A lot of reading has happened in the last month, in addition getting some valuable advice from the folks at the ACL Forums & Chat. This has led me down rabbit holes of research, to figure out the best way to design the show.
A number of questions needed to be answered, with each answer flowing into the next decision to be made.
- What do I want the finished display to look like? ie. What props, what effect, what sort of look am I going for?
- What types of lights should I use, strip, nodes, etc?
- Can I incorporate any of the existing light strings I already have?
- How will I control the lights?
- How will I distribute power to these lights?
- What hardware do I need to make this all happen?
- How much will it cost?
- What do I need to cull to fit into any reasonable budget?
In early January, I met up with one of the blokes from the ACL website, Kent. He had his first Christmas display up in 2021, so I’m trailing one year behind. He offered many pointers, and showed me his setup – unfortunately I didn’t get a chance to see it in action, but it was great to catch up and discuss things.
Being a lovely bloke, he also lent me a few pieces to play with – 40 odd nodes, an ESP32 controller and a DC-DC convertor. I had also picked up a 2m strip of LEDs from Jaycar in the interim and starting playing around with those hooked up to a Raspberry Pi. Some more technical posts on these will be coming up.
Over the next few posts, however, I’ll discuss the above decision points individually, and explore the answers that I have come up with.