Megatree
3.2m Megatree (inside before Christmas)
Our tree is about 3.5m tall (though the bottom 0.6m is not lit because we have a fence), and the diameter at the bottom is about 1.2m.
The base is made of wood, and the post is just aluminium framing (U shaped) supported by some aluminium right angles. The whole thing bolts together using wing nuts so that we can pull it apart easily. We have 4 lightweight ropes supporting the ring around the base, but the lights could probably take the load since it is only aluminium. After an early disaster with the megatree being blown over and taking out a minitree, it is now guy roped to the house very securely.
The lights are Red, Green, Blue and White. There are 12 strings of each colour, which are bundled together and shaped into triangles using a rig dad made out of scrap wood. The four strands in each section are also cable tied together at ~30cm intervals, and all the cables at the bottom of the tree are cable tied together to make things neater.
As you can see, each string actually goes up and down the tree 3 times - our strings were 8m each so we made the tree to fit the length of 1/3 of the string (allowing for a bit extra used up in the base to get between the verticals). We like having more than one strand for each colour because that makes the effect easier to see (and program) AND keeps the channel count under control so we only need one relatively small controller for the tree. Each strand of lights is connected at the point of the triangle by a cable tie which has a hole in it. These 4 cable ties (one for each colour) are then joined using a larger version of this cable tie. The hole of this tie then slips over the hooks on our topper, which also supports our star. The 12 sections are currently attached to the base ring with Velcro, which has lasted surprisingly well in the Aussie sun.
The tree topper (thing to attach the lights to at the top of the tree) is a round piece of wood with 12 hooks spaced evenly around it - there are lots of variations of these around, so long as it fits well on top or your post it should be fine. Ideally, this would be quite narrow, because otherwise the tree can be a bit flat on top - ours definitely is flatter than we would like, but the star helps hide this fact.
The star on top is simply a LED star from a Christmas light shop held on with a strip of metal and some more cable ties.
The whole tree is controlled by one Tiger48, where outputs 1-12 are white, 13-24 are red etc.
The base is made of wood, and the post is just aluminium framing (U shaped) supported by some aluminium right angles. The whole thing bolts together using wing nuts so that we can pull it apart easily. We have 4 lightweight ropes supporting the ring around the base, but the lights could probably take the load since it is only aluminium. After an early disaster with the megatree being blown over and taking out a minitree, it is now guy roped to the house very securely.
The lights are Red, Green, Blue and White. There are 12 strings of each colour, which are bundled together and shaped into triangles using a rig dad made out of scrap wood. The four strands in each section are also cable tied together at ~30cm intervals, and all the cables at the bottom of the tree are cable tied together to make things neater.
As you can see, each string actually goes up and down the tree 3 times - our strings were 8m each so we made the tree to fit the length of 1/3 of the string (allowing for a bit extra used up in the base to get between the verticals). We like having more than one strand for each colour because that makes the effect easier to see (and program) AND keeps the channel count under control so we only need one relatively small controller for the tree. Each strand of lights is connected at the point of the triangle by a cable tie which has a hole in it. These 4 cable ties (one for each colour) are then joined using a larger version of this cable tie. The hole of this tie then slips over the hooks on our topper, which also supports our star. The 12 sections are currently attached to the base ring with Velcro, which has lasted surprisingly well in the Aussie sun.
The tree topper (thing to attach the lights to at the top of the tree) is a round piece of wood with 12 hooks spaced evenly around it - there are lots of variations of these around, so long as it fits well on top or your post it should be fine. Ideally, this would be quite narrow, because otherwise the tree can be a bit flat on top - ours definitely is flatter than we would like, but the star helps hide this fact.
The star on top is simply a LED star from a Christmas light shop held on with a strip of metal and some more cable ties.
The whole tree is controlled by one Tiger48, where outputs 1-12 are white, 13-24 are red etc.