Figure I'd post this in the nerdery as it belonged here more so than anywhere else and it's a pretty nerdy hobby. There's probably going to be lots of confusing words and pictures at the end.
I had built and used 120V triac based controllers for the past few years but decided to take the step into low-voltage RGB lighting. Each individual light is addressable and can turn any color you want it to independently. All of the lights I used are 12VDC nodes (with the exception of the flood lights which are 12VAC). All of the hardware I used came as empty PCB boards that required every component to be soldered on.
The basic setup is cat5 from my desktop's network card to my home router > cat5 from the router to the dongle that basically translate the data > then cat5 to my hub outside. The dongle and hub can be seen below. I had the dongle just sitting on top of my desktop while the hub was out the yard within a battery box to protect it from the elements. I built a little platform for the hub so that the regular ATX power supply that powers the hub (and all the lights) could fit beneath. The hub has 16ports, each cable to control a 'Smart String Controller'. These little controllers are the ones you see housed in the 1" PVC pipe below (for reference each is about ~4-5" long). There are 2 connectors attached to each controller, the gray one in the picture is a female cat5 connector that is the input from the hub to the controller. The white one is a 3pin connector that plugs directly into the light strands. Stranded cat5 was used for power and data to the strings.
All of the programming was done with free software called Vixen. It requires you to tell each node when to turn on/off and also what color to be. The music was transmitted over FM radio using a small transmitter hooked to my desktop.
Here are the videos (labeled as '2014'). Let me know if you have any questions, the above description probably makes it sound more complicated than it really is.
youtube.com/user/LightsofNazareth/videos
Smartstring controllers progression from PCB to final. In total I used 17 controllers to controleverything for this past year.
Dongle- the interface between the computer and the hub
Hub supplies power/data to the smart string controllers
RBG Floods the 'dot' you see in the middle of the housing is the 30W RGB light that is extremely bright. I used a standard halogen flood light housing that I gutted and replaced with the piece below. The metal pieces serves as a place to mount everything and also acts as a heatsink for the light. Aside from Christmas I use them for up-lighting my trees.
Lights close up of the sidewalk lights without the cover screwed on and some pictures of the roof lights that were mounted on 1x4s
I had built and used 120V triac based controllers for the past few years but decided to take the step into low-voltage RGB lighting. Each individual light is addressable and can turn any color you want it to independently. All of the lights I used are 12VDC nodes (with the exception of the flood lights which are 12VAC). All of the hardware I used came as empty PCB boards that required every component to be soldered on.
The basic setup is cat5 from my desktop's network card to my home router > cat5 from the router to the dongle that basically translate the data > then cat5 to my hub outside. The dongle and hub can be seen below. I had the dongle just sitting on top of my desktop while the hub was out the yard within a battery box to protect it from the elements. I built a little platform for the hub so that the regular ATX power supply that powers the hub (and all the lights) could fit beneath. The hub has 16ports, each cable to control a 'Smart String Controller'. These little controllers are the ones you see housed in the 1" PVC pipe below (for reference each is about ~4-5" long). There are 2 connectors attached to each controller, the gray one in the picture is a female cat5 connector that is the input from the hub to the controller. The white one is a 3pin connector that plugs directly into the light strands. Stranded cat5 was used for power and data to the strings.
All of the programming was done with free software called Vixen. It requires you to tell each node when to turn on/off and also what color to be. The music was transmitted over FM radio using a small transmitter hooked to my desktop.
Here are the videos (labeled as '2014'). Let me know if you have any questions, the above description probably makes it sound more complicated than it really is.
youtube.com/user/LightsofNazareth/videos
Smartstring controllers progression from PCB to final. In total I used 17 controllers to controleverything for this past year.
Dongle- the interface between the computer and the hub
Hub supplies power/data to the smart string controllers
RBG Floods the 'dot' you see in the middle of the housing is the 30W RGB light that is extremely bright. I used a standard halogen flood light housing that I gutted and replaced with the piece below. The metal pieces serves as a place to mount everything and also acts as a heatsink for the light. Aside from Christmas I use them for up-lighting my trees.
Lights close up of the sidewalk lights without the cover screwed on and some pictures of the roof lights that were mounted on 1x4s
