Apartments are a lot harder because you can't usually drill into the side. I've seen some balconies on apartments in my area with small animations, and one person has a matrix in the window.
But at the end of the day it's the same as house, you just have a much smaller canvas to work with.
You'll want to look up the ESPixelStick to get started if you're in an apartment, it can probably meet all your needs, since you won't be able to do too many lights.
I once had a crazy idea to build an inner frame and my own floor and walls onto those frames, in a room I was renting for a long time. I ended up not doing that, and depending on your situation it might not be allowed to do it (either because of rules from the landlord, or fire safety that you have to consider).
I still think it’s an idea worth considering in some situations though, as long as you are sure it’s compliant with rules from the landlord and fire safety regulations etc.
I don't know about building an entire false frame (what do you do with it when you move? You would lose a ton of interior space. Your ceilings would only be 7 feet, etc).
But I've definitely seen people build a false wall that covered 1/2 of a real wall to make fake builtins over a fake fireplace. But they could take it with them when they left.
Yeah, the idea was to disassemble it and take it with me when I moved out. The inner frame would be assembled using screws, rather than nails and also not using any glue.
It might take several days, or even a couple of weekends if you have busy days during Mondays to Fridays, to disassemble it. And that’s if you originally built the whole thing in one go and kept in mind and made notes of how to disassemble it.
The worst situation is if your lease suddenly ends on short notice and you don’t have time to disassemble it on the time you have left before you have to leave.
Another thing is that even if you disassemble it on time, the dimensions of your frame probably won’t fit well into the next room you rent in a different place. And then you have to do a bunch of cutting and maybe buying even more materials or throwing away some of what you had, or find somewhere to store it or something.
There’s also the possibility that you might accidentally damage the original floor or walls even though you try to be super careful, if you go about constructing such a thing.
These sorts of potential complications are part of the reason that I ended up not actually building such a thing myself so far. Aside from also not having much in terms of extra cash on hand at the time to even go buy the materials I would have needed for it.
The half wall you suggested is far more practical for sure.
Fire safety rules are a good point. Wasn’t thinking about that aspect. But using outdoor compliant lights and hanging from frames outsides could be an option. Guess it would be an interesting start
Maybe one thing you could do if you have large enough windows so people would see: in-door wall projection, e.g. something like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jtFthRSqRwQ but interior?
There is a street that does this in Alameda (3200 block of Thompson), and I'm told they have a covenant/contract requiring you to overdecorate when you buy a house on that block.
While it is an important holiday for Christians, it’s widely celebrated by non Christians and most of the traditions predate Christianity as European winter celebrations. It includes bits of Germanic Yule and Roman Saturnalia celebrations, both which predate Christianity.
This is mostly pop history, dating back to anti-Catholic propaganda from zealous Puritan reformers who wanted to excise any trace of what they saw as pagan contamination. The bulk of Christmas traditions are distinctly Christian, and very little of Saturnalia in particular was carried over into the new holiday. Perhaps the biggest influence it had was the tradition of communities electing a 'King of Mischief' to preside over festivities -- a practice that hasn't even survived into the modern day!
Of particular note is the Christmas tree, which as far as we can tell originated in the (decidedly non-pagan) 16th century:
"The earliest mention of customs like Christmas trees are actually ascribed to Martin Luther. The story goes that during a winter evening stroll Luther was overcome by the brilliance of the stars in the night sky, painting the background over the evergreen forests. In order to capture that moment Luther cut down and erected a tree in the main hall of their house, covering its branches with lighted candles" (Bruce David Forbes, Christmas, a Candid History, 50).
I don’t think what you are saying is accurate- I was looking up the history of most of the regular things people do as American families, and almost everything I could think to look up had pretty clear non Christian origins. It sounds like the Romans even cut evergreen trees and set them up indoors for Saturnalia. By all accounts the Catholics only changed it even to be in the winter to try to co-opt existing winter Solstice celebrations. It is hard to figure out the real history of things with so many motivated accounts…
Overall, specific rituals aside, having a big family celebration around the winter solstice really seems to do wonders for the mental health of people at high latitudes- and has been done consistently since long before Christianity. As a parent in a non Christian family, I find it to be incredibly valuable and important and I take it pretty seriously, but without any sense of it being religious.
Every year, some people need to marginalize Christianity's contribution to Christmas despite ample evidence to the contrary. I attribute it to an ignorance of how religion digests culture and evolves, plus the usual resentment towards that religion in particular.
There's actually a neighborhood, where everyone who lives there is Jewish, and they go all out on lights. Even get the houses networked together so they can do effects across the whole street. They also post a lot of how to videos regarding xlights and stuff
There's a street like that where a cousin of mine lives. He agreed to it when buying the home. But there is one house that does not decorate at all. It was a very long and ugly situation. All that misdirected hate toward the people living in that home wasn't very Christmassy.
You can celebrate Christmas without decorations. I find those intensive LED creations on houses kitchy and invasive to neighbours and people passing nearby.
Buying prebuilt stuff and premade sequences seems like it’d take all the fun out of it, at least for me. I guess this is an area where some people are in it for the goal and others for the journey. I think either is equally valid, but it’s always interesting to see people making different tradeoffs than I’d make.
I mentioned this in my other comment, but the hobby is basically three parts -- big DIY, small electronics, and software/sequencing. Some people really like one or two parts of it. Some people will buy kits and spend all their time making sequences.
Some will spend all their time building and then buying sequences.
I personally end up buying sequences because I run out of time. I've made them before, but they take about 50 hours to make one song. I sadly don't have that kind of time, so I spend all my time making and then shortcut the end so that all the making serves a purpose.
Vendors sell the sequences for a song, and they typically have certain events plotted out. You then just take the timeline in the sequence file you purchased, and map your props to parts of it
It's somewhat akin to taking a midi file and setting various instruments to the various channels in the file
Join us!! It’s the perfect hobby for nerds. It starts with big DIY projects with lots of PVC and zip ties and 3d printing. Then you do a bunch of small electronics with solder and microcontrollers. And then you get to do programming and some basic networking to set it all up.
I got started in Dec 2020 when I couldn’t go anywhere and my show grows every year.
I’ll admit it is a time sink. I’ve probably spent 120+ hours on it (and my wife has contributed 20ish hours as well)
First you'll need a controller. Falcon Christmas is sort of the gold standard. You can buy just the board and assemble it yourself, or you can get a prebuilt controller. I'd suggest a prebuilt for your first one.
Then you'll need LEDs. My favorite vendor for LEDs is Wally's Lights[0], but there are others. The big choice you have to make is 12v vs 5v. Most people do 12v because you can make a much longer string of lights before you have to do what's called power injection, which is where you splice in a power boost. However 12v lights obviously use more power. Also, most of the pre-built things are 12v. I actually use primarily 5v, but at this point I'm about 1/3 12v because I got props from other people.
You're actually starting at exactly the right time, all the vendors do big sales in January.
Then you'll need something to put the pixels into. There are lots of options here. Strips, props, grids. After you watch some videos you'll have a better idea of what you want. Also after you figure out your layout.
Then you need to get Xlights[1]. Xlights is actually a good place to start, because it gives you an idea of what kind of things you can make. You can actually start with putting a layout on Xlights to see what you want to buy.
But, before all that, you'll want to learn. These are my favorite YouTube channels:
This is incorrect. The same number of lights at the same brightness will use give or take the same wattage. The increase in voltage leads to a decrease in amperage. Larger installs should actually use slightly less power because the higher voltage loses less to resistance in the wires, the same reason utility-scale power distribution is done at higher voltages than anyone actually uses.
There are some individual "12v" LEDs that are just a lower voltage LED plus a big resistor to bring 12v down to a level the LED can survive which do obviously waste a lot of power but that would be a really silly design for a multi-LED assembly.
> There are some individual "12v" LEDs that are just a lower voltage LED plus a big resistor to bring 12v down to a level the LED can survive which do obviously waste a lot of power but that would be a really silly design for a multi-LED assembly.
But yet it's how every one of the LED lights that we are talking about are designed. So like I said, 12v will use more power.
Almost every multiple LED 12v strip I've ever used has the LEDs grouped in threes wired in series, likewise 24v strips are divided in to groups of six. I don't entirely understand the electrical science behind it but I think it's something like the voltage experienced by each LED is within tolerances even though the overall input voltage isn't, and if you were to try to cut the strip within a group it'd blow up that group quickly.
Those strips should use slightly less power for a given number and brightness of LEDs than their lower voltage counterparts because the higher voltage is losing less power to resistance over a given distance, same as high voltage transmission lines.
Yes, those are the consumer ones that are generally not individually addressable. I'm talking about WS2811 LEDs. Pretty much every WS2811 controller board is 5v, because there is only one manufacturer and that's all they make. The strips with 12v have a resistor on each one because people like to use 12v since you can power more lights before you have to inject more power.
Best place to start is probably some form of "permanent Christmas lights"
You install them along the trim of your house, like you would with traditional lights. You can then use them for all sorts of things. Flag colors for patriotic holidays. Bright pastels for spring. Christmas can be any mix of red green and white, hanukkah can be blue and white, etc
They let you start soft, with something that doesn't need xlights, just a simple controller and the lights, so you get the feel for the hardware side of things, and you canuse them all the time
I wrote a blog post[1] about how I got mine set up. My show this winter isn't very big, consisting of only a spinner (big circular pattern of pixels), megatree (big cone shaped light "tree") and the house lights, but some of my friends in the area go all out with spotlights and moving components and even pyrotechnics
Enjoyed your blog post - some great insights, solid final results and at about the right level of DIY. Could you give a specification for the LED pucks though please? The Aliexpress link is dead.
Ah yeah, sorry about that. I'll have to update the blog post.
They are sold by a variety of vendors, but generally you're gonna look for the 3-pixel 30mm pucks. They come in either cold-white or warm-white varieties, and a slew of different voltages.
You can buy a whole "kit" from the same vendor I bought my stuff from here[1], or the individual lights[2] and the tracks[3]
You can also buy similar products from some US local stores, like WasatchLights[4], YourPixelStore[5], or from Gouley[6], who appear to be the original manufacturers of these. But I've had good luck with PaulZhang's store on AliExpress, so its the one I can attest to.
I've always been interested in making my decorations a bit more interactive using coding, but I'd definitely want something more subtle than one of these intricate light shows played to music. Any good examples of something more subtle?
Unless you're really close to your neighbors and they're all on board, I feel my neighbors wouldn't want the extra attention on our street.
It's basically an entire Christmas light show, synced with music which is broadcasted on an FM radio station. The main problem is that because few people have access to an FM radio outside of their car, it pretty much causes traffic chaos in that little cul de sac, and the best view requires you to not be in a car.
If you're going to put a dot matrix display of images on your house, just cover it with LCD screens. At some point too much tech just makes it boring and plain.
The backlight bleed of LCDs would look pretty awful at night. Also I’m not sure how others feel about it but to me a DIY LED matrix is way cooler than dropping in a prebuilt screen with HDMI input.
Some people do combine those with their individual pixels. They will also use projection mapping. All three techniques look different and add to the show in different ways.
Lots of animated displays in New England: https://www.nelights.org/