Newcomer that wants to go big for 2024!

[MagicPixelz]

Greetings everyone! I'd like to introduce myself, my name is Paul, an auctioneer from Colorado, and while surfing YouTube I ran into a Tom betgeorge video and it blew my mind! I'm a techy guy who loves a good challenge, and try to stay up on the latest and greatest stuff, and I thought, well, I could do this! So I have delved into hours of YouTube videos, internet research, fibbing around this year looking at the couple displays we found online, etc. And it landed me here to ask for your help! I think I have a pretty good basic understanding of what's going on, but I still have a few questions I was hoping people here could clarify... I know that when I jump into something new, I tend to go a little overboard... so I think this will be a perfect fit! LOL. I'm asking for recommendations on equipment, want a few things that I don't know what they are called, and am very open to learning and taking advice. I do like to be thrifty and make my dollar go as far as possible, if that means waiting for the perfect time of year for sales and clearances in good with that. I don't know anybody around here that does these shows, so I have nobody to consult with. I'm thinking of spending in the neighborhood of 5-10K to get started for the first year, and hoping that will get us a good start for both Xmas and Halloween props as well as the multi use roof and window trims. When I've got into other hobbies (lots of them) I have found the saying "wish I knew now what I didn't know then" very true! I'd like to kick this off with the right gear the first time. With so many controllers and lights, companies, etc. I want to choose the right setup from the gate. Like today I stumbled on Mattos Evo pixels, and while lower energy, lower price, and ease of use sound great, I'm worried about things like the thin wires and having to do future repairs, add in a pixel don't sound as easy with them. I also see lots of controller options on wiredwatts, and it seems like the new falcon one seems to be the best, but I might not understand application, and how many controllers I will need. I guess I will need help with a laundry list of items needed based on my idea of what I would like to put together. So ultimately, I think I will be needy and have lots of questions. Hope this is the right place for this! Looking forward to any responses from people willing to help share experience with products, etc. And if anyone's from Colorado, would love some future initial setup and run thru... I think my post is long enough and hope to receive some great input! Thanks everyone and hope you all have successful shows!

I purchased 1,200 Mattos Evo pixels last November. I love the way they look colors are awesome and they are much easier to push than the standard bullet pixels. With that said, I experienced some major drawbacks. 1. They currently only offer 4 inch spacing. This is a problem for certain coro props that require a wiring order that skips around like 360 mini trees. As you mentioned the wires are very very thin and very delicate & fragile. Splicing the 4 wire EVO pixels is very daunting. My situation required me to add extended wire extensions between pixels. That is 6 extensions per mini tree with each extension having 4 wires makes 48 splices per tree with 4 trees having a total of 192 wired splices! What could go wrong? My fingers turned into burnt, callused, & sore, I could no longer buttons a shirt or unzip my pants and her nipples hurt my fingers! On Christmas eve, my wife moved one of the mini tree to get the car out of the driveway and the tree stopped working. The next say I brought it in and found the evo connector had twisted. So I started to untwist it to relieve any pressure and it snapped off like a twig! The wires snapped off (flush) on the connector so there is no way to re-attach it. All EVO pixels come with 3 Pin to 4 Pin wire converters but cannot find 4 Pin to 3 wire converters anywhere. So no way to mount regular 3 wire bullet pixels (I already had) for a mini star on top of the mini trees. My advice is to only use Evo pixels on props or models that don't require no more than 4 inch spacing. Also don't use Evo's in props that need to be moved around like I did across my driveway. Hope this don't do what I did, helps

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