Was I ripped off?

T

TheSucker

New member
I'm a novice when it comes to RBG lights. Last year I purchased a "out of the box" package from musiclightsaz. The guy had me submit a picture of my house with measurements of the areas where I wanted the lights and had me pick out 5 songs. Everything went well short of connecting my I-phone to the controller and I had a local professional Curt hang the lights for me. When Curt asked how much I paid he about fell over and said I got ripped off. I paid a little over 8000 for the package.

What I got:
20 (5meter every 3 lights are a channel) spools pre-cut RBG lights (pre-cut with connectors)
1000 mini-bulbs
pre-cut communication cables (from controller to RGBs)
LOR 16 channel
Some kind of Ethernet controller (for the RBG lights)
a small tower HP computer
A 4' by 4' 5 channel singing Santa Face
7 3' Christmas trees
5 pre-programmed shows
And it took Curt about 3 hours to install it all with a helper. He said the quality was OK and the instructions were "good enough." He also had to provide about $120 worth of extension cords which I did not anticipate.


Why I feel ripped off:
When I looked into it I could have bought all of this for under 4K.
When I called to check into returning the lights musiclightsaz said that they could only give me back a little over half of the money. They said they would give me a full refund on the materials, but couldn't give me back the money for time and labor because the system was customized to my home. When I visit the website they say they can teach you to program a song in less than 5 hours, but they claim that the setup alone took them more that 15 hours which made it possible to write each of the songs in the time they claim on their website. Also claimed my home was a specific challenge because of timing on some 45 degree cut-outs in my home.

I don't want to seem like I'm just that guy out there complaining all the time and I'm really wanting to expand my show next year, I just don't want to do business with someone that ripped me off. The music shows were awesome and were obviously designed just for my house as I have some cut-outs they took specific advantage of, and the customer service was pretty good but could have been better. I didn't always get ahold of someone, but they would always call me back.

So, how long would it take to program a show like this per song? The total of 40 hours of programming for 5 songs seems ridiculously long to me.
 
I have no clue as to whether you were ripped off or not. This is mostly a DIY site, and I suspect that almost everybody on this site is far more 'hands-on' than you were. As for whether it would take 40 hours to sequence 5 songs, that does not seem unusual to me. I think that most people on this site spend far more than eight hours per song when they are sequencing from scratch. And that is for displays that do not make use of RGB pixels, it might be far longer for those (this depends, of course, on how much your vendors were making use of pre-existing sequences).
 
$8000 is a bit on the high side, you could have come to a site like this and seek advise before you got into it. Better lucks next time.
 
I do not think you got ripped off .

You are fortunate to have found what you were looking for . Rgb and pixel lighting sequenced is not sold in stores .

If you are happy with what you received do not let one persons comment upset your enjoyment of what you purchased .

You have something completely custom and will not be seen on your neighbors house .
 
angus40;bt663 said:
I do not think you got ripped off .

You are fortunate to have found what you were looking for . Rgb and pixel lighting sequenced is not sold in stores .

If you are happy with what you received do not let one persons comment upset your enjoyment of what you purchased .

You have something completely custom and will not be seen on your neighbors house .
Click to expand...

Agreed, To get something out of the box that required no effort on your part does cost some money. After experience with all of the hours on end it takes to put together a system like this and the sequencing behind it you cannot look at the cost of the components used to determine if it was a good deal.

Most on here in the DIY world refer to costs as components and materials, but if you factor in the number of hours put into this to make a good show that would dwarf the materials cost. It is more of a hobby to most here, not out to make a buck, but to put smiles on peoples faces during the holidays. Look at the vendors, software developers, controls engineers who are all not making much off of this and it is more a sharing community to help each other out.

Look at it this way, you have a base plan to work from now, the more your read, learn and ask you can take it to wherever you want now, but you have to put in the time and effort, if you want instant gratification without putting in the effort it comes with a price. Not trying to knock you by any means, just need to realize that this takes a lot of hours and effort beyond materials costs.
 
I don't think you got ripped off because 40 hours for 5 songs is a steal for a custom job. The length of time it take to code a sequence really depends on your approach. It takes me about 4 hours for 30 seconds of audio but I align lights and colors by instrument. or instrument group. e.g drums, violin, piano, organ, guitar etc. Electrified touched on it. I don't think any of us keep track of the hours we put into designing, building and sequencing out displays but hit is huge. Enjoy your display and if you are adventuresome try coding a small sequence this year.
 
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