Darrell Posted January 16 Share Posted January 16 I always like seeing the details about how others made their props. Here’s how I made my pixels stakes during the previous summer. I got some 48” tall 5/16” dia fiberglass driveway marker rods and cut them in half. I then spray painted them black and marked points every 2 1/4”. I took a bullet pixel string and cut them every 7 pixels. I soldered a connector pigtail up front, about 3’ of 18AWG 3 core cable between each section, and another connector pigtail at the end. These were then zip-tied to the stakes starting from the bottom with the return cable running back down. This gave me about 2’ of spacing between the stakes with 7 stakes in each group. I added some power injection points at the beginning or end of the sections as needed for my layout (no more than 100 pixels). There were 90 stakes in a 7 high by 9 wide by 10 deep field that was set in front of my pixel tree. They were controlled with a Sandevices E6804 4 port board and all the initial connection or power injection points were about 10-12’ from the tree center where the controller was located. For this first year I generally used some combination of the motion effects from S6 for the stakes in the sequences. I hope to expand and customize the effects more for next year. Here’s a link to a video with the stakes in action. https://vimeo.com/903055807 I was able to customize one song so the pixel stakes represent a marching band! It’s a fun video but was a LOT of work to program. https://vimeo.com/900842027 A key part of the design was to keep storage simple. After the show, I used cling wrap to bundle each 7-stake group together with more cling wrap to keep the cables from tangling as well. All 90 stakes with the extension cables, power injection cables and the controller went into a single storage box. It was a fun project and everyone enjoyed the new addition to the show. Hope this helps others who might be thinking about adding pixel stakes to their display. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darrell Posted January 16 Author Share Posted January 16 Image of my pixel stakes Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darrell Posted January 16 Author Share Posted January 16 Pixel stake storage Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Orville Posted January 16 Share Posted January 16 19 minutes ago, Darrell said: I was able to customize one song so the pixel stakes represent a marching band! It’s a fun video but was a LOT of work to program. https://vimeo.com/900842027 That matching band effect was very awesome. Excellent simulation of a marching band. Very cool. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tonymu1 Posted January 16 Share Posted January 16 Gig 'Em! Love the Bonfire and felt like I was watching the FTAMB March across the field! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheDucks Posted January 16 Share Posted January 16 59 minutes ago, Orville said: That matching band effect was very awesome. Excellent simulation of a marching band. Very cool. I have to agree. The planning and storage aspec is welcome 👍 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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