I wanted to see how mini trees would look using C7 LED lights, and how many it would take. I took photos of each step and created this Mini Tree Simulator.

Well I finally got one of our Light-O-Rama controllers hooked up for the first time last night and tested a few of the lights! How exciting!!!

I’d heard from several people to make sure I tested the different effects on different lights before using them in sequencing songs…..and they were right! I thought the Shimmer effect would be much different, but about the only lights you can easily see there’s an on/off happening, are these little LED short cylinder shaped mini lights. Luckly, they will provide a nice snowflake, shimmer effect that I was hoping! I’ll just need to blackout every 2-3 lights I think because they are spaced too close together. But they are very neat..and really bright!

So I strung around the basement various lights I wanted to test. I plugged in one mini tree (with both red and green in channels), the LED mini cylinders, a string of stars that will sparkle, one of the red C7 LED strings, and a lamp on the floor (so I could turn on a light to see what I was doing). Then I turned on the Chase Sequence on the controller to toggle between what was plugged in…ran upstairs to get the wife to show her!

Natalie came down, saw the flashing from outside the basement door, said “You’re not going to show me CHRISTMAS LIGHTS are you?! Babe…it’s JULY!”

Tyson: “Yeeeaaaaahhhhh….check it out!”

Natalie: “Sighhh…ok, can I go brush my teeth now?”

Yes, there is such a person! The Demented Elf is a computerized light show enthusiast himself, but he’s got more talent than just lights…he does awesome voiceovers! The really cool thing is he has his own Christmas Display Show, so he really has a great understanding of what’s needed and what works best. I just got our voice overs from him today and I can’t wait to integrate them into the show! His voice is really awesome, he’s really great to work, prices are excellent, and he’s got his process streamlined!
Here’s just one tiny sample I’ll share with you: G-Town Christmas Opening Voiceover

Anyway, if you want a nice professional touch to your Christmas display, Power Point presentation or multimedia piece, I highly recommend The Demented Elf!

Just took delivery of our two light controllers today! Two of these puppies!

So each controller has two inputs (plug-ins) and 16 outputs. Meaning, each output controls a “channel” which is any kind of light set/decoration. So we will have 32 sets of things that these will be controlling in our display…that will be syncronized to music broadcast over a short-range FM transmitter to 99.9 FM.

I’m excited…but need to get my sequencing of our songs done, I’m still struggling with it. It’s taken me much longer to figure out than I thought it would!

Cruising around CafePress last night and thought I would share some of my favorites with regards to Christmas and all things related!

Alright! Finally a sense of accomplishment, I got our first sequence done! It took me much longer than anticipated to figure out how to get everything working, but after about 4.5-5 hours of sequencing time I got it finished! Special thanks go out to Tim Dorr and Richard Holdman and the PlanetChristmas Forums for all their direction, examples, and words of encouragement…I needed it!

Just finished finalizing our list of songs to set our show to! I won’t displaying the artist so there’s some surprise come Christmas time:

• Christmas With A Capital “C”
• The Little Drummer Boy
• God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen
• Mary Did You Know
• Christmas Canon
• Have A Merry Christmas

I’ve probably taken off more than I can chew with 6 songs for our first year, but hopefully I can get everything sequenced really nicely and still have time to get the other things all done, and lights up! Wish me luck!

Well finally after several learning opportunities, I’ve settled on 99.9 FM to broadcast our show’s music!

The Ramsey FM30B Stereo FM Transmitter is sweet though, I’m glad I went with the FM30B and not the FM25 because of the LCD display and ease of changing settings.

I learned all sorts of things while setting this up. Hopefully others can learn from my experiences:

• Not all radios can get the same channels. Most only tune into odd numbered frequencies, as all licensed broadcasting stations use odd numbered stations (98.1, 98.3, 98.5, etc).
• Each frequency has a Voltage, which will make your signal carry further the higher the Voltage. For example, 107.1 has a voltage of 5.9V whereas 92.1 has a voltage of 2.1V.
• The FCC regulations state that anyone can broadcast a signal as long as it’s under 200′ from the source (that’s a rough number, as it’s really a power rating, but w/o test equipment most people can’t determine the strength).

When it comes time to turn on the Christmas Display, my computer sound card line-out will be plugged into the Transmitter, and will broadcast the Christmas songs to people’s cars on 99.9FM while they watch the lights choreographed to the music.

I have my XM PCR satellite radio plugged into the Ramsey now, so I can tune any radio in the house (or neighbors house) to 99.9 FM and listen to my XM radio.

Well the planning and work for our first animated display officially began yesterday when we ordered our final pieces of equipment, the “brains” of the whole thing, our Light-O-Rama controllers! We will have 32 channels of lights synchronized to music broadcast via short-range FM broadcaster. I’m been really getting deep in the planning stages of what lights and decorations will go where before I start plotting everything out in my sequencing software. The real fun begins then, sequencing every channel of lights to every beat of the music, for 32 channels! I’ve been told this takes on average about 4-5 hours per minute of music, so I’ve got my work cut out for me!

I will REALLY appreciate how these people with hundreds of channels of lights are doing 6-10 songs for their shows! This is a year-round hobby for sure!

Let the fun begin!