Wiring/sequencing mini trees?

M

Macboy

New member
Hey all. Halloween is over so it’s time to tear apart the spider web and make a few mini trees. Just wondering what the advantages/disadvantages are between spiral wiring vs top to bottom strip wiring. Seems spiral wiring would be easier. Does the way you wire them have significant bearing on how you can then sequence them? I’m thinking only 180 degree trees for this year so I can spread the lights a bit further with more trees/props. I learned at Halloween than even one pixel can go a long way in terms of impact if used in the right prop. I had a grouping of five jackolanterns “singing” through the night. Each with just a single triple pixel.
 
I just built a few spiral trees and I think they look pretty great.

I think spiral trees might look weird if you just did 180 degrees. A full 360 is needed to get the full spiral effect.
 
Jguenther said:
I just built a few spiral trees and I think they look pretty great.

I think spiral trees might look weird if you just did 180 degrees. A full 360 is needed to get the full spiral effect.
Click to expand...

What pixel spacing did you use on the spirals? And roughly what vertical spacing between wraps? I often carve spires of ice with one sweeping spiral and it’s pretty beautiful the way you get a double helix look because you can see the rear spiral through the ice. I imagine this is a lot like that?
 
I chose spiral trees for my 62 mini trees. The last thing I wanted was a bunch of little mini matrices on my mini trees(I have enough of those in the display already). Ultimately it depends on what to do with them. My trees are 42" tomato cages with 100 nodes with 13-14 spiral wraps each. I didn't measure anything, just started wrapping. https://vimeo.com/304075454
 
uncledan said:
I chose spiral trees for my 62 mini trees. The last thing I wanted was a bunch of little mini matrices on my mini trees(I have enough of those in the display already). Ultimately it depends on what to do with them. My trees are 42" tomato cages with 100 nodes with 13-14 spiral wraps each. I didn't measure anything, just started wrapping. https://vimeo.com/304075454
Click to expand...
Those look great. I want to redo mine and that looks like what I want. Could you be more specific please on how they are built. Did you add vertical metal to cage for a more round look? Are they just zip tied? Are they mounted in strips?

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Yeah - they do look great. And without a doubt easier on all fronts I'm sure (making, injecting, sequencing). I'll gove them a try for this season and see. I have all the required "bits" on hand so I might as well. Thanks for sharing.
 
Macboy said:
What pixel spacing did you use on the spirals? And roughly what vertical spacing between wraps? I often carve spires of ice with one sweeping spiral and it’s pretty beautiful the way you get a double helix look because you can see the rear spiral through the ice. I imagine this is a lot like that?
Click to expand...

I used the spiral trees from Home Depot and zip tied the bullets in-line(on their side) up the plastic spiral. Spacing is probably around 1” or 1.5” -however tall a pixel is.
 
ab6f148eaa196883447610b8e6d7e527.jpg


Here’s how I wired my Home Depot spiral trees
 
uncledan said:
I wrapped each one with chicken wire. Not a fun job... These have been part of my display for 10+ years. Started with incans, then dumb rgb nodes and finally pixels. I think I used 2 zipties per spiral wrap so 26 per tree or so. Display is setup so pic isn't that great. https://www.dropbox.com/s/59i6418kigsgl50/IMG_2980.jpg?dl=0
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Thanks. I knew they looked to round to just be wrapped around 3 legs of a tomato cage, the chicken wire explains it. I'll have to give it a try. Nice display by the way.

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Try putting two tomato cages together (one on top of the other) giving you six legs to wrap on.
Might be easier than wrapping with chicken wire.

Thomas
 
thg said:
Try putting two tomato cages together (one on top of the other) giving you six legs to wrap on.
Might be easier than wrapping with chicken wire.

Thomas
Click to expand...

I tried it and chicken wire works/looks much better. If I could've saved countless hours wrapping them in chicken wire I would've. The chicken wire helps give you something to ziptie to as well.
 
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