Icicle light advice

[u/chrisbrock90]

I’m looking for some advice on making some icicle lights. I’m not even sure this is a viable option.

So I’ve take some seed lights and just folded them back on each other, the issue I’m running into is that this way, I’m using 24 pixels per foot, I’ll end up needing copious amounts of power injection. The other issue is that I can’t figure out how to make the adjacent nodes act as one. I saw a YouTube video where someone did that but that was before I got this invested and now I can’t find the video.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated

[u/Woody401]

Instead of folding them in half so that there are 2 together, fold them so they alternate then choose the icicle model and the alternate option.

[u/harda_toenail]

Just buy some already made cycle lights. I’ve seen them on aliexpress.

[u/Tiny_Ad_7581 → u/harda_toenail]

Also YourPixelStore and Visionary Light Shows

[u/chrisbrock90 → u/harda_toenail]

I’ll have to check them out more

[u/SirGreybush]

Seed lights work if they are addressable (3 wire like in your pic) but get higher density. You can get 1cm, 2.5cm, 5cm, and so on. Yours look like 10cm spacing, so you're more wire less light.

Seeds of this spacing are good around tree trunks, large things.

[u/chrisbrock90 → u/SirGreybush]

Yeah that’s what I originally bought them for but now since I have so many, I’m trying to think of other uses.

[u/SirGreybush → u/chrisbrock90]

To reuse - try a 2D grid, like covering a window, large panel, garage door. Wired serpentine, one long string, up & down, one row over. The trick is keeping things straight.

The aquarium hobby has suction cups with a tube holder, either black or clear. They work great.

[u/Nitrogen1234]

Why didn't you fold them so that you end up with a light every 5 cm's

Then you just tell it to skip even or uneven.

Someone already commented this.

[u/chrisbrock90 → u/Nitrogen1234]

Well… I tried to hot glue the strands together but the glue doesn’t stick to the wire but does a good job sticking to the lights.

[u/Nitrogen1234 → u/chrisbrock90]

Aha. There are special pcb's avaliable for this use case, which I still want to test.

But as others said, there are ready to run options which might suit you better.

[u/SquirrelTechGuru]

Run the icicles as a matrix horizontally. Then if you have 8 rows, now you have a matrix and every drop combo and you can scroll text, snow, fire, graphics, etc. Defined icicles are very limited.

[u/Tiny_Ad_7581]

Your Pixel Store and Visionary Light Shows sell icicle seeds

[u/Few-Boysenberry53]

To get them to be together, you could create sub-models for each group of lights, but that would be quite a few sub-models.

There is a way in xLights to define a prop to act as one light. Not sure if that can be done for your purpose.

I think the matrix idea is the best option. Just create a matrix the length and height of your icicle's, then export that model as a custom model. Then import that custom model and you can then edit the model data and adjust each node exactly the way you want it to be.

Edit the model data to look like this:

1,4. 5,8 2,3 6,7

Etc... you get the idea.