We now have 5 big boxes to put everything in at Christmas - nice and tidy, reasonably waterproof (the boxes will be under the eaves so waterproof is not a big issue) and made to fit the house. The boxes are now getting a coat of paint to match the house before they are mounted in preparation for Christmas - just 7 weeks to go!
With a new collection of controllers and lights arriving we need some new boxes to mount everything in at Christmas, so Tuppetsdad has been busy playing with his dovetail jig.
We now have 5 big boxes to put everything in at Christmas - nice and tidy, reasonably waterproof (the boxes will be under the eaves so waterproof is not a big issue) and made to fit the house. The boxes are now getting a coat of paint to match the house before they are mounted in preparation for Christmas - just 7 weeks to go!
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One of our new arrivals is a set of four wall washers - I had a picture of them in the last post. The video bellow is sideways but that doesn't matter because all I'm really trying to show off here is the great colours on the wall, which would even look great upside down. We are excited to be in possession of the very latest in light show automation, the brand new release of LSP 2.0. We hope this will eliminate some of our bugs from last year while allowing us to handle a significant increase in channel count - We will have over 400 regular DMX channels, which is a big increase from 240 last year, and even more (2000+) brand new pixel based channels which run over ethernet. I guess this means we have to start programming... September is a bit after our July target, but we hope we will have some time to get at least a couple of songs going!
Tuppet's dad unpacking some lights Today 5 more boxes arrived from China, full of presents for us to unwrap around the fireside. We have got a lot of things in this latest delivery, including about 100m of RGB strip lighting, some 400W power supplies and 4 big wall washers. We also have a range of garden lighting to install - They will be for year round use though. RGB Wall Washer Here is one of the long wall washers. It's about 1m long, and has RGB output which should cover the whole wall pretty effectively. We have four of them, one of which will belong to Brothertuppet during the year. For this reason we also got a couple of RGB remotes and standalone 4 channel controllers. Despite saying 12V on the box we are informed that they are really ok with 24V so we are going to test them... carefully. Brothertuppet was NOT HAPPY that his part of the order was the only part which had any issues so he couldn't play with it tonight. 24V Power supply The power supplies look reasonable considering we were paying significantly less than we would expect to pay here. Don't worry, they do have a cover, we just pulled it off to see the guts. They are not even trying to be waterproof - we are going to keep them protected in a box under the eaves. All in all we are very happy with our first impressions, and look forward to some fun time playing with our new toys. Today the first of our shipments arrived, including a whole bunch of regular LED strings and warm white icicles which will expand the show nicely. In addition we got a couple of samples of RGB strings: The lights came with a controller so we could play with them a bit, which is what you can see in the video. The connectors are waterproof rated and seem pretty good. The bulbs also look fairly waterproof. The only negative comment so far is that some of the colour mixing can cause the bulbs to be more of a mix of colours than a mixed colour, but that definitely depends on the particular colour - yellow definitely doesn't work well, but purple is quite nice.
We have finalised our orders from China, and have about 100m of rgb strip light and another large quantity of light strings on the way. The strings have been built and are making their way to us as we speak, while the strips are just going into production now. It's a bit behind schedule, but then again when aren't we running behind schedule?
This is 4 DMX Universes of Stellascapes pixel lights making up a 4.2*2m array of blinky flashy. Each of the 2000+ RGB LEDs are individually controlled to make pictures, shapes and cool effects via Madrix software, which is automatically synchronizing the lights to the music here! This is the same software used by DJs and Lighting Engineers to run showThe lights are also compatable with LightShowPro, however the programming capabilities are lagging at the moment (major software update is on its way). Oh what fun we could have with these this Christmas...! Kudos to Andrew from Stellascapes for letting us have a play with these, we can't wait to see what new toys he brings to the melbourne christmas lights mini. This week Tuppetsdad placed an order with a factory in China for lots of LEDs. They will be the same as what we ordered last year, but obviously we need a bit more already!
We are getting more icicles to line the upstairs roofline and also some leds to fix the existing stars, make some more, and begin work on tuppet's lighting project for the year - more on that once she comes up with a proper design. Tuppet's dad has decided that he needs to combine his day job as a motion control engineer with his night job of planning Christmas lights, so he has started to plan to construct some DMX capable servo controllers which he will then use to control 8 servos in an angel. He wants to build 8 of these angels so that we can have a very choral Christmas.
In preparation for the Melbourne Mini (hosted by auschristmaslighting.com) a very kind Mr. Wu has sent us some exciting samples from his chinese light distribution store. We are looking forward to having a chance to play with our fun new toys!
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