WELCOME!!!!!!!

Hi All,

My name's CJ and I live in Kelowna, BC, Canada. My neighbor installed some permanent LEDs and I've been interested ever since mainly due to the permanent aspect; the idea of hitting a switch at Christmas and turning it off after Christmas is pretty appealing.

I just have a simple setup planned for now. My main roof lines on the street side of my house amount to about 100 linear feet. So I've purchased a Dig-Quad, and plan to buy a 30 amp power supply and 12 WS2811 12v LED strings. I also bought a length of vinyl J-Channel to test fit using that as a holder for all the LEDs and it seems like it will work well.

Really hoping that these lights will be permanent and not require a lot of ongoing maintenance...
 
Welcome. Permanent does NOT equal maintenance free. Pixels burn out, mice and squirrels love our wires as chew toys, the sun is a deadly adversary and causes things to become yellow and brittle. Design your permanent solution with that in mind. You will be on a ladder working on the lights at some point.
 
Hello, John from Wisconsin here.
I recently committed to doing more than the "normal" Christmas lights from now on - I enjoy tinkering with electronics and this is really fun! Just starting out with a E682 controller and some WS2811 LED strips until I get the fundamentals down. :)
 
Arakasi said:
Hello, John from Wisconsin here.
I recently committed to doing more than the "normal" Christmas lights from now on - I enjoy tinkering with electronics and this is really fun! Just starting out with a E682 controller and some WS2811 LED strips until I get the fundamentals down. :)
Click to expand...

Where in Wisconsin are you? There are several of us in Wisconsin.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
Ah beautiful sunny Kelowna :) Getting quite over populated their now . We passed through their last july on our way to Vernon . The Hwy has drastically improved since the previous trip through the wine country .

Hello CJ I am not far from you in Vancouver here .

You may want to consider designing your elements in a section style format for ease of replacement .
Should a pixel fail etc. you simply unplug the bad section and plug the new section.
This would require purchasing extra pixel to create a few extra sections .

Just a thought .
 
Hello folks! I'm from Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. My background is in IT, networking, and electrical, so this is all right up my alley! I'm a newbie to the more advanced type of Christmas light displays here so I joined up to read and learn more. The closest I've come was a couple of 5m lengths of pixel LED strips that I put inside pex tubing and mounted on the eaves of a previous house, and controlled with a basic pre-programmed controller from eBay. I saw a local display here and found the Johnson Family display web page, watched some of his tutorials on manufacturing trees, arches and such, and did some research on the controllers/software used.

My goal is to learn enough and manufacture things for a relatively small pixel-based music-sequenced display for December 2021. I'm looking at the 6804 controller kit from SANdevices (since that's close to what Matt Johnson uses, and a little more affordable than the E682) and getting some bullet-type pixels for building some small trees, maybe some arches with pixel LED strips. I am getting the sense that it makes sense to go 12V rather than 5V for added flexibility/wire length later on. Running and terminating Cat5/6 cable and setting up IP-based networking is not difficult for me, so I definitely want to go the E1.31 route. Looking forward to reading, learning, and trying things out this year. :)

I read through the beginner's guide here and it's good, but seems to be dedicated to using solid state relays to turn AC-powered light strings, etc, on and off; versus the LED strip and pixel based displays that I'm really interested in. (Feel free to correct me if I've missed something there!) I have been reading through the "Pixels" forum and that seems to have more information that's appropriate, as well as some of the manufacturing advice forums, but I'd really welcome any recommendations of things I should research or other forum areas I should be checking out. Also very open to recommendations on controllers if I should be considering alternatives to the SANdevices stuff. Cheers!

EDIT: found the "Things You Will Need To Get Started With Pixels" wiki article. Score!
 
Last edited:
Hi, Ray from Oklahoma.
I've got 70+ inflatables and growing, started out with 4 or 5 and then the grandson got interested and now I think it's an addiction.
Going to start wireframes this year as well.
Really glad I found this site, really helpful in everything.
 
Hello All,

Dean from Tecumseh, ON Canada here. Looking for information and advice / help on how to move forward with my transition from Twinkle C9's into the addressable LED world.
 
IzzyEddy said:
Hello All,

Dean from Tecumseh, ON Canada here. Looking for information and advice / help on how to move forward with my transition from Twinkle C9's into the addressable LED world.
Click to expand...

Welcome.....Auschristmaslighting.com has a lot of good info to get started.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
 
Hi my name is ////// and I am pretty young. I love putting up lights and this year will be attempting pixels. Hope all goes well and a video of the lights will be up this year. Last year was a mess. The FM transmitter was too close to the computer making the computer go crazy. It literally opened up every file from A to C before I found out. Nothing wrong this year yet...
 
Diyermaker said:
Hi my name is ////// and I am pretty young. I love putting up lights and this year will be attempting pixels. Hope all goes well and a video of the lights will be up this year. Last year was a mess. The FM transmitter was too close to the computer making the computer go crazy. It literally opened up every file from A to C before I found out. Nothing wrong this year yet...
Click to expand...

Welcome! Glad to have you.
 
Jordanli said:
Hi guys, I'm Jordan, I live in Australia, I'm a newbie but I'm interested in this field.

I wish I could learn more here!
Click to expand...
Welcome Jordan. The best thing to do is read the getting started pages on the wiki. Please ask questions. There are a lot of people on the forum with a very wide base of information that are happy to help.
 
Hi All,

Finally going to give this a try this year if I can get it all together to just do a simple set up. Even just one string of lights this year and I'll be happy. If I can get 3 - 5 AC lighted trees and hedges or a "fence perimeter" around the front yard that would be awesome. We usually have a yard full of inflatables/wire lighted animals and trees and hedges with AC lights, see photo. Hoping to purchase a starter kit and SS kit from Wayne this year to use with our AC lights. Still reading through the Beginner Guide and Wiki to see if that is all I need. In the meantime, I will start learning Vixen. Will definitely look to add pixels in the future. Open to any advice and recommendations.

Thank you,
Rita

View attachment 44645
 

Attachments

  • christmaslights.jpg
    christmaslights.jpg
    71.9 KB · Views: 21
Last edited:
Welcome Rita

The SS series of Renard controllers is a workhorse of the AC and DC world. Are you using AC incans or LEDs? If LEDs, make sure you set the controllers up to be using PWM mode. Do you plan to dedicate a PC to run the show or are you going to use the less expensive (and IMO better solution) FPP application running on a PI?
 
MartinMueller2003 said:
Welcome Rita

The SS series of Renard controllers is a workhorse of the AC and DC world. Are you using AC incans or LEDs? If LEDs, make sure you set the controllers up to be using PWM mode. Do you plan to dedicate a PC to run the show or are you going to use the less expensive (and IMO better solution) FPP application running on a PI?
Click to expand...

Thank you. We have AC LEDs. I plan to use an older dedicated laptop. I did run across a post on the FPP and PI, but at this point don't have time to go down too many rabbit holes, since all this is new to me and a bit of a learning curve.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top