New Props

[MichRX7]

Hey @tlogan, how are the lampposts coming? Any pics? I just ordered my last set of lights for my letters, should be here tomorrow. My wife will be happy to know there shouldn't be any more large expenditures this year (crossing fingers and knocking on wood).

 

[tlogan]

I just got everything painted on Sunday. And I JUST today at lunch ran across the street to the electric supply store to get some sleeves that look like candles for the lights. They only had a pack of two so they ordered 4 more for me. Should be a couple of days. I hope to get at least the two assembled by the weekend and I'll post some pics.

Soon, my friend, soon.

I DID go to that Ollies Bargain store and picked up the animated Deer and baby deer. I think they will wait until next year. There are only 50 incans on it and I plan to re-string all my wire frames with LED next year anyway. I have a couple to put this year, so it will be fine. 

[k6ccc]

1 hour ago, tlogan said:

@k6ccc - I hope none of that heat is from the fires!

Nope.  Hardly close enough to smell smoke.

 

[MichRX7]

So, starting my last set of props this year so I can start hanging things this weekend. For this prop I am again using corrugated plastic, dumb led strips and vinyl tubing. It will spell Merry C-h-r-I-s-t-m-a-s in big (looping) letters using 10 channels, 1 for Merry and 1 channel for each letter of Christmas. After printing, taping and cutting out bells for my other coro project, I decided that @dibblejr was right and a projector/tracing was the right way to go. (Thanks @dibblejr it was easier and much faster.) So I haven't attached the strips/tubing yet, but I do have all the letters drawn on the coro. I took 2'x3' coro and cut it down to 18"x36" using my circular saw (so much faster and easier than scissors). Then I taped it to a wall and turned on the projector. I use paint.net a lot (because it's easy and free) so I created a template that you can see in the picture and marked the top and bottom for both upper and lower case letters (see the three red lines). Then I simply typed the first two letters (Me) and stretched them to fit as each piece of coro holds two letters. From there I took my white marker and traced the letters. Put up a new piece of coro, and repeated the steps until all the letters were created. It was nice that Merry has 5 letters because the blank space after y gives me spacing between words. I plan to cut the final s of Christmas down. Now I'll lay out the tubing, cut it to length, measure my strips to the lettering cut the strips to match the tubing length and pull the dumb led strips through then drill holes and zip tie them to the coro. Then I can nail or screw it to my upper deck fascia and run the wires.

Edited November 6, 2019 by MichRX7

[MichRX7]

Houston, we have a problem... Of course, since the word Merry is on one channel I start to measure out the length of vinyl tubing I need to cut and guess what I realize. A strip of dumb rgb lights is 16'8" long. That gets me to the left side of the letter "y"! Ugh... now I get to try and wash off the white lettering and reconfigure Merry to fit on 2 panels instead of three. Hopefully that fixes my length problem. It'll look slightly smaller than Christmas, but I think it'll still work (for this year especially). Each letter in Christmas will be much smaller than my 16'8" issue, so that is not a problem. I was thinking of converting it to smart pixels next year anyway so I can make it "write" the script, but that's what I get for waiting so long to finish it.

[MichRX7]

_{I needed a break from building props... so, let the decorating commence! Now, to trim some of the wife's plants that haven't died from the cold yet.}

[tlogan]

Lamp post update...Was able to only get two completely built. I had to have the electric supply house order additional candle covers (they only had 1 two-pack in the store) and they have not come in yet (they SAID "a couple of days" last Tuesday) so I can't complete all the assembly until they do. Here are the two I completed, against the garage for scale.

One off topic question...how do you get the image to show in the post? I constantly run out of upload storage here so I started using Google drive and inserting the link.

Lamp Posts

Edited November 11, 2019 by tlogan

[tlogan]

On 11/6/2019 at 2:31 PM, MichRX7 said:

So, starting my last set of props this year so I can start hanging things this weekend. For this prop I am again using corrugated plastic, dumb led strips and vinyl tubing. It will spell Merry C-h-r-I-s-t-m-a-s in big (looping) letters using 10 channels, 1 for Merry and 1 channel for each letter of Christmas.

Come on, man. Stop it, you're killing me, Smalls!

Now I have to think about this for next year, and I haven't even been able to finish THIS year's.

[k6ccc]

58 minutes ago, tlogan said:

One off topic question...how do you get the image to show in the post? I constantly run out of upload storage here so I started using Google drive and inserting the link.

That is a common issue here.  The forum allows only a small amount of storage per account.  So the solution is to upload the image to a website somewhere and type or copy and paste the ulr here.  You do NOT need to use the link icon at the top.  These are hosted on my own web server (but most people are not running their own web server - but there are public sites, and generally your ISP will provide web hosting with your account):

The first one, I was programming radios in, the second one I was loading encryption keys in radios, and then riding along on a patrol flight.

Here is my LOR audio distribution.

 

 

[MichRX7]

1 hour ago, tlogan said:

Lamp post update...Was able to only get two completely built. I had to have the electric supply house order additional candle covers (they only had 1 two-pack in the store) and they have not come in yet (they SAID "a couple of days" last Tuesday) so I can't complete all the assembly until they do. Here are the two I completed, against the garage for scale.

One off topic question...how do you get the image to show in the post? I constantly run out of upload storage here so I started using Google drive and inserting the link.

Lamp Posts

WOW! Those look like you could leave them up all year as real lampposts. Great job!

I use Microsoft's onedrive in the cloud and it has an embed option that gives me a link that the forum shows the picture when I paste the link in. You can also try the link you used and click the Insert other media button with the Insert Image from URL option. That might show the picture if google doesn't do the embed thing.

[MichRX7]

1 hour ago, tlogan said:

Come on, man. Stop it, you're killing me, Smalls!

Now I have to think about this for next year, and I haven't even been able to finish THIS year's.

I hope it looks as good as it does in my Visualizer. Who am I kidding. I just hope it works when I plug it into the dumb rgb controller and that I didn't over-kink any of the dumb rgb strips. The vinyl tubing seems to be keeping that from happening, but don't know yet.

[tlogan]

trying to embed the pic via simple paste of URL

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Zemcb241Hck28OOzp2MUC998X7xaPt-Q/view?usp=sharing

 

OK, simple paste not working. When I try the Insert other media dropdown Insert Image from URL, I paste the link in the popup, hit insert button and the text turns red and doesn't seem to do anything. Again I'm using Google drive,. The link works when clicked. maybe I should move this to a different thread.

Edited November 11, 2019 by tlogan

[tlogan]

trying to embed the pic via from embed code on Google drive....

<iframe src="https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Zemcb241Hck28OOzp2MUC998X7xaPt-Q/view?usp=sharing/pub?embedded=true"></iframe>

 

[tlogan]

One more, old school HTML img tag

<img src="https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Zemcb241Hck28OOzp2MUC998X7xaPt-Q/view?usp=sharing">

Edited November 11, 2019 by tlogan

[MichRX7]

Just looked out the window at the snow and a freaking woodpecker is pecking at my star poles... What the heck, they are plastic. I'd let the cat out after him except that dork would try and jump on the star pole causing even  more damage trying to chase the woodpecker... If he shorted out a wire I'll be ticked.

[tlogan]

This is why I live in the city.

OK, not really the city. It used to be a farm. At least it was back in the 1970s/early 80s when I used to drive by. I've had woodpeckers peck at the metal cap on my chimney. Maybe that doesn't scare the bejeebers out of you on a quiet Sunday morning as you're about to sip a nice, hot cup of coffee.  

[tlogan]

OK, trying using MS OneDrive to host the pic.....

FINALLY found the correct link from OneDrive. Now if I can only remember how I found it.

Edited November 11, 2019 by tlogan
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[MichRX7]

53 minutes ago, tlogan said:

OK, trying using MS OneDrive to host the pic.....

<iframe src="https://onedrive.live.com/embed?cid=158FAF5C9B865B15&resid=158FAF5C9B865B15%211429&authkey=AD87oTy5A3BGBC8" width="98" height="120" frameborder="0" scrolling="no"></iframe>

STILL no go

🤣 Only I can laugh because I tried a bunch of ways as well. In onedrive, click on the picture as if you wanted to view it full screen. In the top navigation click embed. A frame should open on the right side talking about pasting it into a blog. Click the Generate button in that frame, choose the width you want below that in the drop down. Highlight and copy the code, then paste it into a message here. That is exactly what I do.

Like this:

[tlogan]

Maybe I LIKE the bigger picture. What about that, huh? My TV is 65" and the screen in my home theater is 102" in widescreen (I think it's 87" in 16:9). Once you go big, you won't go back.

 

Yeah,  that's what I ended up doing. I stumbled upon the need to select the picture. I was just right clicking on it without actually selecting it. I'll figure out the size. See? You CAN teach an old dog new tricks.

[MichRX7]

They still look great, big or small picture! (and pfffft… the home theater on the back of my house is a 120" diagonal in 16:9) Of course, a bit tough to have family and friends movie night when there is a foot of new snow on the ground.