My Christmas Display Blog... (My progress along the way. Please be sure and sign my Guest Book.)9/19/2009
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6/14/09
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9/19/09
Just finished my 3rd song. Let It Snow by Harry Connick Jr. Seeing crossed eyed. What I thought I might finish up on 1/2 of Saturday took all Saturday and Sunday! Hard one to sequence to, even if your using someone else's as a template! Lot's of stuff I changed from the one I had. Would like to start on the "Silent Night" one...but wish I had the guy's sequence to model by. Next 2 days are going to be pretty busy...so maybe I'll get it before then. Of course I have the "Fruit Cake Song" that my family hates. Guess I won't put that one in. Really wish I could get about 3 or more songs. It might only be 1 or 2 more. Got to start building! None done this weekend. Started "Stille Nacht" by Mannheim Steamroller with Linus reading the Christmas Story on top of it. Spent several hours trying to get the "Beat Wizard" to work the first 1:17 of the song. (For you "Non" Light O Rama people this is a part of the sequencing software within the S2 version) I had to keep moving several of the "beats" to line it up where the beat really was. Silly. I finally used the "Tapper Wizard" and just tapped out the beats. Few times to get the "ritards" and "accelerandos" down (slowing and speeding up in the music)...then all was fine. Moved everything to a .05 fixed grid...and that is where I am at with the song. Hope to get at least a few seconds of it down today.
For my "Radio Sign" (you know, the one that tells drivers what FM radio frequency to turn their radio to...), I was going to paint on a piece of 24"x18" piece of Plexiglas. Was going to use simply lettering on one side and solid white on the other. Mount the glass in a wooden box and back light it.
Got the "Box" made up for my radio sign. Have put several coats of paint (white for the inside and black for the outside) on it. Hope to post pics later on today. Have to get the rope light mounted inside today as well. Ok. Finished "Stille Nacht". Yeah! Now starting on "Blue Christmas" going faster than any of the others. Just wish I had looked at the mega tree examples files sooner! Doing this one from scratch and feel better more about it than "Stille Nacht". Hope it turns out ok, we'll see. Finished the radio sign, updated the web page song list. It looks like "Weebly" will except HTML so I will be able to upload stuff to YouTube or Vimeo for the videos. Hope it doesn't rain this weekend. I think I will build as many of the mini trees as I can this weekend. Only 14 more to go ;-)
Still working on "Blue Christmas". Mega tree programming on this went real well. Haven't made as many mini trees this weekend as I wanted. Think I will try what I did early this morning. Not try and cable tie every 1/2 turn or so. Just do the top or bottom (where ever you stop) and keep it real tight when moving it around the tree.
Had a pretty successful week. Short work week because of the furlough day, soooo I built mini trees! On my fourth right now. Take me a while to make the tree (out of 2 tomato cages, put the lights on, put the ties on, etc. My hands cramp after a while...so that is what is slowing me down. However, if my count is right...I have only 4 more mini trees to make and 4 mid size trees to make! Yeah!!!
Finished the mini trees!!! Yeah!!!! Now just got the 4 mid size ones to go.
Yikees!!!! So what have I lost sleep over this week?? Turns out, it's not code to tap into the breaker with 2 lines (ok, call me stupid...but I didn't know! Gues just know enough to get in trouble.) Looks like I am going to have to drop the C9 incandescent lights for LED's. Just not as bright and I have programed all the strong musical hits with the full setup. Rope lights? Guess I will have to wrap the trees with minis. The positive is that I will use white, red and green instead of all white. The bad? Lose some bright "musical hits" with losing the rope lights. I have taken most all of the full mega tree full light hits out and staggered them. That brought the amps way down. I also moved some of the elements around. Been a while. Do I take time away to blog or build? Build of course! A LOT of stuff has gone down since the last posting. Mini lights wrapped around the tree trunks? Nope. Made a "North Pole" out of 4" sched 40 pvc. Had it 10', cut it down to 8'. Quick project that honestly took me a couple of hours over 2 days. Paint? Nope. Used Red duct tape and red Scotch 33 electrical (at least that might hold up in the elements). If it last the season...great. We'll work on painting more of these next year. Like the way it turned out. Have white rope light, 200 red minis and 100 green minis (just happened to have a 200 red mini line). Mounted it on a 25lb dumb bell weight I had from another project. Will hole it fine. HD acrylic globe shoved on top, fill it with red and green minis, connect it up to the other ones...and we're set. 3 channels on this. Looks great. Just hope it doesn't get lost in the other stuff. Lots of other stuff I will have to get back to later, including going back with the c9's on gutters. Limited it down some...and it will work fine. Had a second, so wanted to finish the other post. Actually bought a "Reliance" amp load meter from HD. GREAT tool for building Christmas light displays. Tell how much of a amp pull each string has. I did some calculations on the c9's to find out...it was not much more than the Rope Lights (yep, was going to put that on the gutter...LED ones). Between blowing the leafs off the yard (man I just wish those things would fall off!) and the rain, haven't had much outside time. Had to make 24 "Super Strings" for the mega tree. Took 3 colors (red, green and white) and wrapped or twisted all the strings together. Took forever, but got it done. Looks like I waited too late to order strobes, so that is next year. Was going to make a star for the mega tree...decided just to go with a wreath on top of the mega tree. Put white LED minis on it (60). Wow! Those things are bright! Worked great and looks good. Kind of like little strobes, so will change some of the sequences to "twinkle" instead on that channel. Started the mega tree yesterday and got about 1/3 done. A lot of work doing this by myself. Up and down the ladder. Will take some pics of what I did on this maybe over the weekend. Tried some different things that worked well. What I put up...all worked and looked really cool. Can't wait to get the rest up. Hopefully over the weekend I will get the majority of it up. Need to hurry so I can see what extension cords I am short on. Note to self....start earlier!!!! Plan WAAAAAAY ahead on placement and cords.
Why does it always have to rain on the weekend! Oh well. Got some work done on Friday and Saturday.
Man....I wish this rain would quit! Cold and rain, just doesn't mix.
Oh my aching back!
***I am really lucky that everything with the lights worked. I checked a couple of sequences that I knew had been "toned down" for "amp spikes"...and everything worked! Used the "LOR Power Utility" (do a search on www.planetchristmas.com for that utilities url.) It is a excel file that is great. Tells me at each .1 second what the total amperage is. That way I can monitor this for the circuit breakers ;-)
Wellllll. It works! Figured out how to work the scheduler on LOR. Now have to finish all the voice ID's for that (just an added bonus ;-). Have a few things "audio-wise" on some of the mp3's I want to do as well. Got to put the minis out in the bushes in front of the house. Those will be in static mode however.
Wow!
It seems like each time I "Blog" it gets longer and longer in between. Guess it is just that time of year that it is just soooo busy.
Well....
Well it's Christmas Day.... bitter sweet in some ways. Means we will have to take it down soon. Not really the hassle of taking it down...just the fact that the season comes to an end. Last night...we were lucky. It was the first night that we actually had rain in probably a week or so. I normally put out luminaries (won't go into it here...but my friends from school will understand ;-).....on Christmas Eve. I did. Used plastic milk jugs because of the constant drizzle and wind. Most stayed lit! Another amazing fact...the GFI didn't trip!! Well....at least not till the very last 20 minutes or so of the night. I moved the show to end at 11pm instead of 10pm. The rain got real hard about 10:40pm. I looked outside to notice the same group of lights had tripped again. We were just plain lucky. My rain gauge was completely full! I don't think it rain the 5+ inches it showed...but hard to fool a manual rain gauge.
3) Look at possibly extending the base of the mega tree from 5 ft to maybe about 8 ft? May just keep it at 10 ft tall as well. That way I can keep the same programing for all the current sequences. Maybe.... Well,this is the first chance I have had to post with the "After Christmas Sale" for lights. Walmart was a rip off! Had the lights at $1.84 on Dec.24th. Dec.26th the mini lights had a sign that said "Was $2.49 now $1.19". I don't think so! Maybe when they were put out in September! I needed the lights and very few people still had the clear minis at that price...so I bit the bullet and got 58 boxes of clear and 10 of green. Oh well...really needed more, but resisted. Got about 10 boxes of red (which is really what I needed most of) in Gadsden. No one had any reds left. Would love to double or triple everything that is clear with red or green. Right now...looks like it will be green. However, have to get more controllers to handle it. Also...more power from my breaker panel!
Well...here it is...New Years Day.
Was able to get all the lights down and packed away. Wow. Didn't realize how much space this stuff takes up! Have a tree house (or really a little club house...3 steps, then up on a little porch, then into the little house) for the girls in the back yard. They haven't used it in YEARS. It is now a storage house for part of the display ;-) Covered all the windows and door with plastic to keep the varmints out. Hopefully those little squirrels won't be able to get to my mini trees! :-) Either way, I know at least the number of extra lights I have. That way when I go to build more arches and mini trees...I will know. I think last year I really wasn't sure...so I ended up buying more clear minis. I have enough greens to double everything (color wise). That would be the arches, mini trees and lights hanging in the trees. Biggest thing I really need to do is get some retro c9's. Have to get the large amp pull down on the power panel. Comments are closed.
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Click on the September archive and then click on comments to see all of the 2009 display blogs. I am going to start blogging with a "Title" and also put the post into the blog so it can be archived by month. Should have done that to begin with. If you are new to this world of "Animated Displays", I suggest you not only read mine, but other blogs. They will help you learn NOT to make the same mistakes others have. Archives
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