What are you changing this year? Elements you are building or installing for 2023

[Iain]

Who has been setting up this weekend?

Still building. I have two snowflakes, three mini tree, stars, and a couple thousand verticals and horizontals still to push.

then I’ve got to start laying it out around the yard.

I picked up some extra thick, three core extension cable from the tip shop on the weekend. $10 for about 50 m!

 

[Indigogyre]

Christmas setup day 1? Managed to swap some stuff over today to get the top of the garage finished up. You might be able to notice at the edge of the garage I now put up the verticals for the first time since making them 2 years ago.

 

[djgra79]

Finally got all Halloween packed away and the mancave cleaned up a little to give me some space back.
After weeks of searching and 3rd order later, I finally found the connector forks I use for my PSUs (Jaycar for those playing at home) and have now wired up the PSUs in the first half of my garage matrix enclosure. Just need to add the PI connectors and its pretty much good to go.
Now to repeat for the 2nd half (receiver and PSUs, not controller)

 

[Pavle]

Replacing my previous tree control solution that consisted of power supplies in one box and power distribution in another. There wasn’t anything wrong with it, but it was. Real PIA to setup and pull down.

now I’ve got everything in one box and will be driving the data through 2 x smart receivers - I’m also upgrading my main controller F16V3 to a V4 that I won at the Sydney mini which has given me the flexibility to make this enhancement.

I am not the tidiest box builder, this is almost as good as I get (pimp it out with stickers to take the focus off ):

 

[Whitey-]

I finally found the connector forks I use for my PSUs (Jaycar for those playing at home)

Interesting, are those yellow ones the 5.3mm?

I found them too big for the screw terminals on my PSU, and I had to go all red 4.1mm ones.

I like the 3D printed layer seperating the controller and PSU, I think I'll have to steal reapproriate that idea!

 

[djgra79]

Yellow yes but these ones. They are thinner OD so slot in nicely. All the other ones I got were just that bit too wide I'd need to file down to fit otherwise.

Not 3d print, just cheap chopping board cut up!

 

[Skymaster]

Interesting, are those yellow ones the 5.3mm?

I found them too big for the screw terminals on my PSU, and I had to go all red 4.1mm ones.

Use the forks https://www.jaycar.com.au/forked-spade-yellow-pack-of-100/p/PT4724

Note that the colour often indicates the cable entry size as well, so you may not be able to fit the larger gauge cable into the red and blue forks

 

[Skymaster]

Not 3d print, just cheap chopping board cut up!

What ho? The DJ is not using a Kmart board? For shame

 

[djgra79]

What ho? The DJ is not using a Kmart board? For shame

Pure laziness, Coles is closer!!

 

[Whitey-]

Oh cool. Why pick the forks over the eyes? Surely the eyes are better secured?

 

[Skymaster]

Oh cool. Why pick the forks over the eyes? Surely the eyes are better secured?

Easier to work with, slides in the square hole nicely, don't need to undo the screw all the way and fidget with it.

Once the screw is done up for both the fork and the eyelet, the weakest point will always be the crimp where the wire enters the connector. That said, you should always have strain relief on your cables where they enter the enclosure with a small amount of slack internally.


Edit: Further to the above, you can see that @Pavle has used decent sized eyelet connectors onto the inputs of the fuse blocks.; this is definitely a place where I would (and have) used them as the access there is much easier compared to a PSU.

 

[Johnnyboy]

The setup has begun!

 

[Indigogyre]

Christmas Garage Day 2? Managed to get outside today to work on the rest of my garage. Just need to wire the lower props and elements and secure the verticals at the bottom and do something for the small flakes to stop them from spinning.

 

[Indigogyre]

Well, today I managed to take down the rest of my Halloween props so Halloween is officially over. I did managed to make these the last couple of days.



Just need to secure them to frames so I can put them up this weekend. Although, when reviewing my plans it seems I ordered and built 2 extra. Will need to figure out what to do with them.

 

[Skymaster]

I did managed to make these the last couple of days.

Must say I quite like the look of those flakes. Where did they come from?