Strings or Strips

[CraigB]

With the pre-sales going on now, I am looking at doing a Mega Tree in 2016 and possibly outlining the roof. Which would be better for each, strings of pixels or the strips?

[jerry72]

Personal choice really. Where i live i would not use anything but Pixel nodes. the weather here would destroy the strips in a heart beat, I have seen it. You will here some say that the strips are superior, some will say nodes are superior. Look at where ya live, let that help you decide. I have not done a side bi side to see which looks better so i can go there.

[mpageler]

Really does depend on the look and feel you are after.

Lots of youtube videos that show both pixel and strip mega trees to get an idea of what you like.

 

Same for roofline, what look do you like.

l

[Old Sarge]

its all a matter of what you want and what you prefer and what you want to spend money on....

 

Me I will stick to my mostly Mini Lights....

 

I don't do it to see how much Money I can spend or to try to keep up with anyone else.... or to try to outdo anyone else...

 

or to try to win a contest that it seems only the people who spend thousands and thousands seem to be the winners of constantly.

 

Do it for the fun of it not the competition that some seem to have such as showing how much money you have to spend on it.

[ericm]

I personally don't like pixels or ribbons, I only have and will only ever have lights, I use minis and c9 exclusively.

[jerry72]

I am, despite many many people telling me different, going to run dumb rgb lights on my roof line and windows. I dont need a top of the line display, some nice color changing is all i need.

[Ron Boyd]

With the pre-sales going on now, I am looking at doing a Mega Tree in 2016 and possibly outlining the roof. Which would be better for each, strings of pixels or the strips?

As long as you have the strips well backed, meaning on either metal tubing, Aluminum stock, PVC etc., the strips will be fine. However, the strips need to be kept as is, IMHO. No matter how I waterproofed an element last year, that took two months of evenings and weekends to build, I ended up replacing the entire element on the night before I went live. If you want to use strips, leave them as 5 meters and add a little more GE Silicone II where the wires exit the tubing.

 

Now, I have found, using nodes on a mega tree at 3" spacing, gives a really good look. Both of the trees in the picture below are 3" spacing. Makes about 12.5 feet of lighted strings plus the topper. My star is about 24" and the half sphere on the right is about 18". The star on the left is one of Brian's. For some reason, the only LEDs in my display that are not RGB, wasn't very bright as opposed to the RGBs. (By the way, that sequence that I used to take this picture, is 10% intensity on everything and taken with the camera lens covered by an Oakley, polarized sunglass lens.)

 

Using these strips, you get perfect spacing anywhere from 1"-6", depending on the spacing between pixels. 

http://boscoyostudio.com/products/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=2_6&products_id=2

http://www.holidaycoro.com/product-p/767.htm&Click=670

 

I personally like the clean, precise lines afforded by the RGB genre of lights as opposed to the haphazard look of conventional lights, but that's just my opinion. I would Zip tie LEDs and Minis to some sort of framework so they wouldn't stick out every which way. The last element I used LEDs on was a 20', 64 channel Mega tree, RGBW were the colors. It took a day and a half to put up and make it look somewhat decent. I couldn't tell you how many people said, "Oh, you have another tree. I didn't see that one." Too much trouble for the effect.

 

But again, this just my opinion, to each their own.

Edited January 6, 2016 by Ron Boyd

[steve synek]

How true......we all have different opinions and experiences here - and this is mine. I sliced and diced RGB strips for my "little trees". It took 12 pieces for each tree and I only had one failure on a single piece this year. ( I made a total of 11 new trees) I would not use anything rated IP65- my experience with that was a failure also. My stars each have 10 pieces and not a single failure.  I suggest making some small purchases and doing some testing to see what you like and feel comfortable working with. Any strip with 60 LEDs per meter was just to bright for my liking.

 

Steve

[sticks4legs]

For any long straight run I prefer strips, for anything with any contour or dimension I prefer pixels. As for waterproofing strips, mine have been up since October 2014 and still no issues