2013 Building Progress – Day 3

Construction continues! All parts of the CS display have now been covered in snow apart from the tunnel, as I’m still waiting on a few bits from Ebay. Following pictures shows current progress.

layout_preview

Here is a close up of the lights in place along the track:

track_with_lights

We even have a signal:

signals

Here is a picture of the Christmas Train running:

xmas_train

2013 Building Progress – Day 1

Welcome back! Can you believe we are here again? Today has been a day of stock taking, ordering new bits and assembling some of the kits I will need to put this years display together. I started by assembling the DC Solid State Relay boards I bought last year (but I didn’t order them in time last year so had to improvise!). A before and after shot:

dc-ssr-kits      dc-ssr-assembled

A few piccies of items being used this year:

stuart_the_train

This is Stuart the tank engine, he might be making an appearance in a Christmas Display near you!

and

college_xmas_tree

A pair of lovely wooden Christmas tree, pre lit but I have already removed the inards ready for “tweaking”

It’s that time again….

Work begins on the 2013 lights on Monday 4th November, with a full week off work to get a head start 🙂 This year I hope to add extra hardware to both the Selby College and the CS Department displays. Regular blog posts begin next week! I hope you like the new Christmas wordpress theme Iam using this year.

 usb_io_card

 

Selby College Switch On!

Thanks to everyone who came to see the Christmas Lights Switch On today!

The lights will operate from 9AM – 7PM on the hour from Thursday 6th December, once some final adjustments have been made.

Don’t forget I am supporting Cancer Research this year, do please donate if you can no matter how small it all makes a difference. To donate please click here, or use the link in the right hand menu.

Thanks!

Dean

Selby College Installation 2012 – Day 2

Another installation day @ Selby College today!

Lights are now up, complete with tinsel. This shot taken during testing, one of the snowflakes isn’t working at the moment but the cable fault has been identified and will be fixed on Monday.

We even have the Christmas Tree up ready for Monday.

Thanks to my helpers today!

Switch On

Monday 3rd December @ 4:45PM

2012 Building Progress – Day 4

Not as much progress today as expected due to one thing and another which meant I didn’t get finished in time to get to College, but I have at least got myself a new glue gun!

With the new glue gun, ive managed to complete all the figures for the display @ Selby College. The final ones being to Santa’s, here they are ready and waiting.

To control some RGB LED strips I’m using 4 x 5V relay cards that can be driven directly from the Olsen 595. Here they are all soldered up with RJ45 plugs ready for connection.

Install day @ College tomorrow!