After a gestation period of nearly two years, I finally managed to make a Christmas display for our four windows in 2019. Despite a very poor finish at the time, not one failed me over a three week period.
Once they came down, I felt obliged to rebuild them for a longer life and better appearance.
The originals were pretty much held together with duct tape and drawing pins but the tape was very useful in all the places where it couldn't be easily seen and judicious use of some very good quality insulating tape also made the whole thing neater and less prone to shorting out on the reflective foil.
The lights are cut from edge lit Neo-Pixel strips that only use three wires to control the whole display. I used a cake base from a cookery shop for the circle and cut a strip of 57 Neo-Pixels for each one. The power for each board was a small ready made block from China that inputs between 100 and 240 volts AC and outputs 5 volts DC. They were the first item I changed once Christmas was over.......... It wasn't that they were unsafe, I had used some heavy insulation on the AC side but the whole thing looked very inelegant and a bit scruffy.
And this was when the story really started!
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