A synchronized light show in Alpharetta Georgia. Over 56,000 Lights.
What are Really Big Bulbs? They are really big plastic bulbs in the shape of traditional C9 Christmas light bulbs. They were sold by a number of different retailers in 2018, 2019 and 2020. Depending on where you bought them, they came in two formats; electrical with one incandescent C7 bulb inside, and battery powered with two LED bulbs inside.
We bought ours at The Home Depot and, because we wanted to convert them to RGB pixels so we could control them, we bought only the white colored ones.
RBB Specifications
Material: Plastic
Power Type: DC 12 Volt
Light Type: Pixels - Square Triple
Light Quantity: 3 Pixels per Bulb
Show: Halloween & Christmas
Introduced: 2020 Halloween
Converting the RBBs to RGB
A lot of folks bought these to convert them so you'll be able to find lots of conversations in the forums about how best to light them. I've seen where folks have installed a single bullet node, five bullet nodes, and some bought specialty nodes from China specifically for the task. It all comes down to how much light you want to have in your RBB and whether you want to be able to flicker your RBB (which would require multiple controllable pixels). We tried some of the different options that we already owned and chose the one shown at the right. Flickering wasn't required and three RGBs seemed to be an acceptable brightness. It was an added plus that the square node shown happened to fit perfectly into the RBB's plastic housing.
Our PixelChoice
We had the requirement of being able to use each RBB separately or to connect them together as part of a continuous string for sequencing and controlling. To meet this requirement, we configured each RBB with an input and output pigtail. We used a five foot xConnect extension that we cut in half. The final product results in the ability to connect multiple RBBs with about 4.5 feet spacing. The diagram to the left shows four RBBs connected together.
How we Wired the RBB
The wiring diagram (in the Attachments section below) shows how we wired the RBB to meet our requirements. Please observe the following in the diagram:
+ The input/output pigtails (halves of the original xConnect 5' extension) have three wires. We define the wires as follows:
Red = Positive
Black = Negative
Green = Data
+ We used a short piece of a 4 wire extension to enable us to handle power into and data into and out of the pixel. We used the wires as:
Red = Positive
Black = Negative
Yellow = Data IN (to the pixel)
Green = Data OUT (to the next pixel)
+ The 3 RGB square node. We used the center hole to attach the node to the RBB housing.
+ The Power (Pos/Neg) are passed straight through to the next pixel as well as being diverted to the current pixel.
Attachments
This section includes extra stuff in the way of photos and diagrams that have been included to provide additional information about this display element. Select an item to view a larger version and additional information.
Disclaimer | Information on this page is purely our opinion, learned from our years of experience doing our show. We may have acquired our knowledge using other sites but it is not our intent to suggest that our conclusions are shared by the authors of those sites. This page mentions retail stores as a reference to where we purchased items. We are not affiliated with those stores and use of their name, and product images, has not been authorized by them.