Ask Slashdot: Best Wireless LED Light Setup for 2015?

An anonymous reader writes I want to get a jump-start on next year's Christmas by wiring up my mother's gnome garden for a Christmas light show. I need a setup that can use wireless LED lights and speakers, the lights using a custom sequence set to music, that can be controlled remotely indoors to go off on a schedule, say every hour. Do you know of an off-the-shelf setup that is cheap and works seamlessly, especially for someone with little to no coding or custom building experience?

Comments

Wrong site

[plover]

Try asking on http://www.hackaday.com./ Lots of people there doing exactly that kind of stuff.

Light O Rama

[Anonymous Coward]

I use a Light O Rama setup http://www1.lightorama.com

It is not wireless but is very easy to setup and can be used with regular Christmas Lights.

They have a software suite that is pretty easy to use and you can do some pretty cool stuff with.

Re:Light O Rama

[Sarten-X]

TL;DR: There's a lot more to the craft than just wires and a board. This started as a short post, but turned into Light Shows 101.

I've been on the fringes of the community for a few years. If you're willing to touch a soldering gun, you can do far better than a single-board computer, though I'm sure I'm going to annoy some Slashdotters for suggesting such blasphemy.

First, consider your requirements: Lights, elements, power, control, sequencing, and sound. We'll tackle them in that order.

Lights are actually one of the tougher decisions to get started with. You have to decide between LED (brilliant intensity, saturated colors, low power, expensive) or incandescent (cheap, high power, warm glow), and what size you'll use (everything from surface-mount LEDs to full-size Edison bulbs). I know a guy who's used car headlights in a show, and there's been a few stage lights, too.

The problem with lights is the sheer number to be used. 32 strings are enough for one megatree (more on megatrees shortly). Consider that shows are measured in the thousands of individual lights, and the hundreds of channels. Mixing LED and incandescent lights is rarely a good idea, because of the severe difference in brightness. Even among the same type, different brands have different colored lights. Manufacturers also tend to cut the strings shorter every year, saving money on wire costs. What used to be a 30-foot string several years ago is now a 27-foot string. The result is that show builders will hoard hundreds of strings of lights from the same manufacturer and year, so any future element projects will have a consistent look. Communities will also organize occasional bulk purchases directly from manufacturers, ordering a whole shipping container full of lights.

The elements, though, are where creativity and construction skill really comes into play. You're effectively building a piece of modern art that usually has to survive snow, rain, wind, squirrels (who apparently love the taste of wire insulation), vandals (sadly), and both heat and cold. The elements start the show cold, but often (especially with incandescent lights) they'll have so much current running through them that by the end of the night they're warm enough to cause noticeable expansion.

There are a few standard elements, but every builder has their own technique. There are basic trees, where lights make a vaguely conical shape. With more wiring, you get megatrees, which have several steps of control, up to a single string per control channel, so you can animate spinning motions. In a smaller size, tomato cages with their legs welded together make great minitrees. A long piece of conduit, wrapped in lights (about 30 feet of lights per foot of conduit) can be bent and anchored to stakes, making arches. Chicken wire and zip ties are the perfect tools for laying out a more two-dimensional element. With a bigger budget, flamethrowers, projectors, lasers, water fountains, and robotic spotlights are all options.

With all those elements, electric power becomes a problem. LEDs make the problem much more manageable, but there's still the issue of distribution. There's a lot of extension cords involved, and possibly some very thick wires needed. Builders of big shows will often turn to buried cables and upgraded supply lines. I helped with a show that used a 100-amp line running to a buried box in the back yard, where a control box fed a set of distributor boxes through 50-foot 20-amp lines that were scattered around the area supplying the other elements.

Every outdoor circuit must be also protected by a ground fault circuit interrupter (GFCI), which will cut the power immediately if it shorts to ground. It's intended to protect a person who accidentally grounds a circuit, but with that many connectors out in the rain and snow, you can expect a GFCI to trip a few times a week.

Controlling that much power is the part that gets so much attention, but it's really one of the easiest aspects of the hobby. There are a few routes to go, fr

Re:No Custom Building?

[Slick_W1lly]

>which makes me think that there never will be a commercial solution

Quite the opposite. I've been 'thinking about' doing this for a couple of years now, and my research has led me to the conclusion that 'everyone' uses Light-o-rama commercial setup to do this.

It's not wireless, but I don't believe (other than the DMX solution DJ's use for their stage lighting) there's a wireless solution to be had. Even that 'solution' isn't actually wireless, since it uses wires for.. the power! Wireless dongles can be plugged into recievers at the light end - but to be honest, you're better off just going the light-o-rama route.

That solution works by giving you a 'squid' of power connectors, into which you plug your extension cords and it just.. turns them on and off. They give you some kind of application that you can use to sync the lights to your music - if you've ever made an animated thing in like Blender or Poser or Daz Studio you'd get right along with it - timeline.. flip this on at second 3, flip this off at second 5, turn the other on at second 10.. etc..

However, it's not cheap - by any standards. In controller hardware OR lights.

Best starter system I've used

[Wrexs0ul]

I started down the fancy Christmas lights path last year after seeing a 12-string CCR tree based-on LOR (light-o-rama) that this guy made:

http://www.superstarlights.com/Sequences/Videos.php

LOR Technology is pretty simple and your IT knowledge will translate pretty well to get it setup. The gist is you're using a LOR network protocol over RS-485 (long-range serial) that itself is using CAT5/6 cable to work. This network needs a control node that's either a hardware device or (like most people) a computer running the LOR software package, both of which can work with an audio component.

The neat part about starting here is that there's translation hardware between LOR and the more widely used DMX protocol when you're ready to step-up to fancier shows. DMX gears tends to be cheaper because there's more of it (and more things you can control), but it'll also need a fair bit of comfort with stuff you can start-off learning by point-and-click in LOR. I've been playing with some DMX stuff this year that'll be in the show for December 2015, but didn't have the time to get it perfect on this go.

One thing to keep in mind: more fancy = more bandwidth. Single flashing strands don't use much traffic, but when you start looking at 150 LED strands where each pixel has RGB+intensity I'd recommend against going wireless.

Happy learning, and post a video!