Working on the fireworks lights project

I finally got started this week on one of my 2010 projects, fireworks lights. This isn't an original design of mine; Joel Rose on the Do It Yourself Christmas Forum is doing a very similar project and I borrowed his basic design.

First I made the hub:

Next step was to weld up the spokes.  There are eight of these with four 6.5 foot stalks each.  I made a jig on an old sheet of board so I could make each of the units match.

Here are all eight spoke units welded up and ready to go.

And here's the hub on a temporary pole with the spoke units installed.  When it's mounted properly, it will slide on the pole and be pulled up by two cables and a winch.  There will be three guy wires attached to the bottom of the hub that will be tight when it's fully raised.

Next project are the 32 sections of rope light that need prepped and installed.

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2010 Channel Layout Finalized

I am sometimes asked what the schematic looks like for the dispay.  Well, I don't really do one of those, but there is a channel layout that shows what controllers/channels control what display elements.  I spent 8 hours laying it out today and I believe it is finalized. 

We added nine additional controllers from 2009..

2010 Channel Layour (PDF)

One Fan Down - Two More to Go

Alright, one fan completely done. Blue is finished.

This thing really ended up with a LOT of wire on it.  Pretty darn heavy too!

All folded up and ready to go off to storage in the folks' barn.

Two more to go. I am not sure if I will start on the next one right away or do another project in between... this REALLY got monotonous.

Progress on fans - new radio transmitter

It's taking about five hours per color to add the lights to the fans.  I spent the morning working on radio transmitter issues, so I only got half of the clear lights added to the first fan this afternoon.

I have also installed a new FM Transmitter.  This unit supports RDS which will enable me to send the current song playing, etc. to be displayed on the radio in most vehicles.  Since the transmitter is located in the garage and the show computer is in the office, I had to find a way to extend a serial connection from the computer to the rds encoder in the transmitter.  I used a serial over ip adapter to do so.  This converts the RS232 signal to tcp/ip packets which are then decoded by the adapter and sent to the serial port on the transmitter.

Wrapping the Fans

I'm making progress on the fans which will be part of the replacement for the Bellagio Fountain this season.  This is the first one with 1/4 of it's lights installed.  This is 3600 red bulbs.  Each fan will have a total of  14,400 lights and 3,312 feet of wire on them.  Good thing the frames are built of welded steel.

Flame Generators

One addition to Seymour Lights for 2010 are flame generators.  Eight of these will be placed at key spots in the display this year.  They are dmx operated and work on propane, just like a gas grill.  Before I put them away in storage, I had to have a little bit of fun with them.

Allow me to present... The Firecracker Suite
http://www.vimeo.com/8753775