Jumping the gap at the bottom of a mini tree

[pblais]

Hello everyone,
So, I am making a mini tree.
I start at the bottom and work my way up to the top of one leg with bullet pixels. I jump over to the next adjacent leg and come back down to the bottom. Now, the gap at the bottom to the next adjacent leg is wider than the 3 inch spacing between my bullets (let's say for discussion purposes it's 6 inches). How do I deal with this wider gap. Do I have to cut the wire between the last pixel at the bottom of the previous leg and the bottom of the next one and solder in short lengtht of AWG18/3 wire so it will reach the next leg so I can work my way back up to the top??
Of course I will silicone the crap out of those connections.

Thanks
Pierre

[damo1271]

Yes, that is one way.
Depending on your actual pixel spacing on the minitree you may be able to jump every second pixel on the way down the leg, then fill the gaps on the way up the leg so all the jumps are at the top - where I assume the distance is smaller?
But this is much harder to program in your sequencing.

[StickyWicket]

Adhesive lined heat shrink tubing is awesome for splicing.

[bob81354]

you can cover the ones up with tape if you don't want to cut the wire I don't think you will lose that many

[bob81354]

Hi Nick
I just watched one of your videos of your house nice job can you tell me what your using for the outline and roof of the house like what are you using to make the patterns to hold the pixels
Thanks Bob

[StickyWicket]

Hi Nick
I just watched one of your videos of your house nice job can you tell me what your using for the outline and roof of the house like what are you using to make the patterns to hold the pixels
Thanks Bob

The roofline is composed of two parts. A single line of bullet pixels placed in traditional light holding clips at six inch spacing:



There are also 36 stars made out of 1/2 plywood and rectangle light modules that have double sided tape on the back:

[jnealand]

I just cut the wire and solder in a short piece of wire. No biggie.

[scottn3xcc]

I'll add that if you do power injection at the top of the tree, you don't have to run the positive wire from one side to the other at the bottom. Only the data and ground need to be connected across.

Sent from my SM-G900V using Tapatalk

[DaveMcK]

I'll add that if you do power injection at the top of the tree, you don't have to run the positive wire from one side to the other at the bottom. Only the data and ground need to be connected across.

Sent from my SM-G900V using Tapatalk

Another thought - tie positives and grounds together at the top and only the data line has to run across the gap. No pixel is too far from that junction at the top so that takes care of power injection also.

Sent from my XT1650 using Tapatalk

[scottn3xcc]

I tied my grounds across just for a safety margin. If the ground is not tied across, the voltages at the two ground points may not be the same. (especially if one string is 100% white and the other is off) There *could* possibly be enough of a voltage difference to cause the 2811s to not reliability decode the data stream.
I realize it may not be required, but it makes me feel better.

Sent from my SM-G900V using Tapatalk