Watching Matt Johnson’s how-to videos

I have been watching Matt’s how-to series and while he can be a little monotone (sorry Matt), they are quite informative.  His workshop is amazingly clean and I envy his tool collection.  I certainly have my fair share of tools and machines, which are typically purchased preceding every DIY project I attempt, but I don’t see myself getting all the stuff he has… so I will have to make due if I head off this direction.

Interesting videos from Matt:
Part 1: How to build a Leaping Arch for an outdoor Christmas light show
Part 2: How to build a Pixel Tree for an outdoor Christmas light show
Part 3: How to build a Pixel Matrix/Pixel Grid for an outdoor Christmas light show
Part 4: How to build a Pixel Wreath for an outdoor Christmas light show
Part 5: How to build a Pixel Snowflake for an outdoor Christmas light show
Behind the scenes tour of the Johnson Christmas light show

Some of the things I took away from watching these videos:
I need a welder (I’ll find a use regardless).
I am missing out on a lot of opportunities being stuck in LOR land.
I would have to learn all new skills and relearn some old skills.
Sequencing would obviously be more involved.
It ran him about $5,000 total he says (I am not spending that!)

Good stuff to think about.  Time to investigate when to buy stuff, what would I buy, and which sequencing tool would I use.

2015 show up, thinking about going RGB next year

So, the 2015 show is up and running.  We were late due to the older son getting a concussion and me having back issues for the last month.  Due to the move this year, we did this real basic by focusing on only the yard using elements we had around from previous years.  Also, the new house is ~30 ft for most of the roof line peaks and I am not big on heights.

A short video (cut off by memory card being full and out of focus anyways) can be seen here: https://vimeo.com/150559237

As you can see we ran the 10′ tree with 16 channels (folded for density per channel), bunch of canes/minitrees/santas, a few tree light wraps, 2 yard led strings (one added this year for coverage), and some new nets as we have nicely formed shrubs.  One 16 channel LOR runs the tree while another runs the rest of the show (including tune to sign).

Unlike the old house where I had run dedicated circuits to stop dimming lights, here we had one LOR running off the front door outlet and another off a garage outlet.  The garage outlet seems to be pretty isolated (still need to run through the fusebox and make sure labels are complete) but the front door outlet also runs the foyer lights and the 1/2 bath lights.  Fun stuff to use the restroom and feel like you might be having a seizure.  At least I could tell which song was running by the dimming… sigh.

Now that I have seen Matt Johnson’s dubstep show from 2014 and 2015 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=90oZ52M4IC0), I am tempted to head off in this direction and scrap what I have so far.  While I like the look of incandescent lights and random leds, I am really minimalistic at heart when it comes to layout/design and I think his looks really clean… almost antiseptic in an odd way.

Got to give this some more thought!

A journey into sight and sound (with RGB now)