HolidayCoro's Blog provides our customers insight and a chance to provide feedback and suggestions on projects and products we are working on.
19 March 2013
Outlining Your House in RGB Lights - A Primer
While looking through all the great videos on YouTube showing houses outlined with RGB lights you may have wondered what is involved in getting those working on your own house. The following video provides the basic process to accomplishing this and the two different methods that are possible. Please be aware that this video only provides "generic" information as each vendors controllers and lights have specific requirements for power, protocols, lengths of run, controllers and other settings that affect the ultimate design.
We'd be happy to answer additional questions below in the comments section but please be aware that we are unable to provide vendor specific recommendations.
Very informative, thank you! I'm pretty sold on wanting to do Smart strip outlines on the house this year as opposed to the clusters of 4 single colored strings I did last year. I'll keep all your pointers in mind!
Thanks David! I will be outling my house with the basic RGB strips. My plan is to permanently mount the strips, wiring, and controllers so I can use different sequences for different holidays year-round. I do have a couple of questions on the wiring. As you mentioned, the DMX controllers need to be daisy chained for signal purposes. However, if you try to also daisy chain the power, depending on the size of the display, you quickly run into the need for expensive large guage wire. Do you have any suggestions? My thinking is to use a single cat5 daisy chained for the signal and then run individual cat5 runs from a central power supply to each LED strip for power. I really don't want to get into running expensive and hard to conceal 6 or 8 guage power cable and I most certainly don't want to run 110vac for decentralized power supplies. Any suggestions would be appreciated.
I'd use caution when mounting these lights for year round use. A number of years ago I did a fair amount of testing with different RGB lighting solutions (strip, modules, nodes, etc) and I found that some held up well over a six month period and others didn't fair so well - infact, some strips turned nearly completely brown from the UV exposure. So, make sure that all the items used are designs and will handle the harsh conditions that they will experience with year round exposure.
I can't provide specific advice on your display as for the power but "expensive large gauge wire" isn't really that expensive. What would likely be expensive is UV resistant wiring in the correct gauge. I would see our blog post here: http://blog.holidaycoro.com/2013/03/a-technical-guide-to-rgb-wire-selection.html about how to select the correct wire. If using CAT5, make 100% sure it is rated for outdoor, UV exposure. I really doubt that you'll need 6 or 8 AWG wire and don't rule out running 110v AC, there is a reason that Tesla's AC system won out over Edisons DC system of power distribution.
Agree with the AC comment. I have a single-story house with a long frontage, many gables, etc. I've placed 7 runs of dumb 5050 strip on the gables and have connected the ends of each run to a central (middle of house) CMD24-channel RGB controller. That controller has two power inputs, each for a 4-run grouping. That's working out just fine but I am thinking that I will have to go up into the attic and strategically place controllers and power supplies near the soffits and drill through so as to access them from the exterior. I say this because I want to replace the strip with 2801 or 2811 pixels so that I can do more lighting effects with the additional control. Does this make sense? What kinds of controllers and power supplies would you recommend?
Normally instead of directly placing the power supply at each of those locations where you need power, you would power from a more central location or locations and then run, say 18 AWG or 20 AWG wire along with the strip/modules to carry the power to the end or center and re-inject power there.
Very informative, thank you!
ReplyDeleteI'm pretty sold on wanting to do Smart strip outlines on the house this year as opposed to the clusters of 4 single colored strings I did last year. I'll keep all your pointers in mind!
If you want control the whole roof line as one RGB channel can you set all the individual controllers to the same channel.
ReplyDeleteThanks David! I will be outling my house with the basic RGB strips. My plan is to permanently mount the strips, wiring, and controllers so I can use different sequences for different holidays year-round. I do have a couple of questions on the wiring. As you mentioned, the DMX controllers need to be daisy chained for signal purposes. However, if you try to also daisy chain the power, depending on the size of the display, you quickly run into the need for expensive large guage wire. Do you have any suggestions? My thinking is to use a single cat5 daisy chained for the signal and then run individual cat5 runs from a central power supply to each LED strip for power. I really don't want to get into running expensive and hard to conceal 6 or 8 guage power cable and I most certainly don't want to run 110vac for decentralized power supplies. Any suggestions would be appreciated.
ReplyDeleteThanks,
Dean
I'd use caution when mounting these lights for year round use. A number of years ago I did a fair amount of testing with different RGB lighting solutions (strip, modules, nodes, etc) and I found that some held up well over a six month period and others didn't fair so well - infact, some strips turned nearly completely brown from the UV exposure. So, make sure that all the items used are designs and will handle the harsh conditions that they will experience with year round exposure.
DeleteI can't provide specific advice on your display as for the power but "expensive large gauge wire" isn't really that expensive. What would likely be expensive is UV resistant wiring in the correct gauge. I would see our blog post here: http://blog.holidaycoro.com/2013/03/a-technical-guide-to-rgb-wire-selection.html about how to select the correct wire. If using CAT5, make 100% sure it is rated for outdoor, UV exposure. I really doubt that you'll need 6 or 8 AWG wire and don't rule out running 110v AC, there is a reason that Tesla's AC system won out over Edisons DC system of power distribution.
Agree with the AC comment. I have a single-story house with a long frontage, many gables, etc. I've placed 7 runs of dumb 5050 strip on the gables and have connected the ends of each run to a central (middle of house) CMD24-channel RGB controller. That controller has two power inputs, each for a 4-run grouping. That's working out just fine but I am thinking that I will have to go up into the attic and strategically place controllers and power supplies near the soffits and drill through so as to access them from the exterior. I say this because I want to replace the strip with 2801 or 2811 pixels so that I can do more lighting effects with the additional control. Does this make sense? What kinds of controllers and power supplies would you recommend?
ReplyDeleteNormally instead of directly placing the power supply at each of those locations where you need power, you would power from a more central location or locations and then run, say 18 AWG or 20 AWG wire along with the strip/modules to carry the power to the end or center and re-inject power there.
Delete