Achieving a desired appearance

I recently saw this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_sGmCox-toU showing a comparison of leaping arches. One standard arch, the other sheathed in white vinyl vent hose. I preferred the standard arch, however the idea got me to thinking about my poles. I wanted to have an RGB look without the expense of true RGB LEDs. The unfortunate thing is that no matter how closely you can physically place a red led, green led and blue led next to each other they will still look like red, green and blue points of light. From the opposite side of the street they might begin to appear to blend together but you'd have to be several houses away for them to totally blend together - and that's certainly not what I'm going for...

Tonight I experimented with a small section of white vinyl vent hose on my own. Like a dummy, I didn't take pictures until I achieved the look I was going for. So, to describe what I did: My first attempt was to wrap red, green and blue led strings around a broom handle (since I didn't have any PVC handy); stick that inside the vent hose; and light it up. It looked stupid. There were "hot spot" points of red, green and blue since the leds where pointing every which way and were uncontrollably close to or touching the inside of the hose. Next, I re-wrapped the broom handle, but this time kept the leds pointing in the same direction, securing them in place by wrapping the wires over the leds as I went. This helped eliminate the bright points of red, green and blue light; however the sheer randomness of the wrapping ended up creating clump patterns of color which still defeated the blending effect of the red, green and blue.

Finally, I used my new 1/4" clips and attached the leds to three plastic coat hangers and clipped the coat hangers together in a similar fashion to my original plan using 1/4" steel as a framework for my poles. Next I cut the vent hose lengthwise so I could wrap it around the lights since there's no way the hangers would fit inside the vent hose. This proved to be a blessing in disguise as well. I was able to affix the vent hose providing a maximum distance between the lights and the inside wall of the vent hose which is necessary to achieve good diffusion of light. Overall, I like the effect!

In addition to pictures, I have included a video below which demonstrates a test. It starts with all lights off, fades all lights on then off again; then fades up red and fade-cycles through the color spectrum.

Thank you William for letting me borrow a string of blue leds since my blues won't be arriving until LED Holiday Lighting ships the 2009 pre-order!

The bells are nearly finished

I have attached the 100 Green and 100 White LED lights to the wire frame bells. The three berries in the middle will have to wait until I receive my order of LEDs from LED Holiday Lighting. When they arrive, I'll attach a 35-count string of 5mm Red LEDs to complete it.

Light Clips

The 1/4" light clips for attaching lights to various wire frames arrived today. These light clips were ordered from Betty's Christmas House. $22.95 per bag of 1000.

Not a whole lot else has been going on. I've done a little bit more sequencing but we're still at four songs fully completed.

Bells will be ringing...

Membership has its privileges! Today I received a "Double Bells with Holly" wire frame from Suprtec Novelties (www.Christmas-LEDs.com). I got a 30% discount on my order for being a member of Planet Christmas (www.PlanetChristmas.com). It stores folded in half. A threaded bolt in the middle secures it unfolded. 1/4" light clips will be used to attach Green, Red, and White LED strings to the frame. I still need to order the clips, but I've found that Betty's Christmas House (www.BettysChristmasHouse.com) has them for a very good price. They carry both 1/4" clips and 3/16" clips.

Phoenix March Meet Up

Last night a Phoenix area Meet Up was held at the home of William and Kim Morris (www.twodoglights.com). I got to meet Frank and his wife Christine Kostyun (www.ahwatukeeholidays.com) and Larry Johnson. William had set up a few elements of his show in the back yard along with some new strobes he is adding to his show this year. He had the LED flood lights and countdown clock from Craig operational. Both Craig and Frank have a few really cool things in the works that will be made available to the public later this year.



Thank you William and Kim for openning your home for the Meet Up. Thank you Kim for the delicious lasagna & salad! (If you weren't there, you missed out!)

More controllers and transmitters

The last couple weeks have been busy with things like work, taxes, technical directing at CCV, and setting up an IBM iSeries (AS/400) recently added to my computer collection. However that does not mean the Christmas lights project came to a stand-still; far from it! I have completed 4 music sequences now so far. The four Light-O-Rama CTB16PC controller kits I ordered from their "Secret Sale" arrived. The FM transmitter kit from EDM Design also arrived this week. I also had the pleasure of meeting Craig in Tucson who is building LED flood lights controllable via Light-O-Rama to produce any desired color. These are the flood lights that William Morris has been testing.

Tonight I built the EDM Design FM-TX-LCD kit. What they consider a kit is hilarious; yet fantastic! The kit required me to press the processor chip into its socket, solder the power connector to the corner of the circuit board, and mount the board inside a supplied metal case. After only a couple minor adjustments, I was on the air. I set the transmit power to 1mW (lowest power setting) for testing. The supplied wire test antenna was laid out horizontally across the table for simplicity. I got in the van and was able to hear the broadcast up to three houses away in either direction. It will work perfectly well when it is moved outside and the antenna is vertically oriented.