracks... its more the leaving it on the ground.  Should we get snow and its buried, I guarantee that thing goes through my snow-blower and the cable gets wound around the impeller.  Not to mention forgetting its there and running it over.  

 

I might mock up a mount for the eaves for the garage and keep the others  on stakes off the ground. 

[arw01]

I personally think the floods show better on camera than in person at my house on white.  I'm trying to figure out how to get them up about 30" or so and hide that without putting more holes in the landscape fabric.  The most I can get back some are 2' due to other elements etc.

 

 

Obviously spend some time playing with them in a different spots while it's dark earlier now and take some photos (make each one a different color so you can draw it accurately in the visualizer.)  A program like Lighthshow pro lets you actually model the spread in width and height of the light cast in the visualizer.

 

I did a [Foul Language Used] poor job with my flood sequencing for 2 years.  I'll be up to 6 35w and 11 10 watt on a smaller house than some of you have, and maybe I can get some coverage this year.

[ezimnow]

Are you using LOR to Sequence your Floods?

[75redman]

I am.

[jstorms]

I was also curious about how far away the LOR 10W RGB floods could be from the controller using the extension cords sold on the LOR store. I bought a few and did some tests. Pretty much I'm not going to have any problems with extension cord length.

 

 

Problem: How well do the 10W RGB floods from LOR perform with extension cords?

 

Test Case:

PC running LOR-S3->RS485 w/Booster->CMB24-D->cords->RGB Floods

 

Have one flood (with it's 16' cord) connected directly to LOR CMB24-D

Have another flood with variable length (> 16') extension cords.

Run sequence that turns the floods white and other colors.

 

CMB24-D controller with 10W RGB Floods

10W Flood Extension Cords

 

Validation:

Checking to see if both floods perform the same. 

• With both LOR 10W floods on at full white do they look the same? Does the one on extension cords look pinker?
• Run through full sequence with lots of colors. Do they look the same?

 

Results:

• 16' (attached to 10W flood) + 20' ext + 20' ext = 56' total = Pass
• 16' (attached to 10W flood) + 20' ext + 20' ext + 10' ext = 66' total = Pass
• 16' (attached to 10W flood) + 20' ext + 20' ext + 10' ext + 10' ext = 76' total = Pass

Edited March 22, 2015 by jstorms

[jrock_at_rons]

Scientific method at work... nice.  I'll be needing to use ~60' for my longest runs so its nice to know there isn't any noticeable power/signal. loss. 

 

PS - John, I watched your 10w LOR flood test video over lunch last week.  It helped a lot... although now I'm not sure if 8 10w floods will be enough to give me the effect I want.  I may bail on flooding the garage and just focus all 8 on the main part of the house.

 

Thanks.