New to LOR and need a few tips

[RON8O]

Hello everyone from beautiful California.

 

I'm seriously afraid of starting a thread of my own because I know this is going to be the biggest leap into the rabbit hole so far in my quest for a new Christmas light setup. Forgive the ignorant questions or questions that have been asked and answered before. Some of the limitation may be my darn ADD making it hard to read so much content, boy is that overwhelming. I've poked around the forms a bit, but have yet to find the help I'm looking for, mostly because of my own time constraints, so please be gentle on this LOR virgin. 

 

I know I'm getting a late start in planning for new Christmas lights, but my goal for this year is to do the following, if possible:

 

1) Drape Smart RGB lights from the top center of the Birch trees in our front yard, down the outside of the tree/branches, the wrapping the tree trunks with more Smart RGB lights. For Christmas 2015, I'd be happy with just being able to make this look like one big tree at night, being able to change the colors as desired, but my ultimate goal for these trees is to be able to give them the effect of having snow fall. I'll figure out how to mount a pole, etc in the center of the three Birch tree cluster, but I'd love to get your take/experience on how many lengths of lights would be best, how far to separate each stran of lights coming down from the top of the tree, which controllers to use, etc. The trees are a cluster of three Birch trees, approximately 40' tall, from the top of the trees to the bottom of the branches hanging down is approximately 35'.

 

2) I'd also like to add icicle lights to the roofline of our house. I'm all for planning ahead and even going with Smart RGB lights here too, so I can change colors, etc based on my six year old son's color preference of the day. In previous years I've only put up icicle lights, which are a PITA to fix each year.

 

What do you think? am I aiming too high for Christmas 2015?

Which LOR controllers are best for these ideas? 

Have a good source for Smart RGB lights and other equipment needed that you can share with me? 

 

 

OK, so maybe I need more than "a few tips."

 

Thanks in advance,

Ron

[Mega Arch]

Ron,

 

I don't do RGB lights yet, so can't help you with your quest for the color of the day.

I'm really just replying since it's your first post to say welcome aboard.

It is very late to be starting from scratch, but if you have a job you can call in sick for October, it just might be doable.

 

Good luck,

Daniel

[Premier]

think its is way to late in the game for you too start now with the "smart" rgb ribbons for this season, think you would be much better off with dumb rgb strips if this is the way you want to go, you can still change colors, fades, etc... or try RGB Floods to light up your whole tree/house, etc and change colors as you like. then if its something you want to persue, then get into sequenceing the smart RGB for next year.

 

Welcome to the madness

[Vince4xmas]

Dumb RGB is the way to go.

[zman]

First, welcome to the addiction. Trying to do RGB this year will be tough, but depending on how much time you have, it could be done. Some suggested reading is below. The AusChristmasLighting forum has some great RGB basic info:

 

http://auschristmaslighting.com/forums/index.php/topic,1141.0.html

http://auschristmaslighting.com/forums/index.php/topic,1889.0.html

 

Unfortunately with RGB, there is many ways to go. So you are going to have to do some research to figure out how you want to go. There are decisions you need to make. To soften the learning curve with RGB, LOR has plug and play products that are rock solid, but you will pay a bit more for that convenience. 

 

Fixing lights is not hard, and if you think Icicle lights are a PITA, wait till you start dealing more with Chinese based products. You are going to have to get some tools to help you out. 

 

For your item 1, you are talking a pretty complex and detailed set up. LOR now has the PixCon16 RGB controller. You can start to look at that. 

 

Vendor recommendations for RGB. A lot of folks go direct to China, Ray Wu and Paul Zhang. Seasonal Entertainment, Holiday Coro, Advatek, LOR and others have RGB products you can start to look into. 

 

I am sure others will jump in with more info. 

[George Simmons]

DIYLEDEXPRESS also has both dumb and smart RGB options. Todd's a straight-up guy. Won't lie to you and fully stands behind his products.

[EmmienLightFan]

Definitely possible if you try hard.

 

Pick a type of smart light (Smart Strips or Strings or Modules).

 

Pick a controller (E1.31 probably)

 

To do the colors, just add the channels to the sequence editor. You can then turn a whole tree whatever color you like.

 

Realistic downwards snowfall would be hard without other software, but flashing random lights white quickly makes a nice effect that looks like snow.

[RON8O]

I think you are all right, my ideas/goals are quite grand for the amount of time I have and what I will wind up with is someplace in the middle of last years lights and this big idea. Thank you all for your honesty and advice on products, etc. Shoot, if LOR replied to my contact with them with more than a canned email response and listed out the items I'd need, I'd probably just buy whatever they suggested to save time in this quest. 

 

Maybe I should just start planning now for Christmas 2016, that would give me plenty of time to do this tree right. ;-)

 

I'll check out the links and products everyone has suggested, but by all means, post more info if you think it would be helpful. 

 

Happy Friday all!

[mpageler]

For light element where only changing color is the main goal, you can use dump RGB.

Wrapping/lighting individual branch is a huge time committment each year.  Both in setup and takedown.  There are so many display element possibilities (mega/mine trees, etc. ), I would think really hard about wrapping trees.  An options for larger trees could be use of a number of balls of lights that would mimic ornaments.  You would then control individual or clusters of balls.

I'm in my second of anticipated 4 year expansion plan, and ease of setup/take down is a primary goal, other than the look/feel of the display.

[k6ccc]

Ron,

Unless you have full time available to do this, I STRONGLY suggest that you scale back your plan for 2015. There is just over two months until lights on. I would start simple for this year. Maybe a couple 50 watt RGB floods on your tree and maybe a few other simple things. To be blunt, you are biting off way to much to start.

 

For a comparison, I have run thousands of channels of RGB for three years, and I would not even consider adding what you want to add starting this late in the year. Even if you got the hardware lined up, learning the software and sequencing thousands of channels would likely take more time than you have.

 

You have a great plan for 2016 or 2017, but way too ambitious for two months from now.

 

Welcome to the addiction and good luck!

Edited September 18, 2015 by k6ccc

[EmmienLightFan]

you can use dump RGB.

[tomsusie]

If you really want smart RGB for the future you could buy this year and just use the intensity function (I think that is what it is called- it lets you operate a smart string as groups of bulbs instead of individuals including creating a single string (using only 3 channels) to set them so each string acts like a dumb string -- you can set it to be any color but the whole string would be that color..  Would eliminate a lot of sequencing for this year but still give you some simpler options, yet give you the expansion you may want next year without then having to buy smart strings for the same tree that you put dumb lights on this year.  

 

Correction:  The name of the function that allows you to make a smart string act as a single dumb string is grouping. 

Edited September 19, 2015 by tomsusie

[Softball Shawn]

Ron,

Unless you have full time available to do this, I STRONGLY suggest that you scale back your plan for 2015. There is just over two months until lights on. I would start simple for this year. Maybe a couple 50 watt RGB floods on your tree and maybe a few other simple things. To be blunt, you are biting off way to much to start.

 

For a comparison, I have run thousands of channels of RGB for three years, and I would not even consider adding what you want to add starting this late in the year. Even if you got the hardware lined up, learning the software and sequencing thousands of channels would likely take more time than you have.

 

You have a great plan for 2016 or 2017, but way too ambitious for two months from now.

 

Welcome to the addiction and good luck!

 

 

Heed these words my friend.

Edited September 21, 2015 by Softball Shawn

[RON8O]

Heed these words my friend.

 

Come on Shawn, you just live down in Southern CA. Come on up and help me set all of my "ideas" up, I'll buy the pizza and beer. ;-)