My Star Ceiling Build

Thought I would start a thread with some pictures of my star ceiling build for any one interested.

Specs:
8' Octagon
850 Milky Way Stars @ .5mm
183 Normal Stars @ .75mm
119 Constialtion Stars @ 1mm

Materials:

The Fiber Optics Store
3500 feet .5 mm Fiber
1200 feet .75 mm Fiber
800 feet 1mm Fiber

Fiber Optics Products
2 Cool Sky Illuminators

SY Fabrics
Black Velveteen

The frame is made up of 1/2" MDO plywood. It has a nice smooth paper face on one side that is good foor glueing the vetvet to. In the pictures I have the star map taped on top for drilling all the holes.

Black Vetveteen glued to the surface after all the holes were drilled. Widest material I could find was 60" so I did have to make one seem. It is really hard to get a perfect seem, you can't see it in the pictures but it is their, with the lights down low you will never see it. I may have to do some blending after I get it up on the ceiling and see what it looks like. You can kina see all the dots on the back where the star holes are. As I drilled the holes mark the 3 different sizes with a different color marker so you know what goes where.

Here is the start of running to fiber, I have about 75% of the .5mm fiber done at this point. It is a really BORING and SLOW job, but some one has to do it.





Here it is with all the of the fiber ran. What a pain.




I also added a couple of layers of 1/2" sound board to the back just to try and add some sound dampening to it. Don't know if it does any good but it cant hurt

Add here it is completed and mounted to the ceiling, and that was a fun task also.

The first picture is standing against the wall. The secound picture is mounted to the ceiling but it has plastic over it to protect it until the theater is done, so the picture is not so great. The one thing that I notice is that their seems to be a blue tint to the lights and I don't know why that is, it look more blue in the pictures then real life. But it does look great and the family loves it. I haven't played around with with the LED settings yet for twinkle, probably wont until the theater is complete.

I got must of it off the internet some where and they I added some of my own constilations and extra stars in, so it isn't a "true" map I guess. I have a 24" printer that prints off rolled paper so I can print 24"x96" sheets.

I hope to MAYBE have the .5mm fiber all run tonight and do the .75 & 1mm this week end. May get it put up into place this week end if all goes right. Won't have the illuminators until next week though. Also going to wrap it in plastic when I put it up until the rest of the build is done, so it might ba awhile before I get a complete picture of it. But I will eventually.

Yes some one on here has done it. Made the entire theater room look like a space ship inside, pretty cool.

Found it :http://www.reighn.com/theatermain.html

I will have about $800 in it when done. You could save $100 by using 1 illuminator instead of 2 like I am doing.

Sould have all the fiber done tonight, all of the .5 and .75 is done and most of the 1mm is done. Then I have to start triming them all off.

It sits up in an octagon soffit area and I can get at the top of it to screw it to the floor joist.

You can see some pictures and renderings of the build HERE

I updated post #3 and #4 with current pictures. I am glad to say that it is DONE!!!!!

Updated post #1 with links to where I got stuff from, let me know if that is enough.

I haven't really played with the twinkle much yet. Going to wait untill everything is done so I can take the plastic off and fine tune it. But just from some quick punching of buttons I don't think it will be a problem so find a good setting.

I don't think their is any good way to remote control it. The setting are made by a singal button on the side of the unit. Once you set the twinkle pattern, speed and brightness those memories are stored. So that light unit is plugged into an outlet that is hooked up to a normal light switch. So to turn the star ceiling on you just turn the switch on, pretty simple. I really don't see any need to adjust the settings on the unit once you get them where you like.