Christmas in Brewster

I’ve been to conventions and stuff before, mostly for the grocery store, but I must say this Light Up Ohio was one of the most enjoyable things I’ve done in a long time. I’m sure it was because it had everything to do with my new hobby (eh… habit) and the entire day I was surrounded with knowledgeable people who have the same habit.

All of the presentations were very interesting and I learned something from each one of them. The food was EXCELLENT. We had Gregg Jones’ pulled pork and it was fabulous. I got a cool shirt and bought a hat (forgot to get pictures to post), but the best part for me was the prizes. I NEVER win anything, but I actually won two pretty cool things. I won my choice of a lighted wireframe from www.christmas-leds.com. I chose the cool white LED snowflake. It was what stood out the most to me, but now I think I’ll need to buy some more! I also won a penguin blow mold. I’ve never really been into blow molds and this is my first, but after seeing it lit and looking at it more, its starting to grow on me. It doesn’t hurt that April loves penguins, so she was excited about it.

I took away many ideas, namely the portable hole and JUMP pole that Walter and Jackie presented. I am going to try my darndest to have a mega tree in 2010 based on some of their ideas. (Oh darn, that means more controllers and lights!!!). I also got an idea from Dave Jones about an FM transmitter using an Arduino that I’m tempted to try. I still really like the EDM units, but it is tempting to roll my own and from what I hear the quality isn’t bad.

I mentioned in another post a purchase that I arranged to pick up at LUO. I bought a electrical enclosure for $20. The enclosure is very nice (and heavy!). It is 2′ x 2′ x 8″, and should be plenty of room for both the breaker panel and the outlets. The plan is to put a single 3 or 4″ hole in the bottom to run cords through and the rest will stay as is. I’m also going to paint it gray so it doesn’t stand out so bad. What’s nice is it has a mounting plate in side that everything can be mounted to so I’m not perforating the outside to get things mounted well. It isn’t technically rated for outside, but it has nice seals on it to keep dust and moisture out, so I think it will do just fine. I’m probably going to put some sort of rain cap over the top to keep the water from running into the door, even though I highly doubt it would get it, I’d rather be safe than sorry since it isn’t “rated for outdoors”. Thank you Gary for hooking me up with that! I’m hoping to find a cheap 2 wheel dolly to mount it to to make it easier to move around. If I can find one cheaper than making a treated lumber stand, I will just weld some supports to it and use the dolly as the stand. Otherwise I will have to come up with some sort of stand that can be easily moved. By the time the equipment is mounted and the stand is added, it’s going to have quite a bit of weight to it as it already isn’t very light.

All in all, LUO was a great experience and I hope to be in attendance next year.

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I finished wiring controller #4 tonight leaving only controller #3 to wire yet. I went ahead and tested controllers 2 and 4 and every channel lit up a string of lights, so that’s a step in the right direction. I still need to label each of the channels, but I’m holding off on the weather proof labels to arrive to see if they are more feasible than my “packing tape over regular labels” labels.

I started trying to get an idea on the layout for my temporary sub-panel, and can’t quite figure out how I want to do the wiring. I did some research on the number of conductors allowed in a conduit and it kind of threw a monkey wrench in things (when I have time I need to research that saying, I’m not quite sure I get it). The main problem I’m having is that the outlet boxes I was going to use only have a 1/2″ hole for conduit, so that means I can only get enough wires in to run two circuits, which means I need three conduits coming off the breaker panel. I think I’m going to have a 1″ come off the side and into the SSR panel. The 1″ will carry the hots from the breaker panel to the SSR panel and back to the breaker panel where they will go into the appropriate conduit for the outlets. The main issue with having three conduits is I can’t lay them out how I want and it seems that the whole thing will be larger than the 2×2 that I wanted it to be. It’s probably going to be more like 2×3 by the time I am done. I was hoping to have it be as unwieldy as possible so it can be stored easily. That’s all for now I guess. Hopefully I do something a bit more exciting so I can have more pics to share, but this is all you get for now.

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Today on Planet Christmas someone posted that Menards had 15A GFCI outlets for $4. I had wanted to go out anyhow, so I took my lunch and headed there and Office Max. I was wanting to go to Office Max to look for Avery Weather Proof labels. I read that is what RJ uses over at DLA for his case labels and it seemed like it would be much easier that my “packing tape over normal labels” method, so I thought I would pick some up and try them out. I wanted the smaller ones, and naturally my Office Max doesn’t carry them. So off to Menards where I found that our local Menards did indeed have $4 GFCI’s, so I picked up 6 white ones (probably should have gotten more, but gotta save money). While I was there I looked at prices for an enclosure to mount my 15A SSRs in.

I’m not sure if I’ve talked about this yet or not, but this is the plan for distributing power to the display. The local hardware was able to find me a 50A 240V RV outlet (basically a 50A stove outlet in an outdoor enclosure that allows the plug to be plugged in and still be weather proof). So that will be permanently be mounted to the house and tied to a 50A 240V breaker in the breaker panel that is meant for the stove, but is unused because we have a gas stove. Come setup time, I will have a portable distribution panel that will have a 100A main lug outdoor breaker panel on it. This will plug into the 50A 240V outlet and provide up to 100 amps of 120V power (50A on each of the 240 legs). The panel will be populated with 6 15A breakers for each of the 6 circuits that will be used to power the display. From the main breaker panel, the breakers will go into one of six Crydom CY3455 15A SSRs (Solid State Relays) that will be used to kill power to the display during the day. The 6 SSRs will be wired into 6 separate GFCI outlets that will then distribute the power to the controllers, that will distribute it to the lights. Hopefully I can find some good (free) diagramming software and draw up a diagram. Not only will killing the power during the day save a little bit of energy, but will make everything safer as there won’t be any power running around when it isn’t needed. The SSRs will be triggered by a small “wall-wart” type power supply that will be plugged into a regular old electronic lamp timer. The timer will be set to come on a bit before show time and will turn off some time after, thus enabling and disabling power to the entire display at the appropriate times. Anyhow, I needed a place to put the 15A SSRs. I had found an 8x8x4 NEMA3R enclosure on eBay for pretty reasonable, but wanted to check prices at Menards before buying it. I found a 6x6x4 enclosure that seems like it will work just fine that was cheaper (no shipping) and looks prettier too! It will be a little tight, but I’m fairly certain I can make it work.

I received the 15A SSRs a few weeks ago, but they have just sat at work since then. Tonight I finally decided to bring them home and try them out to make sure they work. I hooked them up to a string of lights and powered them with a 12V supply and they all worked like a charm. I then tried powering a controller with one to make sure that the controller pulled enough amperage to get the gate on the SSR to close and it seems like that works fine as well.

After testing the SSRs, I set to work getting enclosure #4′s grounds trimmed, tinned, and connected. Some of you may notice that I skipped enclosure #3, and that wasn’t intentional, it’s just that I picked up #4 first. It is definitely easier (and neater) doing the ground wires before the PCB/heat sink is in place. I am still getting asked about it, so I’ll remind everyone — The grounds are not necessary whatsoever. I’m using them because they are there and because I have the room for the grounding bar, and because I’m anal like that and like to see stuff grounded. Might come back to bite me in the end because I hear having a ground may cause GFCIs to trip easier, but we’ll see. Anyhow got all the grounds on that enclosure done and the PCB/heat sink mounted, and it’s ready for final wiring tomorrow night.

Before calling it a night to write this (now rather long) blog post I searched for the smaller Avery weatherproof labels, and found someone on eBay selling them for a reasonable price, so I’m going to order some tomorrow and hope that they work out. Sure will save some time on the labeling if they do.

Tonight’s pics also include some pics of the beginning stages of my arch creation from the other night.

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