I’m Brian Ramirez. In 2021, just in time for Christmas, Tesla released a software update for all their cars which included the ability to turn the car into a musical light show. Being an engineer, of course my first thought was: “There must be a way to create my own show, right?” This led me down the rabbit hole to discover RGB pixels, xLights, and the amazing world of high-density, fully synchronized light shows, and the amazing community of people that create them.
In 2022, I set out to create my first holiday light show at my home in Scottsdale, Arizona. Of course I wanted to go big with DMX movable spot-lights, a billion lights and props, but I humbly settled on just 1500 pixels and a Kulp controller. I spent MONTHS planning, measuring, prepping, sequencing, soldering, and many other “ings” for the show and got a 12 minute, 4 song show up just 1 week before December 25th. It was such a rewarding endeavor, and worth all the frustration, challenges, tribal knowledge, and literal bloody process; I was hooked.
I’ve always enjoyed tinkering and collecting various skills that one day might turn out to be useful and putting on my own light show allowed me to combine and enhance so many of them together, but I’ve always seemed to keep these skills to myself and never really thought about sharing them with the world. My wonderful wife casually asked me why I don’t just start a blog about my show and maybe open up a store where people just starting out or with lower density shows can buy sequences, helpful 3D prints I’ve designed, and even some of my custom circuit board designs. (She’s so smart!)
So I did exactly that and Show Me the Pixels was born. SMTP is my way of paying it forward to help others just starting out and be another great and trusted resource for people with existing shows. I’m not trying to out-sell, undercut, compete with anyone else, I’m just happy if people stop by!
I look forward to helping contribute to further expanding and growing the community around this wonderful (and slightly insane) hobby!