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Light O'Rama - anyone use it?
lilshawn:
check out "DMX512". It's the same stuff DJ's and other professional lighting people use to sync lights and the like to music already. it might cost a bit more to start, but parts could be had cheap cheap at an auction or sale making for expansions in the future easy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DMX512
Donkey_Kong:
http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php/topic,87650.msg920508.html#msg920508
Sadly, Marks videos are down. He had a great Light O Rama show. There are of course tons more to watch on youtube.
After Mark posted that thread I almost immediately started buying lights. I now have 10's of thousands of christmas lights. I took the recommendation of someone on the LOR forum that said something like 'baby steps'. First year; setup up a bunch of static lights, just to see if it's going to be your 'thing'. I finally got around to that and put out a couple thousand lights (maybe not even that many). It was sort of fun, but took time. April came around and the lights that were still dangling by a thread (well the ones that the wind had yet to ravage), I finally found the time to take the rest down.
Needless to say..Christmas lights aren't my 'thing' and I have been pretty much banned from ever trying again.
Howard_Casto:
Well you have to get off your butt. It takes MUCH longer than you would possibly think.
Halloween, which I do pretty big, requires me to start getting things ready during the summer. (Haven't done it "right" in a couple of years.) If you haven't started putting things out in the yard by mid September, you won't get finished in time. The Christmas stuff, which is 99% store-bought, goes out around Thanksgiving. I'm usually still fiddling with it in mid December and even though our winters aren't particularly harsh, lights require constant maintenance. I've even switched most of my stuff over to LED lights... it doesn't help.... extreme moisture rusts the contacts off the leds over time and the sets often have wiring/assembly issues that allow a whole section to go out every time a good wind knocks them around too much. Of course this is still preferred to ordinary lights which will, without a doubt burn out sometime during the month and if too many burn out it causes too much power to go to the good bulbs, causing the entire frikkin set to go out.
There's no excuse for leaving your lights out too long though. Even if you don't put them away very well how hard is it to get out a big storage box and throw the lights into the box?
ChadTower:
Heh. I've had this issue in the past with my wife and the xmas decorations. I won't do Xmas lights, but she wants them, so I told her she can do what she wants but I won't help. So the first year she puts some stuff out it sits there until mid april when I finally get tired of seeing the inflatable snowman lie in 2" of mud and offer to take it in for her. I put it all in the trash instead of the shed. ;D
I'm thinking more like bent metal rod forms with rope lights on them. I already have maybe 15 strings of rope lights that my son and I got at a yard sale. That gives us the ability to prebuild them, store them flat in the shed, and make whatever shapes we want anchored in the grass. "Animated neon" style signs should be easy enough even if I just go with some sort of timed controller instead of a complex setup. There is a church here that puts out a display that it takes a half hour to walk through and I got to get a close up view of a ton of different ways to fab these things. Maybe the only thing I'm not sure of at this point is a good way to join certain parts of the bent rods without welding them. Maybe a short overlap and screw clamps?
lilshawn:
Using an old microwave transformer, one can build a low voltage high current spot welder for less than $10 in parts.
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