Peace Stake pixel options

[CVon]

Plan to have 55 peace stakes in the show and possibly expand later and trying to figure out the best option for pixels. There are pre-made 5 pixel strings with xconnects but those will get pretty expensive. Soldering my own strings together is the most economical but is it the best choice? I don't mind putting the time in to get everything together but curious what others are doing.

[TomsLEDs]

I recently made 100 5-pixel stakes ;I soldered all of them. If I had the time and money I would have ordered them from Ray Wu as custom icicles.

[TomsLEDs]

20231002_185620 2.jpg

Here is a shot of the 100 5 pixel stakes. Short test video.

[rstehle]

Buy them from Ray Wu. They are not that expensive, and will save you tons of time.

[MikeKrebs]

@TomLEDs did you write these up somewhere? If not, tell us about what you used, how one looks up close, how you make them stand up, etc.

[TomsLEDs]

I have yet to do a write up as my PC at home is displaying the web page for the site in a tree format and not HTML. Not sure what is up with that? I will try and tell you what I did do. I bought 2 30 count packs acrylic tubes (1"x30") off Amazon and sawed them in half. I used sheaved 18/3 wire cut into 22" lengths to expand the bullet nodes every 5 pixels. I soldered and heat shrinked every wire connection. I then began tie wrapping them by folding the newly soldered extension cable behind the 1st set of pixels (5 count) with the 5th pixel pointing up. I used aluminum 1/8" Tig welding cut to 14" lengths and inserted inside the 1st 2 tie wraps as a stand. I wrapped electrical tape at the bottom of the wire cluster and then inserted that section in one of the tubes. I hot glued clear 1" caps to the top and also at the bottom around the tape to seal the tube. I made 4 extension cable from the Sans controller to each pair of stake strands. Section 1-1 runs the 1st 20 stakes and so forth on the rest.10x10 grid so 500 pixels total. starting point was bottom right not left like a standard matrix. I did reverse the even rows in the controller. Big problem in mapping the even rows as the pixels flow down and not up when reversed. I ended up manually mapping them 1 pixel at a time in reverse order to flip the flow back up. That was 250 pixel reverse mappings. It took me a lot of time, but that is part of the hobby. I will add pics later.

[TomsLEDs]

For those having problems displaying this site in Chrome, the new version has security down too tight. They have overstepped their boundries. I had to dump it and find an older version to see this site as normal. I hope they fix it but til then I will stick with this older version. Way to go Google!!

[1pet2_9]

Take a piece of coro window trim, cut off a piece of 10 pixels, slit it not-quite-halfway with a razor blade, and fold it onto itself. Insert dowel rod down the middle. Squish it together and ziptie it.

[MartinMueller2003]

RE the mapping issue, that is a classic zig-zag problem which both Vixen and xLights can handle for you.

[1pet2_9]

peace_stake_model.jpg

Not the hardest Xlights model I have ever made.