Halloween tech haunts

quote:

---

Ya'll doing anything fun??

---

I have colored LED up lighting in my yard + Hue downlights on my porch (6 columns, 5 porch lights, and 3 dormers).

I spent a LOT of time last year playing with Apple’s shortcuts features and Hue. Hue has REALLY cool ‘dynamic’ scenes. I have WLED lights- I think the Hue scenes are significantly better (and I still use WLED, more coming).
So for October, I have set 6 dynamic scenes (and one simple purple/orange static scene) set for each night of the week. So on Mondays, it’s one. It’s different on Tuesdays, etc. the uplighting on the columns and in the yard gets set to a static color within the scene (tonight is an eerie purple). The real beauty is that I wrote the arguments once for year-round color, and it would be very easy to add WLED (via HomeAssistant) additions to my current conditions (Tuesday in October vs November vs July 4 vs days in November that are after Thanksgiving vs days in January before the epiphany vs post-epiphany/pre-mardi Gras, then I’ve got Valentine’s Day, St Patrick’s Day, the patriotic days, Ash Wednesday and Good Friday with their own arguments. So that’s all automated, and now I just have to add in the components, and I’m particularly geeked that I took the time to split October up into each day of the week)



I have c9 ws2811 pixels on PVC that hang on my gutters. Last year, I had 2 strands. It was a little unwieldy to put up/down, so I cut each strand at the end of each PVC pipe and put new male/female connectors so I can put them up one piece at a time. Much better, but I only have half of them done and up currently. Further, I bought a new controller (Digi-Octa!!) and have purchased 500 more c9 pixels and yard stakes (I live on a corner lot, so I’ve got a lot of sidewalk frontage to cover). The goal is to get the rest of the gutter lights, Digi-Octa, and then a few hundred ground lights in place for trick or treating with either an active WLED scene that complements my Hue scene (no, the WLED ‘mimic hue’ doesn’t mimic dynamic scenes across lights/segments…it can set a segment to a static color of a Hue light automatically, but that’s it…not knocking the feature, but tempering my own expectations). So either that or a nice static purple/orange until my Thanksgiving colors (orange, bright white, green) take over before Christmas (I don’t actually do light shows or run x-lights. I change color patterns on an hourly basis or so)).



I have two ghost spotlights that rotate and a set of pumpkins that do the same.

I’ve got an 8ft inflatable dragon that every kid in the neighborhood goes nuts for (I’m told year round that the kids ask where it is. Last year we dressed it up for Christmas for them and got lots of sincere thanks). I had him on a smart plug, but the number of kids who would be upset that he was “dead” and “not just sleeping” was sort of sad, so I guess it’s not techish and just an inflatable yard prop.


If this goes well, next year we will probably add some Holiday Coro Halloween props (prefab stencils for those 11/12mm “bullet” pixels) to go with the stake lights, ideally still coming off the single digiocta (though at that point I may be starting to stress the 200w dc LED driver I have and get a more robust power transformer).

I would love to get to a point 2-4 years from now where I have the time/effort to make a matrix display out of my garage door and leave it up Halloween to New Years. So far, the wife has learned that if I ask to do it, it usually comes out to her liking. But a matrix would be sort of the last component in an Xlights/full display setup, and I still could probably benefit from doing ~9 window frames before tackling a matrix.

quote:

---

But a matrix would be sort of the last component in an Xlights/full display setup,

---

i have aquashed all of my full xlights plans... and i want to go the projection route. but still have yet to drop coin on a projector.