House Outline, limited power locations

O

opopanax

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So I'm planning out a house outline for 2022. I've done dumb lights before without issues, but I didn't have to worry about things like data and power injection.

Here's my challenge. My first story roof line is 42 feet in length. Under normal circumstances, I would run multiple lines and have a controller for the left side and the right side. My issue is I have no power on one side of the house and no where easy to keep the controller box. The controller box location is already going to be about 9 feet from the start of the roof line.

Right now, I'm looking for suggestions.

One thought is I could do a 100 node, 4 " spacing which would get me about 38 feet, and then place megatree so that last few feet are eclipsed by the tree.
A second thought is to use 3" spacing, and put a long range receiver box on the roof near the 2nd story area and have 1 10' extension down to the gutters for a 2nd line of lights and use the rest of the ports for the windows.

Part of my issue is I don't really know what 3" vs 4" or even 6" on the house looks like from the road. We're not far back, maybe 20-25 ft from the road.

I'm sure there are other considerations that I'm not thinking of and would love any suggestions or ideas. Any other places besides the gutter, roofline, and around windows people would suggest would also be great. We get snow here so lights on the actual shingles wouldn't be a great idea since they'll get covered pretty quickly.

thanks


House photo most measurements are estimated. Everything is in Inches except front windows which are 12' by 6'.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1pZ2XHXe9HBKvnLdUMbCp2pFc92aVx6wJ/view?usp=sharing
 
A lot will depend on how much you want to invest. You have a pretty good canvas to begin with. 4" spacing is the most I would consider for standard pixels. There doesn't seem to be a reason that you couldn't run an extension cord to the right side of your home to power a controller if needed. I would probably do all of your gutter lines, plus the top roof line. You could also do the front to back fascias on your roof. I would wrap each window, the front door and around your garage. You could also do the vertical lines on both sides of the garage and the right side of your house. FWIW, 100 lights on 4" spacing is just over 33'. You will end up doing a lot of power injection. Here is an example of 2" spacing using bullet nodes, this house is about 25' from the street. Have fun with it!
 

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Thanks for the reply. I'm basically putting a plan together with the idea that if I don't do the whole thing right away I'll break it up and purchase over years. I'm not too concern about the right side of the house. I leave on the edge of a cul-du-sac and from a driving perspective that's partially block by the tree there. So if I put the megatree just to the left of the real tree, the whole right side will be eclipsed by something.

You said 100 nodes 4" spacing is just over 33' and would end up with lots of power injection. I thought the injection was based on the number of nodes being powered - not necessarily the distance of the overall wire (I mean yeah resistance but 16 vs 32 ft?). I can power 100 nodes 12v on one port now which is about 25' total length.

I hadn't considered running an extension cord across the whole house to power a separate box. It'll be something to consider for sure.

Also thanks for the example.
 
If you think this hobby is something you'll be doing for a while, it might be worth your while to add an outdoor outlet or two.

I used to place a large PVC pipe across my front steps and run an extension cord through it to the other side of the house but after a few years or fighting the pipe with a snow blower and trying to keep the sidewalk clean, I eventually hired an electrician and "did it right." It cost about $675 to get it done and so for a couple years, I didn't buy any lights or props but used what I had. Now I use 3 circuits to power my show -- one at each end of the house and one in the middle. Not only has it been easier to plan and power the show, but it also seems as though it's never run better, too.

Just a thought...
 
I started doing Light Animation about 10 years ago by putting Lynx boards together. It was a great learning project to do while my wife was pregnant with our twins and didn't want me anywhere near her for days :)

I'll likely get more outlets added. Our house is old enough that the Outdoor, garage and bathroom outlets are all on one circuit - which is awful. There's a lot of other electrical stuff not ideal or outright wrong with this house so it's on the long-term plan along with replacing windows and siding. Just have to decide where I want to put outlets for practical purposes - probably nothing on the 2nd floor, but a first-floor outlet on the other side of the house would be nice even if it's just so I can finally mow the entire yard with an electric mower:)

What do people suggest when outlining items that don't quite fit the length of strands? I typically buy my stuff these days from Holiday Coro and other places I look strands come typically in 50/100 node strands of various spaces. So for example, if I want outline my front windows which are 6x4 feet each that's 20 feet per window. If I"m using 3" spaces a 100 strand is about 25 feet in length, so I would end up with pixels not being used. Do people just let them hang unused - or do you cut and make specific lengths for things?
 
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The great thing about pixels is that you can cut the strings any length you want. The leftovers can be soldered together to make more strings. IMO, Ray Wu is a much better source for Pixels right now. He can make up strings of any length, any spacing, any pixel, and any color wire that you want. He can give you a shipping quote that is much lower than what he posts on his website. Here is a link to his website: https://www.aliexpress.com/store/701799 and his email: ray@rita-light.com
If you haven't dealt with Ray before, introduce yourself and ask for a quote on the items you are interested in.
Randy
 
Thanks for the reploy. I've looked at Ray Wu in the past but the prices weren't all that different from other places so I didn't really see any benefit of buying from him versus other vendors I was already placing orders for.

If I can get some connects fairly inexpensively so I can do my own custom trims and if I screw up not feel too awful about it - I may go for it. But so far I really haven't seen anything too different than anyone else
 
Cutting some strings to the right length also provides you some donor pixels to replace faulty pixels. Testing all of my props before putting them out I almost always have a few pixels that need replacing. Though this has been my least amount of failures this year.

Just make sure you keep track of which are 5V and which are 12V if you have both.

Also not sure what controller(s) your using but I also make use of ESPixel sticks so I can get the controller in some out of the way spaces then extension cords are my friends.
 
This is all MHO and art is highly subjective. Your trees and windows are too gorgeous to do either a mega tree or window lining. For a couple hundred bucks I'd rent a bucket lift, and a) do regular maintenance on your trees and roof while you're there, and b) go to town decorating your real trees instead of making an artificial one. You could projection and/or matrix some mischievous stuff onto your windows. Bushes all need net mesh, and net mesh doesn't particularly need a custom pitch on the pixels. And then I'd throw some big arches over your driveway, regular PVC. That'll let you route your power up and over the driveway. The way I would have it, the pixels wouldn't even be the star of the show:. the projections would. But I'm just one guy.
 
I've done window halloween projects for the first time this year. They were pretty nice. But I'm not really sold on it for Christmas - primarily since I wouldn't want to keep a projector outdoors with our weather in Wisconsin and my wife is going to like having a projector shining inside for a month or two :)

My thought behind the lining is that I want to keep the windows unblocked. It's why my Matrix is currently hanging from PVC pipe in front of the yew bush out front and not in front of the windows. This time a year, on a nice sunny day, my porch gets to be 85 degrees - which is a great boon to help heat the house. I also keep all my plants out there for some sane green spaces during the bleak gray and white winters of Wisconsin. I did think about hanging the matrix in front of the 4 windows on 2nd story since that area is actually attic envelope space and not accessible - beyond some sky light. Not sure I'll do that due to the weight and just plain PIA if something goes awry once the snow flies.

I so want to do big arches over the driveway. It's been on my list for years but I haven't convinced my wife to let me do it yet. She's too worried about backing into something as she backs out (which would not be the first time). But I love the look. Although getting the materials to do an arch that wide and tall enough for the (sigh) future minivan will be tricky. I don't think PVC will cut it for that and probably should use at least metal for part of the uprights.
 
I had a team do the testing on the arches. 30 foot of 1" schedule 40 PVC can stand for months in high wind and rain, if you rebar it in the ground and guy line both sides. We had vans with stuff on top of their roofs drive through the arch tunnel and clear it (although they were not backing up). Extension cords can go right through 1" with no problem. 1 1/4" works as well, but at schedule 40 that tends to put a lot of stress on the couplers at 30 feet. If you go with a lower schedule, you can stick white or red AC's on the inside for Halloween, and they'll glow a dull glow. .
However you need to bump up the diameter by 1/4".
 
I'm assuming that 30 foot is 3, 10 feet sections coupled together? How wide were your arches?

Still wife backing up is the most dangerous part of this along
 
Actually, if we dive down to the finer details, we bought 20" sections and cut off 8. That gave us 12+8+12, for a total of 32'. What you do when you drive in is align to the couplers. As long as you're under the couplers, you're fine. We had two extra feet of guardband because we had hundreds of cars--not just a couple. And we stationed volunteers (elves) inside, whom unbeknownst to the kids were there to make sure the cars stayed in the middle. We tried lots of different widths, but the one I think we ended up with was 17.5'. The structure is actually more solid as you compress (although you stress the couplers), but you need guy lines to stop it from flopping, and that takes 2-3 people to set up. Other hard-learned lesson:. do as much as you can early while it's on the ground, because later you'll need a ladder, and it's much harder. We tied guy lines on the couplers first, and then one man held onto the guy line as we assembled.
 
I have 3 circuits in my garage to run my lights. Two standard 15 amp circuits and one 20 amp circuits. I installed the 20 amp circuit myself. One thing to think about while planning especially if doing power injection is how many power supplies you can connect to each circuit. The standard meanwell LRS350-12V should pull a little over 3 amps at the outlet at 100%. Assuming the 80% rule you could only put 4 PSU on that one circuit. If everything is wired to one circuit in your garage I would definitely add some additional circuits. Just a thought.
 
Nobody (or I missed it) mentioned distributed higher voltage (I do 36V) and then buck down convertors for every 50 pixels. Higher voltage allows you the voltage drops along the distribution wire, but make sure you size the wire out correctly of course. I did this for my eve mounted lights in J channel, the buck convertors fit very nicely inside the channel, from the street you can't even see it unless you are looking for it. Sure it takes more time to do it this way. I spent years engineering the system, building and staging it in the garage before I finally installed it this year.
 
Any thoughts on leaving outdoor extension cords outside all year round? I also have limited outdoor power locations and am running outdoor extension cords to power supplies that are not easy to get to.
 
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