DIY Pixel Stakes

[Darrell]

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.

[Darrell]

Image of my pixel stakes

[Darrell]

Pixel stake storage

[Orville]

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.

[Tonymu1]

Gig 'Em!  Love the Bonfire and felt like I was watching the FTAMB March across the field!

[TheDucks]

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 👍