We Have Pixels!

So, not long after I'd designed the layout I thought I'd be happy with in xLights, I went ahead and ordered the pixels. This can be an interesting task, so I'll walk through what I did.

Caveat: you can likely get them cheaper than I did, but I am fortunate enough to have wiggle room in my budget. I'll mention some things which other people say they have done, but I can't vouch for them, though they do sound reasonable.

Caveat 2: I'm not endorsing or sponsored by any of the vendors I'm linking to here. In fact, were it not for my desire to give credit where it's due, I probably wouldn't include links, just steal the pictures. I may or may not be using the products I share below; I don't know. I haven't gotten that far.

First thing to do is to decide how many pixels. On the rooflines and straight runs, I opted to do a 2" spacing which, judging by my existing attempt at pixel lighting, is fine. It's not excellent, but it's fine. When installing, I'm planning on using some mounting material which will allow me to go to 1" spacing if I desire, but that sounds a bit like overkill to me. A couple of examples are below. After I did all the calculations, I determined I'd need 2,116 pixels for the outlines.

I also used some retail props (the stars, arches, and spinners) to estimate the number of pixels for each of those. Of course, this is going to vary from place to place and what you want in yours, so do a bit of research (google "holiday coro", "christmas light rgb props" and the like), find some you want, and look at the pixel count (in quite a few cases, the vendor has custom models for xLights; there will be a future post about that). The props ended up taking 2,788 pixels.

Finally, there was the megatree. These are somewhat easy to calculate as long as you know how dense you want it. I want more of a beginner's megatree (well, I want a huge one, but I'm starting with a smaller one to see how it goes), so I'm allocating about 800 pixels for that (50 per string, 16 strings around the tree; this is a fairly common configuration).

Grand total: 5,704 pixels in my xLights configuration.

Now that I'd decided on a number, I started reading the forums (mainly auschristmaslighting.com, even though I'm not in Australia; it's incredibly useful) and found that the three most common vendors are eBay, Amazon, and Aliexpress. Amazon is reliable and fast, but relatively expensive. Aliexpress is reliable and relatively inexpensive, but can be slower, eBay can be quite a bit cheaper, but you're sacrificing the reliability. I opted for Aliexpress.

Now, on that forum, when it comes to purchases, Ray Wu's store will come up a lot. This is a highly used vendor in this hobby and they have a ton of supplies for pretty great prices. However, I wanted to see what else was available because Aliexpress is HUGE (plus roughly 30% of the cost would have been shipping, and being a Prime member for years, I've developed an allergy to paying for shipping).

I ended up buying from another vendor because I was able to get 1,000 pixel lots pretty inexpensively. I did find one vendor with free shipping, but paying for shipping ended up being cheaper when I bought the lots. A note on this a bit later. Any rate, the 6,000 lights were around $950, which is $0.16 per pixel; I understand that to be reasonable, though I have heard of others getting them for about half that. I placed my order on the 30th of Dec, and I received the first of two boxes today, Jan. 6 (I have a tracking number for the other box and it should be here soon). Not bad!

Oh, I totally didn't talk about voltage in this post. I should have. I will in the next post.

So, I'm happy with my pixels and can't wait to get a controller and some power supplies so I can start turning them on and stuff. I'm still trying to figure out what exactly to do for props and mounting, so that will have to come later. Full update when it happens, though.

Any rate, two things which came up as credible options. First off, apparently you can contact vendors on Aliexpress (Ray's name was brought up for this) and ask for a quote for the number of pixels you want. From what I understand (I heard this after I placed my order, so I didn't get an opportunity to find out, though I will probably purchase another thousand, or two so I may try then), he will often reduce or waive the shipping fee.

Since in my case, shipping would have been around $300, that savings is nothing to sniff at.

Second credible option I've heard: group buys. If you are getting into the hobby, I would suggest finding a forum (or forums) to join, then seek out folks in your area. There are (were; thanks COVID) meetups all over the world at least a couple times a year, and there can be vendors at these meetups, instructional sessions, demos, etc. But one other thing which is not uncommon is arranging group buys in order to get large bulk discounts; if 10 (or 50) people pool their orders and go through one vendor, they're likely to get a savings on cost and on shipping; then the items are distributed at the meetup.

Any rate, that's the cut and dry of how I got my pixels. Next time, I'll go into pixel voltage and how to decide what strands will work for you.