Chauvet 200B DMX Fixture Enclosure
DMX Basics/LOR - Chicagoland Mini 9/7/10 (detailed)
DMX Flood Presentation - 2011 WA Regional
Christmas Expo - DMX Basics - 7/1/11 (10mb)
Christmas Expo - DMX Practical - 7/1/11 (9mb)
Christmas Expo - Curtain Strobes - 7/1/11 (7mb)
"Behind the Scenes"
An in-depth look at how we do some things. If you want to see something posted, send us an email and let us know.
Animating the Lights to the Music - To date, we have used a product called Light O Rama (LOR) and some "Do it Yourself" (DIY) equipment. LOR has 2 aspects, software and hardware. Software wise, there is a "Suite" of tools that we leverage, but the one of most interest is the Sequence Editor (SE) see picture below. This is very much like Microsoft Excel. The SE allows me to import a song in either MP3 or WAV format. I can then view the audio wave form and leverage several wizards to find the beat of the song. I also have to identify, and embed all the lights that need to blink or flash. We call these "channels" These all have names. In 2011, I will have 556 channels that I could do something with. Looking at the picture of the SE interface in the picture below, you see the song time across the top, and channels down the left side. You are only looking at about 4 seconds of the song and only 35 channels. Notice the scroll bars. Each channel is color coded. If appropriate, they do match the color of the light string, such as Red - Green - Blue - White. Multi color strings are shown in pink. Currently, it takes me about 10-15 hours per MINUTE of music on a new song/sequence. There are wizards that help identify the beat of the song, but a lot of time goes into listening for, and being able to capture details in the song, like guitar and piano riffs etc.... This is why it takes so long. Updates to each song for the new years additions usually goes pretty quickly.
To give me a feel for my display layout, I create a "Light Bright" image of my house and yard. There are ways to make this look better, by embedding pictures, but with my yard layout, that is not super practical. So I stay simple. While it may be confusing to you, it does mean a lot to me. If you look at it for a while, it will give you a perspective of the of the display set up and vignettes. I am on a corner lot, so I have 2 viewing angles, and a very wide perspective from each angle, the first being the street entrance/front view and the 236th Ave perspective.
When I play the song, and watch this Animation Window, I can see the different light strings turn on and off according to the SE window. Watching this, I can get the song to about 95%. I then have to go outside when the display is up to see the song in motion, then make edits. I do this on the night before I "Light Up" for the season. This of course is after a thorough check of all channels has happened to ensure I plugged everything in right! Next we have to talk about the Hardware interface of LOR. If you look at the picture below, the "Controller" as we call it is a printed circuit board that has some solid state triacs that control the lights. A Controller will have 17-18 cords plus a communications CAT5E network cable coming out the bottom. 16 of the cords are plugs that the lights go into. 1-2 cords are power plugs. So each Controller will have 16 Channels assigned to it, hence 16 plugs. I have dozens of these Controllers in the yard, or on the roof. In addition to the commercial LOR product, there is a mixture of Do It Yourself controllers and equipment I use in the display. DIY means that an individual designed equipment that gets offered to the community in something called co-ops. The hardware needs to be completely assembled by me. This does give us the lowest cost per channel, and some unique features like Wireless DMX at a great price. Lastly, the computer that controls this, has a USB cable that plugs into an RS485 communications device. The RS485 either then plugs directly into the 1st Controller in the network, or in my case to a wireless device that talks to several other wireless devices in the yard attached to clusters of Controllers. See the diagram below.
The LOR software allows me to create a "Show", which is just a Playlist, much like what you create for your MP3 players. I then schedule what time the show starts and ends every night of the week, and there you have it, a show that does not need a person to actually launch, it does it all by itself. Pretty cool eh?
How do the songs play on the radio? - This is quite easy. I have a low power (10mw) FM transmitter. See the picture below. This is a very small unit, about 4 1/2"x3 1/2" x 1"that can actually broadcast RDS as well. RDS is the radio text you see streaming on the newer radios. I do not have the RDS working yet, I am torn. I want visitors to watch the display, not the song title on the radio screen! The computer (laptop) that runs the show has a cable I plug into the audio jack (headphones). Then plugs into the FM transmitter, that goes out to a dipole antenna I have on my roof, and "Viola" a FM radio station. The FCC allow homeowners to broadcast into the space immediately around their house. Anything beyond a few hundred feet is considered illegal. I have to find blank air space on the FM frequency spectrum to broadcast into so that you can hear it clearly. My choice for 101.9 was selected for many reasons, and should be good to use for many years to come.
How do the Leaping Light Arches (LLA's)work? - These are made up of 2 10' sections of 1" electrical PVC conduit. I mate the 2 10' pieces together, space the ends 14' apart, drive rebar into the ground at an angle, then slide the ends onto the rebar, which gives them the arch height of about 6'. Each 10' piece, has 7 sections of lights. Each section wrapped with 100 LED minis. This give me a whopping 1400 lights per completed arch. As you can see from the picture, I run a wire harness under the arch that plugs into each section. At night you never see this harness. The magic happens in sequencing that make them flow like they do. It is just a sequentially staggered lighting of each section on the arch The picture below is one of the more complex patterns I have for the LLA's inside the Sequence Editor. You are also only seeing 3 of the 6 total LLA's in the yard.
Below is a picture of the "Show Laptop" Lot's ask how the show works. This laptop is responsible for interfacing with the plugs on the outside of the house that turn all the static display, and DMX lights on. Static items are those that do not blink or flash in the show, and the DMX lights are the floods and large zap strobes. They need to have power before they can be used. A good example is all the items right at the street entrance. The LED sign, Tune to Sign etc... That interface can be seen in the left side. I have a schedule for turning plugs on at the same time each day, and off at different times depending if it is a weekday or weeknight. This laptop also plays my Christmas Music Library on my "radio station" 24x7 during the season, except with the show is running. That interface is in the upper right part of the screen. Lastly, I can directly monitor the show inside while it is playing. That is the smaller box in the lower right part of the screen. Lastly, you see just to the right of the laptop and square black box with 2 white RCA plugs coming out of it. That is my FM transmitter. You can see another white plug in front of the laptop, that is the headphone jack, which sends the audio out, into the FM Transmitter. From this laptop, literally 99% of my display is managed remotely. I only have to get my Santa in the Window, and the LED trees in the North Pole turned on (with a remote) Also, this year is another boom box in the yard to assist with the outside sound, that has to be turned on manually as well and that's it!
How we store our Icicle Lights. A lot of visitors ask how the icicles on the house stay so straight. Trying to explain it is difficult and a few pictures below show you what I devised. The carrier is just 4" PVC pipe with a 1/2" copper pipe through it. Once the icicles are strung on the carrier, it is then hung in the attic above the garage. The summer heat helps to keep things straight. I peel them off 6 strings at a time, test them, then carry them to the roof. These are commercial strings so I can connect 6 inline before I have to break them up. These are still incandescent bulbs and have to be handled as such. This is one of the display items where, to date, no reasonable LED product has been produced to make me want to switch. There are 25 total strings of icicles on the roof. 17 strings on the lowest tier, 6 on the middle tier and 2 on the upper most gable. These constitute my largest amperage draw at over 11.25 amps when they are all on.
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