Well I didn’t use the old panel wagon to pull a Christmas tree out of the ground, instead I used my SUV to haul home parts from Home Depot and Ace Hardware to build my mega-tree. Pixel lights, controller, and star all ordered during HolidayCoro.com pre-sale in January 2021.
The mega tree stands 17 feet tall including 2 foot base, 12 foot tree, and 3 foot star. The tree is made up of 1,070 bullet pixels; 800 for the tree and 270 for the star. The 800 pixels come from eight 100 count pixel strings folded in half each string makes two strands of the tree. The tree has 16 strands using PixNode Extreme Strip with 1″ hole spacing, with one pixel inserted every 3″. I opted for the 1″ hole spacing to allow more airflow since we get strong winter winds where I live. To attach the pixel strips to the frame I used Heavy Duty 4″ Bungee Ball Cords from Amazon. I’m using a 700 Watt 16 channel HinksPix Pro Receiver to power the 12 volt pixels with 10 foot extension cables built-in. This allows me to power all the pixels of the tree and star without the need for power injection.
NOTE: Building a mega tree is an advanced project and I would not recommend this as the first project for a light show. Outline your house, shrubbery’s, etc. and get past the learning curve with the software and wiring that goes into creating a light show first.
Mega Tree – Design
I found using the Mega Tree Calculator by Light Show Hub to be very useful for not only visualizing the tree (height to width) but also for determining the number of pixels per strand, power consumption, and spacing between strands. Here is the design I used. You will find the limiting factor on height to be the length of the pixel string which typically come in 50 or 100 count lengths unless you are planning to make custom length light strings.
Mega Tree – Pole
I’m using the ASAP (A Strap And Pole) for my mega tree combined with the Portable Hole II as invented by Walter Monkhouse of MagicChristmas.org. You may have seen his display on ABC’s Great Christmas Light Fight! The video below shows how the ASAP Sr. design works by using a boat winch to push a small outer pipe to raise an inner pole or even two poles from inside a large outer pole to create tall trees up to 19 feet with a single stage or 28 feet with the two stage!
Matt Heere has a good video on how he built his ASAP and mega tree. There are a few parts that are too time consuming to make by hand when you can purchase them. I recommend the following mega-tree parts be purchased from Boscoyo Studio; the ASAP Pole Bushing(s), 1000# Winch Adapter Plate, and Steel Mega Tree Topper. The other parts like winch assembly can be purchased much cheaper through a combination of on-line stores, Home Depot, and Ace Hardware.
Mega Tree – Frame
For the base I used a design by Fairy Pixie Dust which uses 3/4 inch EMT pipe and connectors from a company called Make Pipe. These connectors give you an easy way to assemble EMT into a variety of shapes and designs while allowing for disassembly to make storage easier. One enhancement I’m making to the design is to cut the two 90 degree curved sections of the frame in half so I will have four 45 degree sections connected with either 135 or 180 degree structural pipe connectors. Besides being shorter and easier to store the main advantage is the legs of the base can slide through the connectors so the frame can be leveled without using any shims under the feet of the frame. Leveling the frame and plumbing the mega tree pole are key to the lights being straight and in even rows on the tree.
NOTE: When bending the pipe to make the curved 90 degree sections the typical pipe bender’s smallest marked setting is 10 degrees. In reality you may need much smaller bends. Example: if you have a 14 foot tall tree with a 7 foot diameter base equals a 22 foot circumference. I built a 180 degree tree so cut the circumference in half to 11 feet made up of two 90 degree pipes of 5 1/2 feet or 66 inch circumference each. This creates 62 inches of bendable pipe. Assuming we make a bend every 4 inches you need 5.8 degrees of bend calculated as follows:
90 degrees / 62 inchs of bendable pipe * 4 inch spacing between bends = 5.8 degrees of bend every 4 inches
Pipe benders are made for making sharp 90 degree bends, so using them to make gradual bends is a challenge and takes a light touch. Remember it’s much better to under bend than to over bend.
The Portable Hole forms the base for the mega tree. It is essentially a 2″ galvanized floor flange concreted inside a wooden frame. The large pole that makes up the backbone of the mega tree screws onto the flange. The Portable Hole must be well anchored to the ground at a minimum of 4 points around the frame.
I used wood shims, like those used for installing new door frames, to level (horizontally) and plumb (vertically) the portable hole with the ASAP pole installed. When I leveled the mega tree frame the tension on the light strands was uniform and the pixels ended up in perfectly straight rows & columns! I also added two strands of the extreme strip from the back of the tree topper to additional ground anchors to keep the tree from tipping over forwards from the weight and tension as you crank up the pole.
Bullet Node Pixel Repairs
I had one bad pixel out of 800 on the tree. Holiday Coro shipped me a pixel repair kit which worked great. The rule of thumb is to cut out the pixel before the first one that’s not working. The thought is some of the time its the lack of output from the preceeding pixel that is causing the issue. Below you can see the Solder Seal Wire Connectors which when a heat gun is used they soldier the wires you’ve inserted while also waterproofing with heatshrink at the same time.
I had a chunk of ten pixels that were always staying on. I thought I had a bad pixel but upon further inspection I forgot when adding pixels to a string to pay attention to the direction they connect. Just like pixel strip, bullet nodes also need to flow in a singular direction pointing away from the controller. Here I had accidentally reversed the pixels so even though the power and ground were connected properly the data flow was backwards, so I had to unsolder the string and flip it around and re-soldier to resolve the problem.
See the other pages in the Build menu to learn more details about each display element or click here to see the Portable Hole.