We Built a Replica of the Las Vegas MSG Sphere in our Backyard! #drzzs #msgsphere #led

by now everyone has seen or at least heard about the massive LED sphere in Las Vegas when I first saw it I said wow and then just like everyone else the next thing I said was I need to build one so I did what I always do when I want to build something crazy awesome I called gers we wanted our sphere to be big but not so big that we wouldn't be able to move it around we decided an 8ft diameter would be a good size for our first attempt at this and yet yes I'm implying that we will be making more versions in fact we're already pretty far along on designs for a smaller one that just about anyone will be able to 3D print and build yourself to make a display on a ball we had to solve one fundamental problem if we just fold a matrix around a ball we'd have a bunch of pixels bunched together at the top and bottom but at the Equator the pixels would be too spread out to make our sphere rival the one in Las Vegas we had to design it so the resolution is the same at the top and bottom as it is in the middle that means there's less pixels in the rows at the top and more in the rows around the middle if you really want to know there are 45 pixels in the top ring and 310 around the equator as soon as we had the basic idea together gers went to work designing the frame it's made up of five horizontal Rings 18 vertical ribs and 77 rings of pixels when the plans were done we took them to our friends at no limits manufacturing and design they've got a couple massive CNC routers and they were able to cut out all these parts for us in about 2 days with all the pixels hanging on this thing we knew it was going to be really heavy we estimated it would weigh about 500 lb and we knew we wanted it to be outside we would have loved to have cut it out of something like plexiglass or acrylic but that was way beyond our budget and this thing is going to be expensive enough so we stuck with wood and the guys at No Limits suggested we use a special extra durable plywood they called gorilla ply because we put a good amount of thought into the design and we had Precision cut Parts the building of the frame actually went really quick we got the whole thing together in about 6 hours painting it actually took a lot longer but thankfully we had a lot of help after the frame was all put together and waterproofed it was time to start putting on the pixels this was absolutely the most difficult part of this whole thing okay you got how many of these pixels to poke through there so I've got uh it's 20,000 pixels one by one all 20,000 we wanted the pixels to be equally spaced vertically and horizontally so we used 1-in spaced boscoyo pixel strap which happens to also be 1 in wide I'll do the math for you 20,000 pixels 1 in apart means 1,700 feet of pixel strap I timed it and it took about 15 minutes to push 100 pixels into the strap again I'll do the math for you that's about 50 hours of pushing pixels we did use pixel pushing pliers and a pixel pushing jig and we wore work gloves but we still got blisters and it was still painful The Next Step was mounting the pixels in the strap on the frame this was one of my favorite steps because it really started to look like what we had envisioned in the beginning when I came to a point where I needed to butt the ends of the strap together I took a small bit of strap and made a patch the vertical ribs have notches and the pixels fit just right and are held in by friction we did go back and add some nails to hold the strap to the ribs before I ran the pixel strap all the way to the bottom I had to send in my mini electrician to make the connections once we put all the pixel strap on there'll be no way to get back inside [Music] there these last few rows are really really hard way harder than any of the others in total there are exactly 20,28 pixels I measured the power draw and as you would expect it varies a lot depending on what is being displayed at rest with nothing being displayed at all it uses about 4 amps at 120 volts the highest draw I measured with the display running was 17 amps with most effects pushing the draw up to six or seven amps next we needed something to make it do all the flashy blinkies this is the brains of the sphere this is a kulp 32 made by Daniel kulp it's got 32 data outputs we're using 29 of them each one has 700 LEDs on it each channel is labeled in case we have to do any troubleshooting underneath is two 12vt 100 amp power supplies those are data server power supplies this should keep it nice and safe and weatherproof does have vents as well because when this thing is running it gets warm in there those power supplies have good fans and they put off a good bit of heat there's an extension cord plugged into a 20 amp breaker that's powering the whole thing there's an ethernet connection between the Culp and our home network and it all fits nicely in this enclosure provided by CCL controllers thank you very much to them so there it is the brains of the sphere the Culp sends the data information to each pixel but to make the actual designs we want displayed we use a software called X lights the real Secret Sauce that makes an xlights sequence work on a sphere is pure pixel head magic if you don't know what a pixel head is you should join our Discord the pixel heads are the nicest smartest most helpful LED experts you'll find anywhere there wouldn't be a mini megasphere without the pixel heads thanks fellas making a sequence in X lights is a lot like editing a video there's a timeline effects and layers we can display a video or a picture on the sphere or we can play around with all the different colors shapes and patterns available in xlights it's easy to get lost playing with xits and spend hours making designs well that's it oh you want to see it in action okay it's demo time I see there is no life in no vo only death you cannot die I [Music] see [Applause] uh [Music] he [Music] a [Music] a [Music] [Applause] [Music] I that's all for now as always thanks for watching until next time [Music] adios

Channel: DrZzs & GrZzs

Views: 231,454

Keywords: DrZzs, wLED, Dig-Quad, Dig-Uno, Dig2Go, Dig-Octa, Home_Automation, Home_Assistant, DIY, Electronics, Tasmota, Arduino, 3d printing, smarthome, hassio, esp8266, iot, nodemcu, drzzs, wHobbit, wHobbit-Hole, wemos d1, esphome, home automation, automation, tech, drzzzs, dr zzs, dr zzzs, hassos, haos, home assistant, home assistant automation, iot home automation, drzzs sonoff, tech hacks, technical hacks, esp32, iot automation, OpenHASP

Id: _ZtewjbFXoA

Length: 10min 55sec (655 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 08 2023