Curved Wall

Dane Daniels from The Harvest UMC in Missouri City, Texas brings us this awesome curved wall look.

From Dane: We previously had a reclaimed wood wall behind our pastor, but when we started streaming more than just the message we needed to improve the backdrop for the entire width of our stage. I took inspiration from the Highlight Strips design, but I needed to stay connected to the reclaimed wood aesthetic we’d established elsewhere on our campus. I designed a curved wall with cedar fence boards and gaps for LED tape strips from a previous set build. I knew I had previously split twelve 16′ RGB LED tape strips into twenty four 7 and 9 foot strips. I spaced them apart in a scale drawing in Photoshop and quickly realized I wanted one more length. I split half of my 9′ strips in half and arrived at a design I was happy with. Twelve 7′ strips, six 9′ strips and twelve 4.5′ strips.

I created a separate document to plan the curve to estimate materials, but in the end the final angles were planned drawing it out the base, with a lot of math and an angle measure tool.

My frame was constructed from 2x4s and 2x10s
– Twelve 30 inch segments of 2×4 were prepared to top the wall with a 91.88 degree angle on either end.
– Three 10 foot pieces of 2x10s were use as a base. The corners were cut off so that they matched the dimensions of four segments of the top pieces.
– A mix of 11 foot 2x4s (and some shorter pieces lapped together) created the wall studs. I needed 15 of these.

I assembled the wall in thirds, stood them up and braced the back corners to the stage wall with pieces I had lying around.

We hung corrugated plastic from a local plastic supplier on the frame with drywall screws, taking care to measure so that all our screws would be hidden behind fence planks. We used coffee stir sticks to line up the channels in the corrugated plastic as each sheet with up and then taped the seams from behind with black tape to block backstage light.

I marked my row heights from the top down and use a laser level on a tripod to make each row perfectly level. I used a brad nailer to hang the cedar planks.

The corrugated plastic provided the structure needed to mount the LED tape which had lost its stickiness. My design has 30 LED strips of various links, controlled as if it’s 24 RGB fixtures. (12 of the LED strips are in pairs). I used a pushpin to punch a hole above and below the tape, and fed U-shaped floral wire through and twisted it tight on the back side of the wall. I cut a hole in the corrugated plastic to feed the control wires through and used RBG extension cable and wire nuts to add length so each strip could reach one of the three DMX decoders. Each DMX decoder has its own power supply.

I control the wall with LightKey running on a Mac.

LED Tape – https://www.amazon.com/SUPERNIGHT-Changing-Non-waterproof-Flexible-Decoration/dp/B00E0EVHYA?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=B00E0EVHYA&pd_rd_r=616740f7-4e7f-4fc7-9ca4-4355986415e2&pd_rd_w=3pQ09&pd_rd_wg=b1M9D&pf_rd_p=f325d01c-4658-4593-be83-3e12ca663f0e&pf_rd_r=NSBTYYDZFBMMP3ZNZX17&psc=1&refRID=NSBTYYDZFBMMP3ZNZX17&linkCode=sl1&tag=csdi-20&linkId=f188b02ae4a691edc06399dcd0e4e03d&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_tl
DMX Decoder – https://www.amazon.com/Channel-Controller-Smoother-Indicator-Function/dp/B01CCBG1SO?hvadid=312305907549&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=14530553623500787482&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9027790&hvtargid=pla-444813334052&psc=1&linkCode=sl1&tag=csdi-20&linkId=7675cdfd31be03d812777e23968ff10a&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_tl
Power source – https://www.amazon.com/eTopxizu-Universal-Regulated-Switching-Computer/dp/B00D7CWSCG?pd_rd_w=O8Cql&pf_rd_p=a07701e4-f565-442a-b97f-93ab23cbb7ef&pf_rd_r=NSBTYYDZFBMMP3ZNZX17&pd_rd_r=616740f7-4e7f-4fc7-9ca4-4355986415e2&pd_rd_wg=b1M9D&pd_rd_i=B00D7CWSCG&psc=1&linkCode=sl1&tag=csdi-20&linkId=4cde71e0ca5c4a46d55d5f63458e8d0b&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_tl

I didn’t really budget for the project since it’s the beginning of a budget year, we were long overdue for a redesign, and much of the materials were reused from other sets. If I were to start from scratch, I bet I would’ve spent $1150

• LEDs $168
• DMX decoder $150
• Power sources $63
• Plastic $192
• Wood $475
• Misc cables $100