Meet the biggest single prop we’ve bought to date: The Gilbert Engineering Hattitude Quartet!

This thing is almost 4′ in diameter, and consists of a wreath/spinner and close to a dozen singing face options (with or without Santa hat). We wanted a new “centerpiece” above the porch, to take the place of the star on the the flat-tree we made in 2020. We are going to have a free-standing Mega-Tree in 2021.

The frame is made of PVC and 3D printed parts from Inspire Light Shows. It will be mounted using the same brackets and hooks we used for the 2020 flat tree.

Just check out the wiring diagram…

UPDATE 04/05/2021:

Finished punching pixels and wiring it!

That was fun. Took 3 hours, with a few beer breaks. Had to re-start a few of the strings because the wiring diagram didn’t quite match up with the actual prop. The distance between some of the pixels was exaggerated in the wiring diagram, probably just so the numbers would fit on it. This has some pixels that are only a few mm away from each other in it. I also, admittedly, skipped a hole near the end. I was starting to get delirious and my hands were hurting.

I didn’t take a picture of it wired up with power injection before I put it in storage. There are 14x 5v strands (just shy of 700px), and I just connected them all up instead of worrying about every-other-one. In a few cases- the injection wires were right next to each other, making it really easy. I used the existing JST connectors with dielectric grease, like I do for all of my 5v pixels, and solder-seal connectors for the injection wires. They are bussed onto 16Ga landscape wire long enough to reach the PSU on the ground where this is going.

Here it is complete with a test pattern on it. It’s going into storage for now since it takes up too much space for me to leave out all summer for testing. I mostly just wanted to make sure all the pixels lit up. I didn’t see any bad ones! Later in the year, I’ll dig it out and start running some faces and spinners on it. For now- the xLights virtual version will do. 😊

I also didn’t push the pixels all the way through, just to the first “notch”. This was partly for my own sanity and to save my hands, and partly because I think it will look better this way. The nodes just barely go above the front layer of coro.

As I work with this later in the year, I may post more updates. For now- it’s done.