Permanent Outdoor Lights (Christmas lights)

Those seem like good choices. I like that little controller. I wonder what the wled dev thinks about seeing that kind of stuff.

Should be interesting to see where this goes. It is certainly gaining momentum.

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Yeah, I was thinking about posting that controller on the WLED site to at least put it on their radar… but not until I got 3 of them to use myself. No foot shooting! :smiley:

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The licence of wled is MIT. That is pretty forgiving. The only way the company can get in trouble is if the wled logo is trademarked or something. But MIT basically says they can edit the software, distribute it, charge for it, but they have to keep the MIT license on the source (I think). It is as close to giving it away as possible.

My guess is they aren’t even editing it though. Hopefully you can flash it as soon as you get it with the latest. Just to make sure you can upgrade forever.

I will say I don’t see enough info about current requirements. It even says USB in some places. But a big string of lights will need multiple amps. I think mine is 10.5A. I am sure that white controller shouldn’t be pushing that much through it.

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So far, my 8A 5V (Mean Well LPV LED Power Supply) power supply is running through a 5m strip with 60 LED/m. It goes pretty bright white with no color loss. I’m not sure if the manufacturer did it this way, but when I built a similar box on my own, I only used a common ground through the controller, I split the + wires so the big current didn’t have to flow through the ESP8266. I hope these guys also thought that way. :smiley:

I’m unable to fully see the inner workings of the strip as it’s in the sillicone tube diffuser, but I was surprised that I didn’t need to do any injection. I didn’t even power both ends, so maybe there is built-in power fixing?

It does come with an older version of WLED, so I’ve already upgraded it.

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I installed them yesterday. It is a bit of a drive, so I wanted to make sure I could do it all in one trip. I did as much ahead of time as possible and it still took about 4 hours. Looks good though.

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I ran mine yesterday and found out that I have a dead pixel :frowning:

Oh no. I had to patch a dead pixel on my second story and I hated soldering on a 30ft ladder.

I had the same problem after mounting the backside of the pyramid. It’s always the highest mounted pixels that die…

A little piece of video of our version of Josheph and the amazing technicolor dreamcoat.

(general rehearsal; mapping of the projection not ready, just som random effect on the led-pyramid)

These are the same panels, multifunctional

Just bought a rechargable soldering iron to fix the broken leds. Standing on a ladder with a soldering station is quite dreadful.

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I have one of the small butane soldering irons for stuff like that.

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That’s pretty cool to see used on stage. Those are some big projects.

I have a butane one too. But it is much more of a pain to use than my desk soldering iron. It worked, but it was enough difference that I trued really hard to measure and solder as many connections as I could on my desk instead of on a ladder.

Why make just one star when you own a mpcnc and can make four…

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Now this is one of the main reasons I also created an account here. After spending numerous months reading this forum to learn all I can about the MPCNC and everything that goes with it, you all have now sent me down another species of vermin hole into this. I so want to do this (and have for years). Now I just need to get the other half on board. I think it is too close for this year’s Christmas light display, but maybe next year?? (As if I needed any other projects to do!!)

I think you still have time. But I put mine up in the first week of January, so…

I got mine installed in one weekend.

Debugging took a month :smiley:

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@jeffeb3 @niget2002 I know physically there is still time, but with all the other projects that I have due out for other people, as well as wanting to get a planer and the kit for the MPCNC, this will have to fall into the category of “maybe next year, dear!!” Not to mention we have a little family vacay next week over Thanksgiving.

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The cheapest parts (LEDs and control board) come on the slow boat from China, which can take a few weeks. That’s what I was mostly thinking would be the bottle neck for your schedule. If you are going to do it, be ready to wait for a little while.

You can do it before the season, but you’ll probably pay more for supplies. BTF-Lighting prices are a bit higher on Amazon, but arrive in a few days instead of a few weeks.

I’ve seen them, but just to look at doing all of this again and what I have in my Amazon cart, I just found out that the ESPixelStick is currently unavailable right now. And since I saw this post a few months ago and looking into doing it more, and finding DrZZz and his Duo (which seems to always be sold out) or his QuinLED-Dig-Quad, I am finding I need to learn some more stuff out. I am sure right now they are all getting bombarded with orders, so maybe as, @jeffeb3 did, waiting until after the season might be a better route regardless. I think I might start small-ish and go for a tree…and show the wife what it can do, and then talk her into the house.

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I ordered bith my digi quad whatever boards from the china shop. They took about two weeks.

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I also just set up Cheap DIY Ambilight TV Project with Hyperion and Raspberry Pi - YouTube. It’s super simple to physically set up, the configuration is a bit more challenging but the ambient lighting matching the edge of the screen is super cool!

It’s also indoors, and doesn’t require ladders… so big wins.

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