Truss me, this stuff is cool

I have been needing to find a way to get the moving heads and lasers elevated this season. I have been considering all sorts of bizarre mounting schemes on the roof, etc. However, I ran across a local fellow who had some aluminum stage trussing for sale, so I picked up four sections. This stuff is incredibly strong and lightweight as well. I need to get two corner pieces and two base plates to complete the system. In addition to providing a secure place to mount the intelligent lighting, this truss will add that 'professional rock concert' feel to the show. I am really excited.


Each section is 10 feet, so this will be 10 feet high and roughly 20 feet across.



Check out the wall thickness. This is some serious tubing.

These lasers are cool

I was playing with them out in the garage tonight to try to get a handle on the dmx traits...

Wrapping for the Bellagio Fountain nearly complete

Well, 60 odd hours of wrapping and 336 sets of lights later, the 24 leaping light posts for the Mini-Bellagio display are finished. Just three more of the leaping light arches around the perimeter and I can move on to programming and other projects.

The Laser's Edge

Here's another addition for the 'rock concert' portion of the 2008 show. There will be two of these laser units. These will be controlled by dmx and will do liquid sky patterns and some other effects.

They came in today and I couldn't resist playing with them a bit.


Here are some shots with the lights on in the garage and just a little bit of fog. These show just how bright these babies are!








Now, a shot with the lights off.



And finally, one shooting outdoors. You can make out the hood of the truck. The laser is on top of a ladder shooting out the garage door at about six feet high. The white spot you see is a street light down the block.

First Project for 2008

My first project for this year is my nativity set. This is my first plywood cutout project. So, after all the cutting out, priming, painting and attaching to stakes, I finally finished attaching the rope light to all of the figures around the middle of February.

I am going for a very simple design with black figures outlined in rope light. They will be turned on when Linus tells the Christmas Story.


Here they are in the light



Here's one of the palm trees. They are approximately 8 feet tall.

Second Project for 2008 - Electric Splash

When I saw Steve Bang's version of the Bellagio fountain in lights I thought it was about the coolest thing I'd ever seen.



So... I'm doing my own version for this year's display. I am scaling it down to 10 feet tall and combining the left and right sides to save controller channels this year, anyway. That still leaves 24 10' uprights to wrap and 8 3/4" leaping lights. I had four leaping lights last season, so I only have to do 4 additional of those.

Three weeks ago, I finally got started with the uprights. I made myself a powered wrapping rig to try to speed the process along a hair.



A $10 can opener from Big Lots provides the drive. (That motor would be way, way too many rpm... it was just the first thing I found to use as a spindle for the other end) It was easy to weld a bolt to the little gear that normally turns the can, then I drilled a hole in a quart paint can lid and used nuts and fender washers to attach it. Then a pvc bushing was screwed to that, then a flex fitting to hold the pvc piece being wrapped.



I run the stp1 and put the plugs on so it's wrapped underneath the lights. Here's one ready to begin wrapping the lights on.



As of tonight, I have 16 of the 24 2" uprights finished and ready for storage, just another 8 to go.. I think I could make one of these blindfolded by now.

New Tree Topper for 2008

This won't be used all the time, only during the 'rock concert' portion of my show.

I think I am going to use TSO's Christmas Jam and do one sequence only using my dmx fixtures (four moving heads, four LED par 64's, two dmx abyss fixtures, my laser and some fog from two dmx foggers. Those fixtures will be used very sparingly, if at all in the other sequences, best of both worlds I figure.

I will have to figure out a way to mount it up there, but tougher things have been tackled. I am going to have a wireframe star around it that I will use most of the time... or maybe a star with this mounted above... not sure yet.