To get my glowing spheres hung, I am making a grid of sorts between the roof line and a post in the yard.

1. Dig a big hole for pipe.
I have dug down about 4 feet, and set a piece of 1.5″ galvanized steel pipe w/ concrete into the ground. only about 2 inches will be left sticking out, and this has a standard male thread on it. 2 additional sections of pipe will be coupeled to the top

2. Attach support cable.
Support cable will run from the top of the pipe to collums at the front of the house / porch.

3. once thats all done, I will run various leginths of zip cord along the supports, and secure them with zip ties allong the support wire. Wires will be terminated with standard female outlets.

When its all done, I should have a random assortment of hanging spheres above the yard.

Its the end of october now, and crunch time for christmas!

2 Laminar jets are built, but still need finishing touches and mounting.
LOR released v3, and now has DMX support with ENTTEC usb adapters – thats great news, as I can now use my RGB Pixel strings, and DMX controlled Fiber optic illuminator.

The final major add on to this years show will be a grid of lighted spheres. The basic form is made by shaping chicken wire into a ball, then wrapping it with lights. These will then be suspended from a grid of support cables run between the house and a post in the yard.

Its mid july, and I cant wait for winter – and the cool weather to get here.
Some plans for this year :
1. Light O Rama says they will have cheap DMX this year. Im keeping my fingers crossed, and have ordered some RGB Led Pixels from overseas. These are LPD-6803 pixels, with a DMX adapter at the end.

2. Fountians. Last year I said this year would be adding fire or water. This seems much safer. So I am in process of building 2 laminar jets. I have 1 jet done right now, trying to get a “cutter” mechanisim in place, and also some lighting. The jet is mostly PVC and drinking straws, with a custom cut sliver of metal at the end ( Thanks Mark ) Its like a washer with a bevel that comes to a razor edge. For lighting a brass rod is fed into the center of the PVC base, and 1 or more stands of PMMA fiber is fed into the middle
Here is what is looks like right now.

Saturday November 27th 7:00pm

We are ready for Lights ON! We hope to see all our friends to help us kick off the holiday season at our yard lighting party.

Everything is out in the yard, and I finished connecting and labeling most of the cabbles last night. Controllers need to be plugged in, and sequencing must be finished.

CHRISTMAS!
Halloween is all taken down, and I spent the weekend wrapping posts in rope light, attaching the “fill” lights to the railing, and laying out thousands of feet of electrical cord. Lessons learned – Rope light is WAS easier to wrapp while “hot”.

almost all the lights are out, just a couple strands left ofr bushes and mailbox. Still many hours of wiring to get everything connected to controllers. About 2 weeks left before we are supposed to turn it all on – Things are looking pretty good.

Its just a bunch of stuff that gets in the way of me setting up for Christmas!

But its October,  and I promised the Wife a Couffin this year. So my friend Nick came over and 3 sheets of plywood, some nails, and 4 hours later – we had a couffin.  We will have a small graveyard and some body parts with static lights. I dont think I’ll have time for and animation for halloween this year.

Everyone keeps telling me “use a DC Controller for your Rainbow Flood” – I understand, I just dont agree. I took (3) 12v transformers, and connected those to 3 rectifiers, (one for each color) and then connected that to an rJ-45. The danger here is that there is no regulation on the transformers, and they put out slightly over 12v (it ends up being about 14v) So to prevent dammage ot the flood, I should add a resistor to the DC side, or a dimmer to the AC side – or just program the channel to never go above 90%.  any of those methods should result in 12v out.

   So this part took a while- I wanted to make something that looked like grass – but could light up. So I took about 40 pieces of EL Wire, chopped it into bits, soldered what felt like a million pieces onto wire, and drilled another 40 holes into some PVC pipe. Some hot glue to hold it all together, and Wala – Light up grass. Next I’d like to add some movement, considering Servo motor on the PVC or maybe a Linear Actuator. Looks like Neon, doesnt it ?

This part will allow us to transmitt the Music from our show to an FM Radio station so people driving by can hear the music in there car.  We will still have small outdoor speakers for people that walk by on foot.