I am just getting started with wanting to build controllable lights at my house. At the moment, I have not purchased anything yet. At this moment, my hope is to coordinate my lights with music and I am thinking of combining WLED with xLights. I would like to somehow send the audio that the lights are timed with to something like an IceCast or similar server. My thought is to create a QR code on a sign in my front yard to the audio server to hear my audio.
I am hoping to line the complete perimeter of my house with straight lines that will remain up year-round. I have many lines that will be horizontal and there are several gables. On either side of my house, there is a diagonal line that goes from the first-floor roof line up to a peak above the second floor going up and down. I haven’t measured it yet but I expect it to be a pretty long run, maybe 40-50 feet or so on each angle. I will likely just start with this but add additional Christmas-specific lights I put out in November each year; like adding a tree and possibly some type of matrix design on a fence. One advantage to having these up year-round is I can use it for other “celebrations”, such as a pink/red/white theame for Valentine’s Day, Green for St. Patrick’s Day. Red, white, and blue for 4th of July. Orange and purple themes for Halloween. I probably wouldn’t synchronize music for most of those except maybe some John Philip Sousa marches may sync well for 4th of July (Stars and Stripes Forever).
Obviously, I will need to measure all of these lines but from there, I would like to seek the advice of others as to what hardware to go with. When it comes to purchasing LED strips, I see different spacing options, from 30, 60, and 144 LEDs per meter. Obviously, the denser the pixel placement, the more power will be drawn. Also, the denser the pixel placement, the smoother the light transiotions ought to be (my assumption). I also realize that from a distance, you may not be able to discern each individual pixel and at some point, there is no point in being more dense.
As I mentioned, some of my lines may be in excess of 40-50 feet (~12-15 meters). This will likely require some power insertion along the line. My thought is to actually run some 14/2 silicone wire with a much higher voltage alongside the runs and use a buck converter and something like the QuinLED-Data-Booster in a small plastic box periodically to boost it along. Now, when it comes to animation, I may want the lights to run from left to right or right to left, but on a gabled end of the house, it may be nice to also do a top to bottom or bottom to top animation. Sould I then need to split the gable ends into two segments instead of one?
When it comes to mounting LED strips, I am assuming that I will want some type of aluminum channel with probably a frosted plastic shield over the LED strip. What is the best kind to use for this? Are there some that have a groove that would allow running additional wires hidden under the strip?
As you can tell, I am having a little difficulty just trying to figure out where to start. I have ideas, but no practical experience at these type of lights, yet. I do have quite a bit of experience at electronics in general, computer networking, and messing around with script editing. As I tend to do with most projects, I do hours upon hours of research before doing anything, but it is hard to use this knowledge without actually doing it.