The track is called “Everybody” by PlanetShakers.. They were actually doing that song, but the audio on my camera was terrible, so I used the original.

It’s downloadable from iTunes, that’s where I got it from.

-mrpackethead

Second clips is a 47.5″ star with 136 RGB nodes attached.  Video shot in here in our shop.

For the curious, this is an early prototype of a system which will be distributed by Animated Lighting.  Check with them for pricing, availability and more details.

P.S.   Video questions:  This was shot with a Nikon point & shoot camera, tripod mounted, autofocus off.  The camera was perfectly still during recording.  But, the captured image hops all over the place.  No idea why, and it drives me crazy.

It only seems to occur in high-contrast video clips.  Daylight shooting works as expected.

Camera glitch?  Anyone have an idea?

Wednesday morning I pulled out the controllers (last year’s Rev1 Art-Net bridge), extension cables and power supplies.  After about an hour of shuffling back and forth, I applied power.

Gratifyingly, the entire rig sparked right up.  I was pleased to see that 6 months of outdoor exposure hadn’t affected the nodes in any measurable way.

Answer: See the clip below…

(Note that the sound doesn’t start until half way through.)

Sorry for the rough video quality… The nice camera (EOS 7D + 28-70 f/2.8L) from last fall was a rental, and I’ve not found the courage to buy a set for myself yet.

Nonetheless, I think the gist of the project is nicely conveyed.  :)

The DecaBox protocol converter is described in more detail here.

Front porch is suggested, but neither required nor included.

It’s 40 of the RGB Tubes, driven by DMX and some pixel-mapping software they ginned up.

More details, plus information about the release of the strings & controllers, is coming very soon.  Thanks, everyone, for your patience through this R&D phase.  We’re confident that you’ll be thrilled with the result.

His toolchain is Madrix (running in a virtual Windows machine on a Mac, natch) –> Enttec USB Pro –> DMX / Pixel Bridge I designed –> 50 Nodes.

Video courtesy an EOS 7D SLR.

Spent a few hours figuring out the protocol (this new 8 bit controller speaks a somewhat different language than last year’s 5-bit system).  Once I could drive the nodes discretely and successfully, I wrote some quick microcontroller code for a DMX bridge.

Here they are, lounging happily in a bowl of tap water.  All we need is a fish.

Onward!

As always, if you’d like to receive automatic updates when content is added to this site, just enter your name and email address in the top right corner of this page.

A couple days ago I rented a Canon EOS 7D + 28-70 F/2.8L lens, which I used to capture some footage of the house on a frozen and windy night.

The camera can shoot full-on HD video – 1080p at 30 fps.  5 minutes of footage fills a 4 GB flash card.  It’s compressed quite a bit by Youtube, but the actual color rendition is as close as I’ve ever seen.  Audio is the same as you’d hear if you visited in person.

This next picture is the physical incarnation of an idea my wife had.  She wanted snowflakes on the house.  Lots of ‘em.

So we sketched up a family of flakes in the CAD program, then emailed the DXF files to the metal shop that’s just up the road.  The shop tightly arrayed the flakes on a 4′ x 10′ piece of aluminum stock, then cut them out on the laser table.

The large flake  shown here measures 23″ from tip to top and contains 83 RGB nodes on ~ 1.5″ centers.  83 nodes equals 249 channels of DMX and/or Art-Net.  So 2 per universe.

Since we left ‘practical’ behind several months ago, such a massive channel count poses no problem at all.

Snowflake, fully loaded & waiting for installation.

The video clip below shows it running a simple – yet frantic – test pattern.  It’s really, really bright.

With any luck, we’ll have a whole flock of these mounted on the house after Christmas.  They’ll run through January & hopefully counteract the cold grey winter.

As always, if you’d like to hear when contact on this site changes, just enter your name and email address in the upper right hand corner of this page.  As a member of our exclusive ‘Insider Club,’ you’ll be the first on your block to receive the updates.

Thanks!

Later this week I’ll be able to post some HD video clips + audio + decent color reproduction.

Yesterday (Saturday) morning UPS delivered the missing link of this year’s light display: a USB dongle, used to authenticate the software which drives the LEDs.  The software can be downloaded free of charge.  However, communication with the outside world requires an decryption key.

Since then, I’ve installed and tested two Art-Net bridges, which drive about 2/3 of the existing lights.  Tomorrow morning, weather pending, I’ll add the third controller and record some decent images.

In the interim, enjoy this grainy, overexposed foreshadowing of things to come:

2009 RGB Node Preview from Engineering Solutions Inc on Vimeo.