Christmas lights ... details!

So this post is for my brother and anyone else out there that is curious about how Steve does his lights. I'm starting it, but I may make Steve finish it. :) For those who don't know, our house really is quite done up outside for Christmas. Its not crazy like some that you see (National Lampoons). Its done VERY neatly and is choreographed to music. The lights dance almost as if they are the instruments making the music. I love it! Its Steve's "baby" though. We often sit in our van across the street from our house so we can watch our own lights ... I know we're strange. So if you ever see a van like ours backed into the driveway across the street ... don't mind us! If you live locally and haven't seen our lights, they will be turned on starting Friday, November 27th through January 1st. Most nights they are on from dark until about 10pm. Closer to Christmas, we sometimes leave them on longer if there are still people coming by. At this point, unless you are curiours how we do our lights or want to learn how to do it for your own house, I would suggest you stop reading now. :)

We talked about making videos of our lights last year ... but never got them. I think it started snowing the night Steve tried and then we didn't get back to it.

First off ... Steve uses a Light-o-Rama system to control the lights. Each Light-o-Rama has 16 "channels" but they can connect to each other as well ... We have 4 of them. Each channel can control one set of lights - making that group of lights do whatever you want it to do. A set of lights might be one string of lights, or a series of strings on one level of the roof, a wreath on the front of the house or a tree in the yard or any combination of multiple things you plug together. But whatever is plugged into one channel will do the same thing at the same time.

The controllers are mounted on a board that stands beside the house. They connect with 64 extension cords to all the lights in our yard and on our house. A CAT5 wire connects the controllers to a computer inside the house. - I tried to get a picture, but they are behind a bunch of other boxes of lights and stuff, so this isn't the best picture. You can see two of the light controllers in teh pic. Notice the black plugs hanging down below each box - that is what all the extension cords plug into.

Software that came with the controller is used to program each individual "channel" of lights. You can "draw" your yard on the program so you can simulate what the lights look like, assign channels to each of the "sets" of lights. Then you program each of the channels to turn on and off, flicker, pulse, dim, etc at each point of time corresponding to the music you have loaded. We have 64 channels - which means we have 64 extension cords in our yard that connect the different sets of lights to the controller. It also means that if we turned on each set for a second each, it would take a whole minute to go through the yard. :) You CAN purchase pre-programmed songs but Steve has created all 5-6 of our songs from scratch.

How do we use our 64 channels?? Last year we only used 48 because we had hopes of creating one more big tree with the other channels but ran out of money due to the job issue last year. We aren't sure if we'll get to build that tree this year or not ... This is a picture of our house last year - obviously after a big snow storm. But you can see the layout of our house/lights a little. You can't tell but along the top of the front porch are green light garlands with red bows in the middle of each. There are 5 of those. Each is on its own channel. Along the porch rail are regular garlands with white lights and then at each post there is a lighted candy cane. Those are also each their own. Buried in the snow are trees, presents and spot lights. Those also take up some channels. The spot lights looked really cool with the snow on top ... just sparkling under the snow.

Then there is the regular lights - all C4s on the house. We have red, white and green lights on our house. Each color can turn on/off by itself. The upper/lower levels can also be turned on/off separately. So, that's 6 channels (2 for each color). In order to do that though, we have 3 strands of lights running together. I think you can see it in the 2nd picture below. We have removed every other red and every other green (left them empty) so the lights can alternate white, red, white green. This also makes our lights closer together than a normal strand. The red and green start at the same point, but the white starts half way between the first two lights. Hope that makes sense.

I think this angle shows the three strands better... Yes, every single light bulb is clipped to the roof. And yes, we take them down and put them up every year. They go up in mid-October (so we avoid being on the roof during rain, wind, cold and snow that comes in late October and November). When he takes them down, he takes down all three strands as if they are one and leaves the clips on the lights. He just coils up each set of lights, ties them together with a pipe cleaner and then keeps them in the same order so they can easily go back up the next year.

Another thing we used a lot of channels for are these dancing arches. These were inspired by the fountains in Vegas. We made these from scratch last year. For each of the 4 arches, we took two PVC pipes (just bought it at Lowes) and then 4 wood blocks with holes drilled in them. We drilled screws into the wood blocks, through the PVC to hold them in place. Then we took lights and wrapped the arches (stapling the lights strands so they don't move). Each arch has 4 channels so the first channel can turn on, then the 2nd, 3rd and 4th, making it look like the lights are shooting from the ground up and back down into the ground on the other end of the arch. Hope that makes sense. Then we can make the arches jump from one arch to the next (leap frog style) or we can make them dance simultaneously. Its a really cool affect. We store them in our garage - hanging on the wall because the space in our cold storage is FULL with other lights. :) When we install them in the ground, we put 2 rebar in the ground on each end and that goes inside the ends of the PVC pipe to hold them in place. This takes up 16 channels!

All the rest of the channels ... go to these ... Boxes with trees, garland bows, candy canes and presents. :) The final touch ... a sign that says to tune your radio to our station. We have a small radio that broadcasts the music so you can hear it inside your car while you stay warm and watch the lights. It also means our neighbors don't have to hear it playing outside all the time. The radio only broadcasts about 2 houses either direction so you have to be close to tune into it.

We love our lights... but it does cost a lot to get it all. The controllers aren't cheap! http://www.lightorama.com/products.html If you buy them in the spring, they often do specials, making it significantly less. Then of course, there is the cost of all the lights themselves (and replacing them as they burn out, break etc). We usually take a shopping spree every year on Dec 26th to hit the after Christmas sales on lights and items. Sometimes we buy things, other times we don't find as great of deals. Our electric bill goes up about $100-150 for the month but its actually not as bad as when we ran all the lights all the time (constantly on - before we had the controller). And of course, there is the flickering lights inside the house, especially my office and the dining room. The surging on and off of the power outside makes the lights pulse a little inside. We can sometimes even tell which song is on based on the pulsing inside. :) We enjoy watching the cars outside watching the lights. We'll sit in the window with the blind just a tiny open so we can see how many cars there are and how long they stay. We had 5 songs last year. Some stay for just a minute or two, some for a song, others stay for longer. A family about a block away told us that they use it as a reward ... if the kids are ready for bed and have had a good evening they get to come watch a song. :)

We'll do our best this year to get videos to share with you! And if Steve has any additional input or corrections, I'll let him make notes tonight.