Mr.Tim's 15x27 Theater - Page 5

No pictures of the theater to share, but I have been progressing slowly. Mostly routing pieces to assemble the columns.

I've been sidetracked with this:


I had to break out a shoehorn, but I got the air handler installed and running. I still have some duct insulating to do. Oh, and I just found out I piped the supply/return backwards for the first floor.. d'oh! I had labeled the ducts supply and return 2 years ago when I installed them to prevent this.. but I labeled them wrong! Anyway, not too terrible to fix that problem.. Guess it could be worse. Blows nice cold air but I can't dial it in unless it gets above 60 degrees outside.

Here's the Aprilaire 6203 controller and the damper to the left:


Not sure who first turned me on the the Aprilaire.. Nick?

It works really well, but is counter-intuitive. All dampers are open when the unit is off. When a zone calls for air, it closes the dampers to the zones that are not calling. I had figured it would work the other way..

I have a ton of panels and molding to prime tomorrow.. Once that's done I should be able to get an assembly line going and make some real progress.

Tim

Haha I have to do the exact same things. I'm not sure about the bypass yet. I had some estimates when I was going to contract it out and 2 of the 3 said it wasn't necessary, the third said he would install without it, but it may need one. He recommended running it and see what happens. One of the first two said they would install a 'gravity dump', which is basically the bypass damper dumping into the attic instead of the return plenum. Seemed kind of.. inefficient.

At about 52 degrees outside today the plenum sensor was interrupting the condenser because the supply air coming out the unit was too cold. So I know that works

Makes sense about the fail-open. Never thought about that.

Tim

I just referred to the diagrams that came with the units. 5 wires.. Rh Rc Y G W. Rh=24v for heating, Rc=24v for cooling, Y=call for cooling, G=fan, C=common. I might have Y and G backwards. The diagram is on the access panel for the unit.

What's miswired about it?

Tim

Yes, 3-tab meets the building code. Not sure what wind zone you are in, but the contractor should use the high wind nail apttern (6 nails per shingle vs normal 4 nails). Subject to verification with the manufacturer's installation instructions..

Hope you otherwise came through the storm ok. Not sure where you live, but I may be able to give you the names of some roofing contractors if you need them.

Tim

It dawned on me that I should get the step lights in the columns before I close them up. The thought of measuring-drilling-jigsawing was not something I was looking forward to. Instead, I made a simple jig to use with my router, a 1/4" spiral bit and a bushing. I should have done this.. 20 years ago:









Here's what the columns are beginning to look like:


I got a lot more of the rails and stiles routed. Hopefully I can move forward without too much interruption to mill more pieces.

Tim

I have 6 to cut out.. 4 step lights and 2 receptacles in the columns.

I just took a scrap and penciled out the outline. Drilled two 5/8" holes to accommodate the little bump-outs (I'm using a 5/8" bushing on the router). Threw it on the miter saw and cut as much as I could (which also guaranteed the cuts were square). Finished up with a hand saw. Maybe 15 minutes of work.

About 5 minutes per box to cut out, and they fit perfect every time.

When I'm done it's going in the toolbox with all of my bits and featherboards.. When I think of the number of times I have jigsawed baseboards and cabinets to accept a single gang box..

Progress on the columns. The tolerances are very tight, but the pieces seem to be coming together nicely.

Half columns:





Bottom of the two full columns:





Detail of the trim between the upper and lower halves of the column. The rabbit hides the joint and straightens out any minor bows in the wood:





Added some braces and filled the bottom with insulation. The steps lights need 3" clearance from the insulation, so I'm not sure how much more insulation I will put in there:





Here you can see what the finished look will be:




The panels in the top half will be fabric. I had originally intended to do black.. but wondering about red to match my absorption panels. Still leaning towards black. That wire you see was intended be for an IR emitter.. the Grafik Eye is on the wall opposite the wire. Unfortunately I am unable to locate a blaster for the application.

Tim

Well, with all this trim progress I am slowly getting to the point where I can shift gears and build the speakers that I bought the parts for.

You know what that means? It means it's time to buy something else that I won't need for a year. So I went and bought a 7" tablet to hopefully run iRule on. Well, We'll be doing a road trip with the kids, so it's inaugural purpose will be to play movies in the car. I took a chance on this $60 ebay tablet.. We'll see if it works well or not. I figured for $60 if it keeps the kids happy for one trip, it's paid for itself. Hopefully it will do more than that.

I also bought a Global Cache GC-100 off of the 'bay. Well, to be honest, I bought 3. I only need one. At $23/each and all 3 shipped for $12, what the heck. If you are thinking about doing anything with automation.. you really can't go wrong for the price. Just remember the GC-100 can only handle 1 connection at a time (unlike the iTach that can handle 8 simultaneous connections). The GC-100 is a solid choice for the theater since only one remote will be used. It might not be so good for a whole-house application where you would have multiple remotes trying to control hardware.

Anyway, that's my tip for today.

Tim

Been progressing very slowly. Getting into the intricacies of the trim. Column meets wainscot meets riser nosing meets... It's been complicated.

Progress pic:



Note that the riser the seats are in is completely free-floating. It rests on six vibration isolators. Consequently nothing else can be attached to that riser. The columns had to be completely supported by the walls and anything else I could fasten to. I also had to cut all the trim on that riser (nosing etc) 1/4" short on both ends so the riser could be moved by the Buttkickers.

I also am getting ready to finish the few odd and ends spackling:



I'm using the roundover bead in the three places that actually need corner bead. Remember to draw plumb lines on the wall before installing corner bead! Otherwise you end up with crooked bead.. and you will notice.


Also got some more stuff:



Looking to use iRule to control everything. The tablet was $60 shipped from the manufacturer on ebay. The wifi and battery leave something to be desired, but it's capacitive and works great. It came rooted with Google play installed. The kids have a blast playing with it. The GC-100's were $23 each and all 3 shipped for $12. I'm going to use it to control the equipment and the Grafik Eye. I am planning on putting the second 3106 in the closet at the rear of the theater. If I can find a one- or two-button wallstation cheap on the 'bay I'll put that at the rear of the room for a secondary control. Not sure it's necessary.. But I can't refuse a good deal

On the subwoofer front, strategy has changed. I'm going to use two F-20's in the front, behind the screen. In the back I think I am going to use two THT's due to their lower form factor. The rear seats will be about 30" off the back wall for decent sound.. the THT's will fit nicely behind them and leave the top of the rear wall available for some sort of sound treatment.

Tim

Yeah those seats have been in my way for the entire build . They've been mostly covered up and moved from here.. to there.. and back.

There is going to be 3 rows of seats.

Those theater seats will be overflow seating and will be on the highest riser about 30" from the back wall. I have 7, but I think only 6 will fit.

The floating riser will have a straight row of 4 leather-match recliners.

The concrete (lowest) level will have a straight row of 3 leather-match recliners.

Tim

Laying out the LED soffit lighting:



I'm no electronics guru.. but I have a bit of experience with LEDs. I've probably soldered over a thousand of them to go with my 200+ channels of computer controlled Christmas lighting. I understand the basics.

I've seen some people try to do some pretty crazy things with LEDs, but you really have to put some thought into it to get even lighting that works.

The key here is voltage drop. If the voltage goes too low you will get dim LEDs. Worse, depending on how you wire it, you could end up with some bright and some dim. Industry standard for most things says that allowable voltage drop is 5%. With LEDs I go for 3%. That is, 3% drop in the wire that is supplying the strips. That's because the voltage will continue to drop in the strip itself. How much? I don't know, because the trace widths and thickness will vary with manufacturer. It's easy enough to test, just power one end and read the voltage at the other.

So I'm shooting for a 3% voltage drop, or less than 0.36 volts (12 * .03)

I started by selecting the LED strips I am going to use. I just want red (not RGB), so I picked the 3528 LED strips with 60 LEDs per meter. Specs say these will draw anywhere from 4.7 to 5.3 watts per meter. If you have fewer LEDs per meter, they will draw less current. It's important to know what you are buying!

I knew I wanted to use 18 gauge wire.. because I had a ton of it. Thermostat wire is typically 18ga and it is rated for in-wall use. I had a spool of 18-4 thermostat wire lying around.

Next I needed to figure out the voltage drop using 18ga wire. Now, if you didn't have any wire, you could work the other way.. what gauge wire do I need to keep the voltage drop within parameters.. but it could get expensive quickly, and the thought of running 14 or 12ga wire to strips is not a good one.

Voltage drop is a result of the length of the run, the gauge of the wire... and the current being drawn. Draw less current and you have less voltage drop.

Using the diagram of my ceiling as pictured above, I used 2.77 meters as a starting point. Specifications for the strips will state they draw anywhere from 4.7W/m to 5.3W/m. At a worst case of 5.3W/m (0.44A/m) the 2.77m strip would draw 1.22 amps (0.44 * 2.77). I figured 20 feet as the longest length of my 18-4 that would supply the strips. You can punch these numbers into any of the online voltage drop calculators and you will see this yields a voltage drop of 0.31V. 0.31V is less than the 0.36 I was shooting for (3%), so this is a good match. If I make the strips longer (ie combining a 2.77m and a 1.52m piece), I'll draw more current and the voltage drop will surpass the 0.36 threshold-- no good.

Consequently I ran an 18-4 to each corner as depicted by the magenta lines in the diagram. I will take 2 of the conductors from the 18-4 and power a single 2.77m piece of strip LED, and I will take the remaining two conductors and power the adjacent 1.52m strip.

A few caveats you need to keep in mind.. The traces on the strips are only able to carry a certain amount of current. Draw too much current through them and they will burn out. Check the description for the maximum length permitted. Second, keep in mind that with RGB strips all of the current is returning on a single conductor. You probably have four wires going to the strip, 1 conductor is +12v for red, another +12v for green, a third is +12v for blue and the last is a shared -12v for all three. To put it in household terms, you wouldn't take 3 circuit breakers, run a black wire to each, connect a receptacle to each of the 3 black wires and then use a single white wire for all 3 receptacles. You have to sum the current to size the white wire. Typically you will be running red OR green OR blue, so it may not be a problem. However, if you start color mixing, or turn them all on simultaneously.. you could have a problem

To control my red strips I am using a GRX-TVI interface with the Grafik Eye system. I picked it up brand new of the bay for some crazy price like $20 a while ago. That will interface with a Meanwell HLG-240H-12B 12 volt power supply. The important part is the "B" at the end. That means it accepts the 0-10v control the GRX-TVI will output to control the LED dimming.

Again, you have to size the power supply properly.. Using our worst case of 5.3 watts per meter, multiplied by the total length of my strips (25.74m) I come up with a total of 135 watts required.

HTH,
Tim

Here's one design (not my design, but I built 8 of them):


LED flood using a cheap halogen enclosure. Rip out the halogen and insert PCB.



DIY Controller (start with a bare PCB and a big bag'o'parts):


Everything is DMX controlled.

Tim

I know, at the price that guy is unloading them it's hard not to. I imagine once his inventory is sold the prices will rise again.

Anybody that is thinking about iRule should jump on one now or regret it later.

I've seen it happen with Grafik Eyes.. people paying $3-400 for a used unit. Wait a few months when there are several of them.. I picked both of mine up less than $200. Now prices have jumped up again.

Don't say we didn't warn ya!

Tim

I've been steadily moving forward. I'm not sure where all the time is going.. it seems like at the end of the week I haven't gotten very far.

Finished the last of the tread nosing:



I framed/sheetrocked/spackled/painted the small closet at the back of the theater. I broke out the handly-dandy $50 hvlp and gave it a coat:



With the closet done I can finish up wiring the second grafik eye, which will be installed in the closet. This second GE will control the step lights, the rear lights and the GRX-TVI that will dim the soffit LEDs:


That box is a 3-1/2" masonry box. It's a "gangable" masonry box, which means I can add more gangs to it. They didn't have the preformed masonry box in stock. The important part is it's 3-1/2" deep because anything else is a royal PITA.

Progress on the install:


You can see all the wiring for the LED soffit lights at the very top. I need to get an enclosure to mount the LED driver and terminate all those wires. I am going to fuse them all in the enclosure.

Tim

I had some cheap-o Glidden paint left over from a Halloween project. That stuff is so terribly thin out of the can I thought it might spray well.

It didn't work well out of the can, but after adding a little water it sprayed fine. I started with 16oz of paint in the gun. I ended up adding 4 medicine cups (like you get with cough medicine) of water. I basically added one medicine cup at a time until it sprayed well. I don't have the cup you can use to test viscosity, so it was trial and error.

Prep was pretty easy. I just masked off the areas I didn't want to paint. Also vacuumed the floor so the air wouldn't blow dust off the floor into the paint. The only cleanup was the gun and that's easy as well.

I will probably go for the roller when I paint the rest. Given the tight space and all the pipes, the sprayer was the easy solution for the closet.

Tim

This is the other thing I sprayed:



The studs are about 2" off the back wall. I'm not sure what I am doing here as far as acoustical treatments, so I painted everything black.

Eventually I will have something.. diffusion? absorption? and cover it with fabric. I'm not really sure what I should do with this area. I've seen two layers of absorption with plastic between them... I've also seen diffusers.

I guess without an expert analysis of the space it's just guessing.. and it will probably be a bad guess.

Tim

My best guess is that some company that was using a tremendous number of GC-100's either went out of business or upgraded. The 'bay is flooded with used units, in particular one seller is offloading hundreds.

The GC-100 has been around for years and I don't see it being any less useful due to age. Global Cache has introduced the iTach line of bridges that will accept multiple connections, so you need to choose the bridge that will work for you. For the theater a GC-100 should be a good fit for most people.

I don't know for sure, but I think iRule gained mainstream notoriety after HomeSeer, C4 and Savant. If it is gaining steam being introduced after those other technologies, chances are demand will only increase.

Each has their own nuances.. But iRule needs only the device (ipad, android) and a bridge to get going. The low cost of entry is a big plus for me. I've looked at other technologies and they all seem great.. but you pay a lot up front just for the server. There is also a user Mark P. who has been around for years.. he has tried them all and went with iRule. He has the time and the resources to use whatever he wants, and iRule gets a thumbs up from him.. so that means a lot.. to me..

Tim