Firesticks

A firestick is simply a vertical post wrapped with lights. Firesticks can be short or tall, thin or wide, and are commonly made from PVC pipe, wood, or other lightweight materials. They can be short, tall, skinny or fat. A common post material is PVC pipe, but they can be made out of 2x2 wood just as well. Traditionally, the lights are divided into several independently controlled sections so each firestick can be animated with chases, fades, and other lighting effects.

Simple Here's an example of a short, 44" tall PVC firestick that has a topper ball. It's wrapped with three strings of 50-count white incandescent mini-lights, and the topper ball was made by splitting a whiffle baseball, stuffing it with a short string of 15 white mini-lights and zip-tieing it to a couple holes drilled in the top of the firestick. Prior to assembly, the PVC and whiffle ball were spray painted with flat black paint to provide a better wrapping surface as flat paint provides more friction for wrapping, as well as hiding the wires. As each of these firesticks had 4 channels, they were controlled by DirkCheapSSRs inserted up inside the PVC pipe; they were zip-tied to a short piece of rebar pounded into the ground when mounted in the yard.

Pixel Firestick Here's an example of a firestick that uses multiple strips of smart pixels attached to a PVC pipe and then covered with shrinktube for waterproofing. This particular example was 17' long and used three, 5-meter pixel strips, connected in parallel and driven by a single ESPixelStick. The shrink tubing protects the pixel strips from weather while also helping hold them securely against the PVC pipe.

Here's a quick demonstration of the completed firestick: Vimeo demonstration

Both traditional light-string firesticks and modern pixel firesticks remain popular because they are inexpensive to build, easy to store, and can add significant vertical movement and color to a display.