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A Technical Blog for Oak Hills Lights and Related Projects

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Category: Builds

Building stuff. Sometimes cheap and easy. Always an adventure!
Some failures, some successes.

BTS Screen Grab

2021 Behind the Scenes Video

March 24, 2022 | June 17, 2022 General, Blog, Builds, Holiday Lights

Here is a behind-the-scenes walk-thru of our 2021 show/layout. Obviously completely unscripted with me babbling semi-coherently. 😁 https://youtu.be/m_rzh7nM-fw I'm hoping to get time to post more details about the mega-tree and some of the other builds. It's just been a busy few months. Here is a pic of the K16 controller box that is under..

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2022 Test Layout

2022 Layout and Test

February 28, 2022 | June 17, 2022 Blog, Holiday Lights, Sequences

Update: We did have to scale this back. Hopefully we will be able to upgrade things more in 2023. While it's subject to change, I thought I would share our current layout plans for 2022... Highlights: Mega Tree moved to right side of the yard. Our real oak tree was blocking the view of it..

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New xLights API, Package Script

January 7, 2022 | January 12, 2022 Blog, Code

Late last year, the xLights developers started adding API functionality to xLights so you can script repeating tasks. For example- you can roll your own batch-render or batch controller upload scripts now. The API is still being developed, but I asked the devs to include an option to package a sequence as part of it,..

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OHL Power Meter

Oak Hills Lights Power Consumption

January 1, 2022 | January 1, 2022 Blog, Holiday Lights

Okay, the numbers are in... From Thanksgiving Day through New Year's Day we used a whopping 92.19 kWh of electricity. At $.12/kWh that's a total of $11.06! We did have a Raspberry Pi controller (Show Runner) and a small network switch running on separate (un-switched/monitored) power. Given the maximum wattage of the power supplies running..

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A couple of FPP matrix display scripts…

October 4, 2021 | January 12, 2022 Blog, Code, UPDATED

Updated November, 2021: Script Updates and related text changes. Our show has a long matrix display above our carport/driveway that displays general show information, along with our "Tune To" FM frequency to listen to the music, and song information. Usually in order to do this- the information needs to be built into the musical and..

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IMG 1639

Quick Build – Wago Bus

October 1, 2021 | October 9, 2021 Builds, In-Progress/Test Build

This is one of those: "I'm going to see if this works..." builds. I needed some power busses for the top and bottom of our mega tree. The biggest down-side (and only, in my opinion) to using 5v pixels is you need a lot of power injection. We are using 75px. strands, so applying the..

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IMG 1572

More Power!

September 10, 2021 | July 3, 2022 Builds, Holiday Lights, UPDATED

So the front of our house has a bunch of convenient outlets, but they are all run off the same 15A GFCI breaker. Knowing that likely wasn't going to be enough power for our show, we ran quite a bit of our 2020 show using extension cords from a set of 20A outlets we have..

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IMG 1486

ASAP Jr. Mega-Tree Pole Change

September 10, 2021 | September 10, 2021 Builds, Hacks

Just a quick post on this. For our Mega-Tree, I bought 1.5" and 1.25" galvanized conduit for the pole. We also have a hole in the ground for it already. I'll post more details about that build once we set the tree up this year. It quickly became obvious that these poles would be WAY..

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“Permanent” FPP Master Controller and FM Transmitter

September 10, 2021 | November 22, 2021 Builds

While revising almost everything for our show this year, I decided to more-permanently install our master FPP controller (Raspberry Pi 3B+) and FM transmitter. The controller lives on my desk most of the rest of the year because I use it to test new FPP versions, and I wanted to move it out of the..

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Colorlight Controller Box Builds

August 10, 2021 | August 10, 2021 Holiday Lights

Last week I posted about my P10 Column Build. One big problem I had was the Pi-P10 controllers I tried to use just didn't work. They had a terrible amount of flicker, and I was unable to find any actual support for them. So- my next most expensive option was to switch to Colorlight cards...

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Raspberry Pi 5v Power Regulation

August 10, 2021 | March 21, 2022 Holiday Lights, Other Builds, Stuff

We have a lot of Raspberry Pis that run various elements of our shows, and powering them from "wall warts" in enclosures isn't always practical, especially since we are already running 5v power everywhere. The problem is- if you power them using the GPIO header, there is absolutely no internal voltage regulation. So- a voltage..

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Column Matrix Builds

July 30, 2021 | October 13, 2021 Holiday Lights, In-Progress/Test Build, UPDATED

Last year, we lit up two of our three front porch columns with PVC pixel "poles". These worked really well: Pixel Columns This year we are making several changes. First, we got rid of the flat-tree in the middle of the front of the porch, so I needed to light up the middle column. Second,..

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IMG 1308

Add an OLED to a Raspberry Pi

July 30, 2021 | October 13, 2021 Hacks, Holiday Lights, Other Builds, Stuff

It's kind of silly since they spend most of their time closed up in a weathertight box, but I really like the little OLED screens on the Kulp controllers. They give me a quick indication if the controller is working, so I can at least rule it out (for the most part) if there is..

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  • Sequences (2)
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