Off topic, but Campsite flags and light up LED strips. (1 Viewer)

[starquake]

Recent trip to Campervan Campout has me coveting a light up flagpole for future events. I know we may be at Motorhome fun for them, but anyone with any clue on the electronics necessary to make one.

It's obviously a glass fibre pole for the flagpole itself, but for the lights it looks like a cheaper alternative is a LED strip (IP67 or outdoor rated) + a controller, plus a regulated 12 or 5v supply depending on the LED strips need. ANyone built one, and want to share, or join me in lighting up a pole in the funster area at a future Rally if no-one objects.

Gromett this may be one for you, but the commercial options being £50 and the parts to make it being sub £20 for the electrics from amazon, and WAY cheaper via China mail = I can likely make one with my soldering iron cheaper.

Anyone on fun done this before, and is it a no-no in the FUn area? As I need to know before i book general camping and set my pole up there.

 

[Kannon Fodda]

About the only thing funsters get techy about on our rally fields is generators

Nothing wrong with a good flag, although if it's very windy some might get concerned with safety or simply excess flapping noise, but then you'd get that anywhere.

Very few times do I see anyone try and light up, but it is done. After all there are plenty who have displays of solar type lights deployed around their van. On a rally field, with no hook up, and no generator, many might be concerned if they have enough spare battery power for the flagpole. It might be nice to turn it off overnight, once the evening festivities are over.

 

[Pausim]

A standard extending flag pole and external solar decorative lights works well.

 

[starquake]

Very few times do I see anyone try and light up, but it is done. After all there are plenty who have displays of solar type lights deployed around their van. On a rally field, with no hook up, and no generator, many might be concerned if they have enough spare battery power for the flagpole. It might be nice to turn it off overnight, once the evening festivities are over.

Yeah we have the solar awning lights for the motorhome already, and usually fit to awning when its out (the normal FIamma one not our air one). The RGB poles allow a nice firework like pulse up the pole in various colors, but as they not on all the time, the power usage should be minimal -> you are totally right it would be a concern if all the LED's were on all the time, but thats not the plan - a statically lit flagpole looks a bit "boring". I have plenty of power in any case, and will be upgrading our total solar to 300w, and we have around 300ah of storage on board in multiple batterys, so should run for days on a max 30w driver anyhow (given it'll be duty cycle to 5-10w peak I expect, so less than a TV to run for an hour). Part of the fun will be measuring the draw (my multimeter can thankfully also record current over time via a clamp) and setting it up I expect (addressible LED should allow some interesting patterns if I can program the controller). These days Arduino and similar programming chips I already have a few of!

Its looking from my research tonight to be a similar programmming endeavour to that which you use for christmas lights, and given how simple it may be to address these strings, it may be fun to also upgrade the solar awning lights to a led driver extension given I hadn't realised just how cheap led strips that are addressible have become now (5-10m of RGB strip thats IP67 can be as little as £10 today). I also finally now understand how the previous owner of my van fitted some LED's into the van!

At the Campervan campout a few of the areas had poles with unique flagpole lights allowing it trivial to find a semi-direct route back to the vans by orientating using these poles at night, and quite a few people mentioned how useful they were on the "midsized" campsite..
And yes, I expect we'd turn it off past midnight when everyone tucked up, as not much point when we've all gone to bed.

 

[starquake]

Well all the bits are ordered (from China unsurprisingly), but I have got a controller that should allow full custom programming, a 300 LED strip (outdoor rated) and power supply. The slightly scarey thing is on full brightness on all LED at once, the draw is 95W by my calulations, so may blind some funsters at that level.

The positive is as a self build I can fully tune the brightness on an LED by LED basis, so can have nice bright lights at top of pole, with it being less "bling" at bottom.

The mad thing is the fully IP67 rated LED strips to do this are £10 these days, the issue is the controller is "not" and a good controller able to handle 10 amps is 12 quid - > I could build myself, but the breadboard, chips and capacitors come to more than one prepackaged, and the prepackeged, but programmable device was cheaper given it's already in a mostly sealed case.

Total costs for project = £22 inc shipping so far, have a regulated power supply to add, but probabaly have one in my bits box already.

WLED is the key -> it's a programmable software for ESP devices designed to do anything including custom designs on LED arrays, and no, it's not Chinese software, it's open source, you flash it yourself to a ESP chip. (you do need to know how to do this, but I have many Arduinos, and it's a similar process).

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[JJ]

WHY?

JJ

 

[Kannon Fodda]

I am making a note that if I see your name on a rally we know to put you in a corner of the field and issue blackout blinds to anyone nearby

But seriously most of this is well over my head. Going to be interesting to see the results.

 

[starquake]

WHY?

JJ

Something fun to do I guess, but I think it could be used in rather interesting automation designs around houses. I probably can have my Ltd company make some money out of the skillset once I learn it.

Custom LED work prior to yesterday looked "difficult" and it being easier to buy something from someone who already had the "know".

Now I feel that I could produce a christmas display timed with lighting with only minor more work, and for a lot less money than you would expect.

5m of exterior grade lighting is £10, 10m but less bright is like £11. This is so cheap it would allow some nuts setups -> and I think I'll also do the motorhome up for winter with some fun lighting too (not a pole). 800 pixels or lights controlled for £12 ish per 800, it's a nuts price.

 

[starquake]

I am making a note that if I see your name on a rally we know to put you in a corner of the field and issue blackout blinds to anyone nearby

But seriously most of this is well over my head. Going to be interesting to see the results.

Yeah, thats why I'm doing it for the results, if anything I'll be in a position to revamp the interior of the van (which already uses a Chinese LED driver) and improve that to be more adressible, unfrotunatly, I now know the previous owner used "too cheap" LED strip, which is one color entire strip instead of individually adressible strip, which is a shaae given the cost differce is like 30p ona stirp wholeale, so when I revamp the van interior I'll need to actually remove some furnature to fit a better quality strip.

But also the learning experience as said on the other thread, this LED stuff actually looks super simple. Theres a phone app to control it all for andriod and ios, and literally the ony thing you need to do post install of the controller is join it to your wifi network (ie it does need a semi-permanent hotspot in the van, which we already have).

I can link the aliexpress links (hopefully) when it all works. I'm reasonably confident it will as there are examples of people building exterior grade screens using this technology (ie, take many of these £10 strips and convert it into a Jumbotron style TV).

 

[carolyn]

I hate all those blasted flashing lights, particularly if I’ve had a migraine. They make me feel queasy. They also look really naff. I suppose a military or National flag and MHF of course should be acceptable plus a subtle dim light to find your way home and help avoid piles of dog poo.

You’d think I’d be in a better mood having been to Bodycombat wouldn’t you.

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[The Coops]

I hate all those blasted flashing lights, particularly if I’ve had a migraine. They make me feel queasy. They also look really naff. I suppose a military or National flag and MHF of course should be acceptable plus a subtle dim light to find your way home and help avoid piles of dog poo.

You’d think I’d be in a better mood having been to Bodycombat wouldn’t you.

Is it time for a poll of the nay sayers and the ayes about flagpoles and lights?

 

[scotjimland]

Is it time for a poll of the nay sayers and the ayes about flagpoles and lights?

flagpoles .. ok .. been known to fly a flag myself..

lights .. nay sayer

the night sky is wonderful ... add lights and it goes out ..

if you want flashing lights, go to a fun fair or night club

 

[Simon Meadwell]

Just gobbledegook to me

 

[Captain Yoghurtpot]

Something fun to do I guess, but I think it could be used in rather interesting automation designs around houses. I probably can have my Ltd company make some money out of the skillset once I learn it.

Custom LED work prior to yesterday looked "difficult" and it being easier to buy something from someone who already had the "know".

Now I feel that I could produce a christmas display timed with lighting with only minor more work, and for a lot less money than you would expect.

5m of exterior grade lighting is £10, 10m but less bright is like £11. This is so cheap it would allow some nuts setups -> and I think I'll also do the motorhome up for winter with some fun lighting too (not a pole). 800 pixels or lights controlled for £12 ish per 800, it's a nuts price.

I like the sound of this, especially the Christmas lights bit.
Looking forward to some picture results.

 

[starquake]

I like the sound of this, especially the Christmas lights bit.
Looking forward to some picture results.

Automation of Xmas lights is an identical thing to a flagpole just with more pixels really. There’s software to join multiple pixel controllers together for an actual display and that’s how the big displays work under hood. If a single 5m strip is 144,300 or 500 pixels you get idea of how much programming the big displays are now. I have a lot more respect for the guy locally that does a single song to music across a few thousand lights now

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[steve69]

WHY?

JJ

Well at least he'll know where his van is as he rolls back towards it from the pub at night.

 

[rolosroller]