"Reel Time" Build Log-14' Scope, 9.7 17,000W Transducer Audio, Dedicated Stadium Room - Page 7

Moggie - Did you double up the blue rope on your soffit? I saw in your build thread that you had double clips installed in soffit, but couldn't see if you actually installed two.

Also - Where did you purchase your blue LED rope light?

Thanks!

Added a few pieces of trim (corbel and rosette) to the front sides after they arrived in the mail.

WE HAVE STARS!

Set out to unpack the huge crate that held my star field panels from FOSI this weekend, and actually finished it. Everything was very well documented and the instructions were spot on. Now, it did take far longer than I anticipated, but since I have never put one up I really didn't know what to expect.

The biggest issue is working around the star placement and having the blocks behind the panels for mounting in the right position. Then there's the lifting of the 45"w x 10' long 3/4" MDF panels into place and scewing them up. With the help of four 3rd Hand poles and my oldest son, we were able to do it. We did need assistance from my wife and youngest to help hand the poles and steady them.

Below is a stream of photos from beginning to end of the this project.

Opening the crate...



Panels in the crate...



One of them out and ready to go...



First panel up being held by 3rd Hand poles before being screwed up...





Quick pick holding the end of the fibers up to the illuminator...



Fibers coming in through the slot and into the hushbox in the rear of the rooom...







Second panel up and the fibers running back to the hushbox...



I installed blocks to help line up the panels. The screw is not going into the panel, but into the 3/4" mounting block. Once the panel caught onto the biscuits, I removed the blocks and pushed the panels together. I needed to use the blocks (4 total) because the MDF bowed too much making it hard just using the poles...



All the panels up...



View of the wheel in the illuminator and the panel holding the fibers...



Other side of the illuminator with the fiber strips attached...



Just a pic of the illuminator bulb...



A couple shots (albeit poor from cell phone) of the field...





Pic of the illuminator running sitting in its final position up in the hush box to the side...




I have to say that I'm really impressed with the star field and it's quite stunning all finished. It was a lot of working prepping each board and working around the star locations, and especially installing the screws, but worth it. For each screw, I simply cut and L in the felt, pealed it back, put in a screw, then laid the felt back over and smoothed the edges making it disappear.

The only small negative, and it is small, is that the seams of the panels are visible when you are standing directly below one looking up. The MDF is tightly together (I even used the poles horizontally to squeeze them together), but the felt does not touch from each piece. There is no overage at all of the felt. When you look directly up at a seam, you can see the light brown of the MDF panel showing. I think I will take a black sharpie and try to run down the line to color the MDF and see if that works. If I would have known prior, I would have colored it before putting it up!

There you go. If you have any questions about it, just shoot'em out.

Thanks SM! I remember reading about your issues. It went pretty well overall. Some of it was just trial and error in figuring out the best way to put the panels up, support them, and then screw them up.

The first panel went up fairly easy since I had everything ready to go and made sure my space in the soffit was pretty square. The second panel gaves me fits because it was just two of us there and I hadn't thought of the four small blocks idea. Because the panels are so long (10 feet) they really bowed with us holding at the edges and made it difficult to line up. Coming up with the block idea for the third and fourth panel was a big, big help. Having two other people to help with the support poles, while not necessary, certainly was a help.

The finished star field is 10 foot wide by 15 foot long and is made up of four panels 45" wide by 10' long. Yes, everything is from FOSI, who has been great from start to finish. I plan to give them a call on the seams.

The fabric is only on the surface of the MDF and not on the edges. I would have thought the same thing, that the fabric should be pulled over the edge and then the biscuit slots cut. I'm not sure how FOSI cut the fabric, but if that blade is just angled a bit from the MDF edge, this can be the result. I know that I have the panels pressed together completely because I took my poles and pressed the panels together before screwing them together. I even beat on the edge of the panel with a rubber mallet to make sure something wasn't catching. When the other seams came out the same way, I figured it was just a slight issue with the fabric and the way it was cut. Seems like the best approach would be to wrap it over the edge like you did, but I'm assuming FOSI tried that in their design phase and ruled it out for some reason.

The seam is very tiny, maybe a 1/16" at the most. If you are not stating directly below the seam and looking up, you will not see it. When you are there even, you can't look over at the other seams and see those. And the reason I'm seeing the seems at all is because the light brown color of the MDF panel is showing through the gap. That's why I want to take something like an acrylic paint pen and color over it to see if it goes way.

The stagger is an interesting idea. For me though, if I'm sitting at the back under the last panel looking forward, I cant see the seams at all.

I would agree with SM that I think you will be okay even at the close distance to the ceiling in the rear seats. Once you're sitting down you'll be 3-4' below. You could also play with the layout of the stars a bit so that you don't have a huge concentration of them towards the back. I'm sure if you talked with FOSI, they would have some ideas like this to minimize any of the concerns.

Mine is 11' above at the front row and 10' above at the second row. It ends just behind the second row and doesn't extend over the bar area. So it's a little hard for me to give you a full opinion. That being said, given that the majority of the field is black and with some appropriate placement of the stars, I think you will be just fine. It really does look amazing completed and is a huge wow factor. My oldest (17 - yes, thank you in advance for the sympathy) even said it was "sick"! From what I understand, that's pretty high praise.

Just got off the phone with Cyr at FOSI to talk about the seams. Looks like someone there forgot to paint the edges black. He said that they are supposed to do that so that what's happening to me, doesn't. He's sure, as am I, that once I run an black paint pen down to color the MDF that they will disappear.

I did ask about the idea of wrapping the edges with the fabric, then cutting the biscuit slots. As I thought I might hear from him, they tried that in the design phase and this made the seams very apparent. Even though they are tighly glued, the pulling of the fabric over the edge changes the look. Putting two edges like that together doubles it and it shows up very easily.

SM - You're idea of the stagger probably made some of this go away.

Also, one of those "WHAT WOULD I DO DIFFERENTLY" items, is having FOSI separate the motor and lamp in the illuminator to be on different circuits. That way I could dim the bulb for fade in/out or just to lower the intensity a bit. I am still planning to do this, but now I'll have to modify the illuminator myself which isn't a big deal. The lamp I have is LED and can be dimmed. Prior HID lamps could not without causing damage to them. The LED does bottom out at a certain point and will start blinking, so there is a power "bottom".

No, just one circuit out of the box. Didn't think that through on the order and wish I would have read your thread prior. I looked at the wiring and it looks to be a quick addition.


Yours is 40 sq ft bigger than mine then. Not sure if the number of stars is what is driving the fiber difference. Just looked back at the proposal and I have ~523 Milky Way stars + ~218 constellation stars = total ~714 fibers. MW stars are dimmed and all C stars twinkle with some dimmed.


They were on the original proposal, but I dropped them. I'm very visual and easily distracted by things he see even at the corners/edges of my vision, and I knew that they would distract me in the end.


That's pretty damn impressive! I thought about getting a lift, but moved on forward. Still one person with a lift is a lot of work.

Thanks Spaceman.

In the photo above where you see the silver side of the aluminum strips, there are two strips per panel (4 panels), one for the Milky Way stars and one for the constellation stars. The exception is the larger strip in the middle for one of the panels where the MW stars are terminated on the top of the strip and the C stars are terminated at the bottom of the same strip.

FOSI gives you the instructions on placing the aluminum strips in the proper position. Look at the photo above where I removed the lamp and you see the wheel and the black side of the aluminum strips. This is a panel that mounts to the aluminum strips and holds them all together. The cutouts you see there have an ND filter showing to dim the stars to varying degrees. The twinkle wheel only moves in front of the C star strips. The MW star strips are the ones above the wheel.

I don't have a picture of the unmounted aluminum strips, but what you would see is a bunch of tiny holes all together in the shape that matches the ND filter cutout I just described. Each individual fiber goes into one of those holes so that the end is cut flush and straight onto the lamp. The hole is just tight enough to hold the fiber.

I'd rather not do that. Just give FOSI a call and they can certainly give you an estimate for turn-key and DIY. They did for me.

With the whole HT build and the addition and remodeling, I had to make a call on what I'd do myself or purchase. This was one I went ahead and paid more, probably a lot more than DIY.

Looking at the invoice, I can at least tell you that a DIY version of this would have cost about 50-60% less. That would have been only having FOSI give me the fibers and illuminator. Everything else, including the template would have to be done by me.

Thanks Sean. I'm anxious to get'er done and enjoy it. I know that StockMonkey had some major headaches on his star ceiling. Although there is the enjoyment of looking at something and knowing you did it all yourself, albeit with a lot of help from folks and threads here!

I'm sure I'll be cuss'n when I go to start my DIY 4-way masking system. All the parts are here. Just need the time, and patience, to get it going.

Thanks! More to come!

Hush box

With the star field up, I figured I would get the last major trim up, which is the inverted base and small crown that goes around and below the star field. I started laying everything out, which included it going across the front of the projector hush box. In order to see where the trim could either go across or would need to stop to allow a portal, I had to mount up the projector and see where the image fell on the backside of the drywall that makes up the face of the hush box.

First thing, I needed to mark out the largest image on the screen wall that I could possibly throw. It might be a little smaller, but I wanted to make sure the portal could allow and image that large, plus I wanted some cushion. So I figured out the 15' wide scope size (180"w x 75"h @ 2.4:1). I marked out that with blue painter's tape on the tarp protecting the screen.



To get a 15' wide image with my Epson 6010, I had to move it all the way into the back of the hush box and even cut out some of the studs.



Then I created a shelf for the projector, brought it in, and then changed the background image to blue from black so that I could see the image it was projecting on the back of the drywall and then on the screen once I started cutting holes. Pretty cool with the blue light.



The total depth of the hush box is around 46". Remember that I changed my plans (more than 12x probably) on the projector setup and finally settled on dual Epson 6010's - one dedicated to scope and one dedicated to 16:9. Going with the bigger screen required that I move the scope PJ all the way to the back of the hush box. My original plans was to have a single PJ mounted towards the front. Now with the PJ in the back, I knew the portal that I would need would need to be much bigger than say a 6-7" circle/rectangle. So here comes the next steps.

I started cutting holes through the drywall where I saw the zoom maxed image and seeing where it fell on the screen wall. I just kept moving the holes around until I could figure if I was reaching my desired scope width. Looks like some crazy techno pumpkin.



Well, after fooling around with that for probably an hour, I was amazed by the portal size I needed! Keep in mind the lens of my PJ is 29" back from the front of the hush box. Well, here's what the final portal size turned out to be.





Yes, that's huge! I knew it would be much bigger, but nothing that size! It turned out to be roughly 25" wide by 19" high allowing for a little breathing room and room for trim.

No came the real problem. Putting up a piece of optical grade AR glass that size (even if I could get it that large) would be 1) expensive, 2) would allow you to look and see everything in the hush box, and 3) have the PJ too far from the glass. So trimmed off the area around the front of the hush box and what I'm going to do is create a sort of funnel wall that comes off of the back of that angling in on all sides to a portal window for each PJ that's more reasonable. I will paint everything the same deep blue of the soffit so it doesn't stand out. Actually it might look kind of cool. I'll be sure to angle the AR glass portals to the recommended 15 degrees.

I'm going to make it as light as I can and so it can detach from the front trim. That way I can get up in there since my access will now be blocked, and I can change it if my PJ changes.

Well, that was the majority of the day. As always, a new challenge and more time taken up. I'll do another post for the rest of the day.

I'm a workin' on it! Well, I did just post a pic showing one of the 6010's mounted, albeit temporarily. That takes care of one orb at least for the moment!

Star Field Trim

After fooling around with the hush box for most of the morning and into the afternoon, I finally could get to the trim for the star field. After all the crazy in-and-out angles I've been dealing with to date, it was nice to just have straight walls and 45 degree angles to deal with!

Here are some pics of the completed trim. You can see where I added the trim around the inside of the portal of the hush box and where I broke the crown trim also.











And yes... you do see some blue light in the pics... on that topic, read on...!

LED Accent Lighting

Well, I got so fed up with a lack of response on my rope light issues that I sent it all back. I started searching around for other options, and long story short, I found some affordable RGB LED strip lighting on Amazon and ordered a single reel of it. If it worked, I was going to have to change around my plans a bit to keep them off my GE unit and run some IR wires to the LED controllers. I figured I had all that available (good planning and conduit!) so I ordered a reel of it. I actually tried it out the other day on the side wall and it worked perfectly. You still have to get a good angle, but the output was bright enough and the color was great and uniform. Having the ability to change the color was great also! My wife was liking colors she never thought she would have.

This is the item on Amazon that I purchased. $40 for a 16' reel (I'll need 6 total) with controller, remote, and power supply.

After some trial and error, I figured out the best placement by just temporarily taping it in different places. When I laid the strip on top of the inverted base it gave me a nice mounting area, but the light was directed by the edge of the crown and it left a straight edge of color on the star field. A few more options and I found that placing it on the side wall of the soffit and just below the edge of the top of the crown gave a great result. BTW, there's a 1-3/4" gap from the top of the crown to the star field. Here are the pics of the strip in the channel behind the crown.





It's falling down in the middle there on the last pic, but you get the idea. The strip has 3M tape on the back which will make it go much easier for mounting. I will just use a spacer to get it even as I apply it.

Well, here's the final result in a purple-blue which just looks fantastic on the star ceiling! Changing it to red and increasing the brightness also looks great and gives it a fiery horizon.



I think it looks great and the color and brightness (with ability to easily adjust) works very well. These strips are 150 LEDs in 5m (16.4') and they do sell double-density (300 LEDs/5m) but I don't think they are needed. At least not for what I'm doing.

They appear well made, but for the price my concern would be the quality of the LEDs. That I'll just have to wait and see on. At the price, about $250, for all six units I had to give it a whirl.

Okay, back to work. I think it's a day of caulk ahead!

Day 2 and 3 of the 3 Day Weekend

Well, really nothing to show picture-wise for this post. Spent a half day on Sunday and all day today pretty much doing all the caulk work on the trim. I'm glad to say that I'm done! I probably will need to touch up a few areas where it shrunk too much.

I cleaned up the room a bit and went around and filled in any nicks and scraps in the walls, getting them ready for paint. I built up a two foot section of the crown molding and painted it a metallic gold which I'm going to try and antique with some dark glaze as that's the current route we are thinking for the molding. I also painted up a large piece of cardboard with a dark brown paint we are considering for the walls in between the wallpaper. I will get some pics up soon on that.

I ordered some Protostar flocking for the masking system, but also to line the walls of that "funnel" I'm going to have to make for the hush box. I figured that would be the better way to go instead of the dark paint in order to soak up some of the light.

Selecting Paint

I think we are narrowing down our choices for the wall color and how to finish all the trim. We've gone back and forth on the trim between paint and faux wood graining. We like the wood look, but we really wanted to bring in a "grand" feel with a gold metallic. That's already in the carpet and wallpaper as an accent. So, after some research, we thought we'd try a metallic gold base for the trim and then accent it with a darker glaze. This would give the multiple layered trim some needed definition and even create some wood-like graining.

So, here are the results. We' don't have the wallpaper book any longer and the paper is ordered, but here's a picture of the wallpaper. On each side wall, it will be covering the two bumps and the front angled wall. Here's a pic of the side wall to refresh the memory.



And here's the wallpaper. It's a darker red than what's shown.



So here's the wall color painted on a large piece of cardboard, the carpet is the red one on the right above it, and our test build-up of trim is below.



The wall color is a dark brown with a slight gold tone. Doesn't come out as dark in the photo. The carpet and trim look about right.

Now, the samples on the trim...



The strip down the middle is the unglazed, plain gold metallic paint. The glaze on the right is a dark option (coffee) and the glaze on the left is a darker gold option. We like the one on the left the best, and definitely not the paint gold paint.

But now, we'd like to hear from everyone that's following their opinion. The carpet and wallpaper are a given since they are both ordered. But the paint color and finish for the walls and trim are up for grab. The cabinetry and third row bar wall is a dark, brown mahogany wood and the seats are an expresso brown (think a black-brown).

Opinions?